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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan
Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan
Publications and Research
Introduction to the special issue, "The Sexual Body," edited by Shelly Eversley and Jennifer L. Morgan.
"Unrighteous Compact": Louisa May Alcott's Resistance To Contracts And Promises In Moods, Nina Bannett
"Unrighteous Compact": Louisa May Alcott's Resistance To Contracts And Promises In Moods, Nina Bannett
Publications and Research
Alcott’s first adult novel, Moods, initially published in 1864, presents oral promises between women as extralegal alternatives to standard legal contracts between men and women. In the 1864 edition of Moods, Alcott's protagonist, Sylvia Yule, fails to understand the constraints of marriage as a type of contract, and the results are dramatic. In fact, Alcott undermines the idealized marriage plot so crucial to her later, wildly popular works like Little Women (1868-69). In the 1864 Moods, Alcott boldly questions both legal contracts and oral promises characteristic of nineteenth-century conceptions of romantic love and heterosexual friendship.