Driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America

by Deborah Clarke

Over the years, cars have helped to define the experiences and self-perceptions of women in complex and sometimes unexpected ways. When women take the wheel, family structure and public space are reconfigured and re-gendered, creating a context for a literary tradition in which the car has served as a substitute for, an escape from, and an extension of the home, as well as a surrogate mother, a financial safeguard, and a means of self-expression. Driving Women examines the intersection of American fiction―primarily but not exclusively by women―and automobile culture. Deborah Clarke argues that issues critical to twentieth-century American society―technology, mobility, domesticity, and agency―are repeatedly articulated through women's relationships with cars. Women writers took surprisingly intense interest in car culture and its import for modern life, as the car, replete with material and symbolic meaning, recast literal and literary female power in the automotive age. Clarke draws on a wide range of literary works, both canonical and popular, to document women's fascination with cars from many historical, psychological, economic, ethnic. Authors discussed include Wharton, Stein, Faulkner, O’Connor, Morrison, Erdrich, Mason, Kingsolver, Lopez, Kadohata, Smiley, Senna, Viramontes, Allison, and Silko. By investigating how cars can function as female space, reflect female identity, and reshape female agency, this engaging study opens up new angles from which to approach fiction by and about women and traces new directions in the intersection of literature, technology, and gender.

Genres: Nonfiction

226 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2007

Reviews

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5, but definitely YMMV (this is written in an academic style, which is a big minus for me). Clarke looks at the complicated relationship between women and cars and the uneasy reaction of American society to the possibility of women driving (more mobility, less control by men) and how to rationalize women drivers so they were still feminine (for example shifting the masculine aspect to fixing cars, or driving muscle cars). Using fiction, Clarke shows cars serving as an extension of the motherly role, a small piece of serenity in a crowded life or a way for women to intrude into male space. Interesting, but some chapters, such as the one which discusses Mother As Cyborg (starting with an analysis of MY MOTHER THE CAR) really didn’t have enough substance.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and informative read, discussing a wide range of fiction.

[Nate Jordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

For thesis research...

A well-researched and well-written book - but at times, a bit long in the tooth... As well, the author postulates that the absence of women in road novels or "automobile fiction" is the purposeful determination of men is a bit short-sighted and is reflexively sexist. American culture has been sexist, and that may be the fault of a patriarchal society, and our literature therefore reflects that - and it is therefore a stretch of logic to say that men are responsible for the absence of women in the aforesaid literary genre. The fault lies in the foundations of our culture, which goes way back in time and history - the fault doesn't lie with a few male writers penning books in the last hundred years. The good news is, this paradigm has changed - yet the book doesn't present this attitude at all, it only harps on the negative.