Just Looking (Routledge Revivals)

Download or read book Just Looking (Routledge Revivals) written by Rachel Bowlby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-11-18 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spectacular development of early consumer society in Britain, France and the United States had a profound impact on constructions of femininity and masculinity, and commercial and cultural values in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on novels by Theodore Dreiser, George Gissing and Emile Zola, Just Looking, first published in 1985, addresses itself to a central paradox of the period: the perceived antithesis of the terms "commerce" and "culture" which emerged at a time which saw the actual drawing together of commercial and cultural practices. Drawing on structural, psychoanalytic and Marxist-feminist theory, Rachel Bowlby retrieves a relatively neglected literary area for contemporary political and theoretical concerns, re-establishing the naturalist novel as a rich source for feminists, literary theorists and cultural historians.