Abstract

The first of three volumes in a series on women, the arts, and society, this collection of essays examines the full range of political consequences inherent in women's art. Bringing together important new perspectives on music, the visual arts, theatre, film, television, literature, philosophy, and psychology, the contributors to this volume present a cohesive revisionist look at the arts. The first two essays discuss feminist aesthetics, giving several models for new critical readings of the arts. Suffrage art and an important nineteenth-century feminist utopian novel are examined from the genres they revise, as do essays focusing on a long-running television series and a social activist actress. Childhood and womanhood are explicitly compared in one essay. Breastfeeding and housewifery in the visual arts and music in American women's organizations are the subjects of three other essays. Finally, political implications within the fiction of Jane Austen, Fanny Fern, Eudora Welty, and Mary Lee Settie offer divergent historical perspectives and applications of artistry of women.