Whitening Domestic Spacesenacting female roles in Anzia Yezierska's the lost beautifulness

  1. Rebeca Campos Ferreras 1
  1. 1 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR 02p0gd045

Revista:
The Grove: Working papers on English studies

ISSN: 1137-005X

Año de publicación: 2019

Número: 26

Páginas: 9-26

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.17561/GROVE.V26.A1 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: The Grove: Working papers on English studies

Resumen

The aim of this research is to give an accurate account of how female stereotypes around the concept of hygiene and domesticity in early 20 th C North American context influenced newly arrived Eastern European immigrants . L ocated in New York’s Lower East Side ghetto and d etermined by their Jewish background, the se immigrants’ arrival caus ed them a cultural shock to the point that they started shap ing their identities according to the new standard of beauty and cleanliness related to the Americanness they were eager to perform. For this purpose, Anzia Yezierska ’s short story The Lost Beautifulness serves as a referent because it demonstrate s the failure of Americanization as the prospective means through which the American Dream could be experienced , a credo which, according to the author, would only reinforce classist policies instead of cancelling them. To this effect , Yezierska depicts the actual consequenc es for these Jewish female immigrants after attempting to Americaniz e their private household spaces and maintain , thus, the standard of cleanlin ess necessary to validate their acc urate adaptation to the American culture from their ghettoized and marginalized context.

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Fuente de los datos: Dialnet