Williamson, Alicia
(2013)
A Free Union?: The Sexual Politics of Progressive-Era Socialist Novels.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
“A Free Union?” is the first comprehensive critical study of novels written by members of the Socialist Party of America (SP) from 1901 to 1917. Published mostly by mainstream presses at the height of the Party’s public influence, this set of novels predates the formal theorization of a coherent radical aesthetic but offers an apt case study of the profound interplay between radical and popular imaginaries in the early twentieth-century U.S. While critics often dismiss the politics and literature of the early SP as hopelessly inconsistent, “A Free Union?” asserts that their radical potential lies precisely in their accommodation of ideological and aesthetic diversity.
Specifically, this study focuses on the dynamic intersections of sexual, political, and economic discourses in SP novels, tracing their influences on ongoing debates about Party theory and strategy as well as on public understandings of sexuality. The SP, with its patriotic and electoral orientations, often posed socialism as the means for the final achievement of a “more perfect union.” Hence, “A Free Union?” invokes the multiple forms of purportedly voluntary and legal unions—conjugal, economic, and political—that factor into this nationalistic socialist imaginary as well as the metaphorical and discursive overlaps among them. Contending that popular SP novels offered a unique site for interrogating and imagining alternatives to such unions, this project likewise interrogates the ideological ramifications of the means and ends of socioeconomic transformation posed by and figured in these narratives. Starting with the predominant genre of the socialist marriage plot, the chapters consider the ways in which the conventions of both popular culture and socialist theory are taken up and revised by subsequent novels that foreground evolutionary tropes, prostitution, and free love. In doing so, this project argues for seeing gender, sexuality, and literature—all of which tended to be marginalized in official Party politics—as key arenas in which contemporary understandings of socialism were being contested and articulated. “A Free Union?” further concludes that socialist novelists produced innovations in literary and sexual representation that ultimately challenged authoritarian and orthodox modes of socialism in favor of more feminist and dialectical models.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
2 July 2013 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
11 April 2013 |
| Approval Date: |
2 July 2013 |
| Submission Date: |
18 April 2013 |
| Access Restriction: |
5 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 5 years. |
| Number of Pages: |
266 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > English |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
socialism, sexuality, radical novels, Socialist Party of America, political literature |
| Date Deposited: |
02 Jul 2013 16:19 |
| Last Modified: |
02 Jul 2018 05:15 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18497 |
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