1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910300005503321

Autore

Eagleton Mary

Titolo

Clever Girls and the Literature of Women's Upward Mobility / / by Mary Eagleton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

3-319-71961-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (213 pages)

Disciplina

820.99287

Soggetti

Literature, Modern—20th century

Literature, Modern—21st century

Social history

Social structure

Equality

Culture

Gender

Sociology

Contemporary Literature

Twentieth-Century Literature

Social History

Social Structure, Social Inequality

Culture and Gender

Gender Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: The Language of Upward Mobility -- 2. Escaping Origins -- 3.Relative Values: Career, Marriage, Maternity -- 4. Troublesome Bodies -- 5. New Forms, New Selves -- 6. ‘Top Girls’ and Other Epithets -- 7. ‘The Haves’ and ‘the Have-Nots’ -- 8. Coda: Phantom Feminism.

Sommario/riassunto

This book follows the figure of ‘the clever girl’ from the post-war to the present and focuses on the fiction, plays and memoirs of contemporary



British women writers. Spurred on by an ethic of meritocracy, the clever girl is now facing austerity and declining social mobility. Though suggesting optimism, a public discourse of ‘opportunity’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘choice’ is often experienced as an anxious and chancy process. In a wide-ranging study, the book explores the struggle to move away from home and traditional notions of femininity; the persistent problems associated with women’s embodiment; the pressures of class and racial divisions; the new subjectivities of the neoliberal era; and the generational conflict underpinning austerity. The book ends with a consideration of feminism’s place as a phantom presence in this history of clever girls. This study will appeal to readers of contemporary women’s writing and to those interested in what has been one of the dominant social narratives of the post-war period from upward to declining mobility. .