The New American Women Concept as Modern Women in the Novel My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather: A Feminist Literary Criticism
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-070-1_3How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Modern; New America Women; Novel My Mortal Enemy; Women
- Abstract
This article discusses one of the phenomena in American social life at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, namely the emergence of the typical New American Women. They are known as modern women who reconstruct Victorian values in traditional American society. This phenomenon was documented by Willa Cather in her fictional works entitled My Mortal Enemy in 1926. It features a female character named Nellie Birdeyes who builds a new conception of women in America. This research helps literary readers to find social facts in the world of literature so that they can be used as life guidelines and educational media. Feminist literary criticism which narrates the social atmosphere of women in gender relations is used as a method of study in conceptualizing New American Women in the novel My Mortal Enemy. This criticism emphasizes the emergence of women who are able to bring changes in people’s lives so that the views of marginality and inferiority against women turn into justice and equality. Literary works are considered as a medium for imaging the roles of women and men related to certain social conditions. This research results a conception of New American Women, namely the emergence of a new woman who is seen as a modern woman in her day. Their emergence is estimated between the 1890s and 1920s which carries the notion of renewal on socio-cultural construction. They want to rationalize the role of women in household, family, and community life. They are generally young women who want to reposition the dominance of men’s rights over women, such as the need for women to also be given property rights, economic access, and education outside the home. The presence of New American Women is played by Nellie Birdeyes in the novel My Mortal Enemy.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Abbas Abbas AU - M. Amir Pattu AU - Fathu Rahman AU - Abidin Pammu PY - 2023 DA - 2023/06/27 TI - The New American Women Concept as Modern Women in the Novel My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather: A Feminist Literary Criticism BT - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Linguistics and Cultural (ICLC 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 20 EP - 29 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-070-1_3 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-070-1_3 ID - Abbas2023 ER -