Collaboration, Materialism, and Masochism: New Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Sentimental Literature and Culture.(three books on sentimental literature)(Book Review)

Publication: College Literature

Publication Date: 22-JUN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 West Chester University

Kete, Mary Louise. 2000. Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. Durham: Duke University Press. $54.95 hc. $18.95 sc. xx + 304 pp.

Merish, Lori. 2000. Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Durham: Duke University Press. $64.95 hc. $21.95 Sc. 400 pp.

Noble, Marianne. 2000. The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. $57.50 hc. $19.95 sc. 240 pp.

In 1860, the writer of an article entitled "Sentimentalism" that appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine defined sentimentalism as "either a disease of the moral nature, or a perversion of imagination; either the illusive confounded with the actual, or fancy taken in preference to fact; either an emotional self-deception, or a pretentious unrealism" (204). This diction illustrates why many readers dislike sentimentalism, believing that it is inauthentic due to its emotional nature. Sentimental literature also has failed to receive consistent serious literary attention largely because of its direct and accessible style that privileges connection among the characters and between the reader and the writer. As Paula Bennett and Joanne Dobson both explain, this negative view gained momentum in the twentieth century as modernist standards emphasizing fragmentation, inaccessibility, and irony came into vogue, relegating the seemingly less complex sentimental works further into the marginal literary wastelands. Fem inist critics challenged these assumptions when they began reevaluating sentimentalism in the 1970s. Joanne Dobson summarizes the diversity of the resulting criticism: "With the accelerating recovery of nineteenth-century women's writing, sentimentalism has been approached as a subliterature, as a moral philosophy, and as a hegemonic cultural discourse" (264).

The three critical studies under consideration here focus largely on sentimentalism's cultural role, showing how it offered writers a means of depicting sexual expression, galvanizing political action, illustrating economic exchange, developing subjectivity, and maintaining community. Mary Louise Kete's Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America investigates poetry found in an unpublished nineteenth-century personal manuscript entitled "Harriet Gould's Book." These poetic pieces reflect what Kete terms "sentimental collaboration," a way in which people combated loss and developed a sense of middle-class and national identity. Lori Merish similarly explores the connections that sentimentality had with class-related status. She shows how consumerism and a middle-class female subjectivity were intertwined. Merish also investigates how commodities both reflected and combated racial assumptions and symbolized imperialist attitudes. Marianne Noble in The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature focuses on human relationships, specifically examining the elements of domination and submission so prevalent in sentimental writing. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Noble argues that this masochistic discourse stemmed from religious assumptions and discourse about "true womanhood" and was popular because it allowed women to focus on their bodies rather than their spirits. Each of these well-written books provides new insights into the significant role that sentimentality played in the cultural and aesthetic work produced during the nineteenth century.

For readers unfamiliar with sentimentality, Kete's text offers a good starting point because its first section provides a clear overview of the critical conversation. By examining the work of nonprofessional authors,...

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