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Interior Revolutions: Doing Domesticity, Advocating Feminism In Contemporary American Fiction, Kalene Westmoreland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Domesticity has endured as a facet of everyday life in the late twentieth century and beyond, despite cultural acceptance of feminist beliefs and ideals which encourage women’s movement away from the private sphere of the home. A tumultuous and remarkable cultural transformation has marked the four decades since the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, a key text of early second-wave feminism. Equality and choice seem viable and attainable, yet many women today feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and the pressure to live up to the idealization of motherhood. Domesticity can be used as a tool of oppression, against which …