Women-writing-women:: Three American Responses to the Woman Question

The Woman Question served as a catalyst in Kate Chopin's, Nella Larsen's, and Willa Cather's portrayal of the eroticized female body. The question evolved, in part, from Herbert Spencer's 1873 article "Psychology of the Sexes" and centered around Spencer's "theories" on woman's nature, her function, and her differences¿biological, sexological, and sociological¿from man. Chapter one historicizes the Woman Question by examining its influence in these three areas. Chapters two, three, and four analyze one novel by each author. Chopin's The Awakening introduces the literary study because it operates as a transitional text challenging the Cult of True Womanhood while simultaneously introducing the sexualized New Woman. In Larsen's Quicksand, the New Woman is conceptualized within a black female body, a body that boldly confronts racist notions of woman. Lastly, Cather questions heteropatriarchal hegemony through her eroticized, feminized landscape in O Pioneers!. Although each author develops her heroine differently, all three construct strong female characters who energize the Woman Question debate, forcing a re-examination of it in ways ignored or unrealized before.