Domestic Individualism, Imagining Self in Nineteenth-century America

Gillian Brown explores the key relationship between domestic ideology and formulations of the self in 19th-century America. Arguing that domesticity not only presumes but institutes distinctions of gender, class, and race, Brown reveals how these distinctions in turn inform identity. She offers a new reading of writings by Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, Fern, and Gilman.