Kitchen Economics: Women's Regionalist Fiction and Political Economy

In Kitchen Economics: Women's Regionalist Fiction and Political Economy, Thomas Strychacz examines how female regionalist writers of the 19th century represented political economic thought through three complex cultural fables: the island commonwealth,stadialism, and feeding the body politic. He argues that these works represent counterparts to modernity rather than counterworlds and that their emphasis on sufficiency and the common good has been misinterpreted and misvalued by contemporary neoclassical economics.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 232 pages
\n Publication date: 30 September 2020
\n Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
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Readers of late nineteenth-century female American authors are familiar with plots, characters, and households that make a virtue of economizing. Scholars often interpret these scenarios in terms of a mythos of parsimony, frequently accompanied by a sort of elegiac republicanism whereby self-sufficiency and autonomy are put to the service of the greater good - a counterworld to the actual economic conditions of the period.

In Kitchen Economics: Women's Regionalist Fiction and Political Economy, Thomas Strychacz takes a new approach to the question of how female regionalist fictions represent the economic by situating them within traditions of classical political economic thought. Offering case studies of key works by Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, this study focuses on three complex cultural fables - the island commonwealth, stadialism (or stage theory), and feeding the body politic - which found formal expression in political economic thought, made their way into endless public debates about the economic turmoil of the late nineteenth century, and informed female authors. These works represent counterparts, not counterworlds, to modernity; and their characteristic stance is captured in the complex trope of femina economica.

This approach ultimately leads us to reconsider what we mean by the term economic, for the emphasis of contemporary neoclassical economics on economic agents given over to infinite wants and complete self-interest has caused the sufficiency and common good models of female regionalist authors to be misinterpreted and misvalued. These fictions are nowhere more perceptive than in their depiction of the complex relationship between gender, economics, and power. By exploring these fictions, we can gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which nineteenth-century women writers responded to the economic challenges of their time and contributed to the development of political economic thought.

In conclusion, Kitchen Economics: Women's Regionalist Fiction and Political Economy offers a fresh and insightful perspective on the representation of the economic in nineteenth-century female American literature. By situating these fictions within the traditions of classical political economic thought, Strychacz demonstrates how female regionalist authors challenged traditional notions of gender, economics, and power and contributed to the development of political economic thought. This study is a valuable addition to the field of literary studies and provides a new way of understanding the complex relationship between gender, economics, and power in nineteenth-century America.

\n Weight: 498g\n
Dimension: 163 x 236 x 26 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780817320584\n \n