“At Home Too Everything is Falling Apart”: Waste, Domestic Disorder, and Gender in Alison Lurie’s Early Ffiction

TY - JOUR

T1 - “At Home Too Everything is Falling Apart”: Waste, Domestic Disorder, and Gender in Alison Lurie’s Early Ffiction

AU - Dini, Rachele

PY - 2019/2/1

Y1 - 2019/2/1

N2 - This paper seeks examines the gendered aspects of consumer waste, dirt, and domestic mess in three early novels by Alison Lurie—Love and Friendship (1962), The Nowhere City (1965), and The War Between the Tates (1974), set in 1969—which I argue provide an incisive account of the transformation of gender relations over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. By focusing on the signifying potential of material objects in these texts, I seek to demonstrate Lurie’s relevance to the “thingly turn” in literary criticism, to re-ignite interest in an author whose work has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, and to generate interest in the waste matter across the rest of her oeuvre, where it in fact proliferates. In broader terms, I hope to complicate existing scholarship on waste in literature (including my own), which remains almost exclusively focused on male authors.© Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017. This is an author produced version of a paper published in the Journal of American Studies, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link below. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

AB - This paper seeks examines the gendered aspects of consumer waste, dirt, and domestic mess in three early novels by Alison Lurie—Love and Friendship (1962), The Nowhere City (1965), and The War Between the Tates (1974), set in 1969—which I argue provide an incisive account of the transformation of gender relations over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. By focusing on the signifying potential of material objects in these texts, I seek to demonstrate Lurie’s relevance to the “thingly turn” in literary criticism, to re-ignite interest in an author whose work has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, and to generate interest in the waste matter across the rest of her oeuvre, where it in fact proliferates. In broader terms, I hope to complicate existing scholarship on waste in literature (including my own), which remains almost exclusively focused on male authors.© Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017. This is an author produced version of a paper published in the Journal of American Studies, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link below. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

U2 - 10.1017/S0021875817001359

DO - 10.1017/S0021875817001359

M3 - Article

SN - 0021-8758

JO - Journal of American Studies

JF - Journal of American Studies

ER -