1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463271903321

Titolo

Playing house in the American West : western women's life narratives, 1839-1987 / / [edited by] Cathryn Halverson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Tuscaloosa : , : The University of Alabama Press, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

0-8173-8686-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

HalversonCathryn

Disciplina

810.9/9287

Soggetti

Autobiography - Women authors - History and criticism

Domestic space in literature

Women and literature - West (U.S.)

Women authors, American - West (U.S.)

Women in literature

Electronic books.

West (U.S.) In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1. Playing House on the Froniter - Caroline Kirkland and Louise Clappe; Chapter 2. ""Your Ex-Washlady"" : Elinore Pruitt Stewart, the Woman Homesteader of Wyoming; Chapter 3. ""Straight-Made in Nothing"" : Mary MacLane and Domestic Ritual; Chapter 4. Girls of the Limberlost : Gene Stratton-Porter and Opal Whiteley; Chapter 5. ""Wind and Sun Are Good Housekeepers"" : The Domestic Narratives of Mary Austin and Zitkala-Sa; Chapter 6. Camps, Caves, and Attics: Playing House in Willa Cather's Western Novels

Chapter 7. My Great, Wide, Beautiful World: Home Writing as Travel WritingChapter 8. Eating in, Eating Out, and Eating al Otro Lado: M.F.K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me; Chapter 9. Searching for Home: Jean Stafford's West; Chapter 10. The Once and Future Home: Housekeeping and Anywhere but Here; Conclusion. ""I Am Going to 'Play Like' You Have Come""; Notes; Works Cited; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Examining an eclectic group of western women's autobiographical



texts-canonical and otherwise-Playing House in the American West argues for a distinct regional literary tradition characterized by strategic representations of unconventional domestic life.  The controlling metaphor Cathryn Halverson uses in her engrossing study is "playing house."  From Caroline Kirkland and Laura Ingalls Wilder to Willa Cather and Marilynne Robinson, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries, western authors have persistently embraced wayward or eccentric housekeeping to