What do you think?
Rate this book
Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist
A cultural history of the work of nineteenth-century black women writers, this volume traces the emergence of the novel as a forum for political and cultural reconstruction, examining the ways in which dominant sexual ideologies influenced the literary conventions of women's fiction, and reassessing the uses of fiction in American culture. Carby revises the history of the period of Jim Crow and Booker T. Washington, depicting a time of intense cultural and political activity by such black women writers as Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Hopkins.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
5 people are currently reading
462 people want to read
About the author
Hazel V. Carby
18 books32 followersHazel Vivian Carby is a professor of African American Studies and of American Studies. She serves as Charles C & Dorathea S Dilley Professor of African American Studies & American Studies at Yale University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 13, 2016
Major Field Prep: 25/133
Carby’s project begins at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, comparing the contributions of Frances Harper and other black women to the Congress of Representative Women (in contrast to Ida B. Wells’s activism at the same Exposition). Carby’s project has four major concerns: 1) black women confronting dominant domestic ideologies from which they are excluded; 2) question contemporary feminist historiography that claims an early black and white sisterhood; 3) recover black women’s intellectual activity of the era; 4) write literary history of emergence of black women as novelists. She critiques the emerging canon of black feminist thought for relying on a common, or shared, experience between critics and writers “is essentialist and ahistorical” and does a disservice to the field (16). Carby then covers the ideologies of female sexuality in the antebellum period and the distinctions between women of different races. She then looks at Nancy Prince, Harriet Wilson, and Harriet Jacobs to see how black women before emancipation incorporated these ideologies into their narratives. She notes that the “transition from slave to free woman did not liberate the black heroine or the black woman from the political and ideological limits imposed on her sexuality” (61). Carby then turns to the work of Frances Harper, Iola Leroy in particular, to look at the representations of a black intelligent elite and the narrative function of the mulatto character. This brings us to the important year, 1892, with major publications by Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida B. Wells. Carby looks at this period as a shift in black feminist thought and activists working to dismantle hierarchies of race and gender in organizations and society in general. The next two chapters focus on Pauline Hopkins who, as an editor and contributor to the Colored American Magazine greatly impacted the black magazine-reading public. She reimagined the history of race relations and used fiction as a vehicle to both teach and entertain. Carby concludes this section with the claim that “perhaps the most apt word to describe Hopkins’s writing is testimony” (162). The concluding chapter shifts to the 1920s and the Harlem renaissance, a partial misnomer according to Carby. Carby argues that what actually takes place in the 20s is a shift in “stressing the discontinuities and contradictions surrounding issues of representation” (164). Who “the people” represented shifted, on some occasions, in fiction to the folk. This group became less homogenous after the start of the great migration, “and the variety of intellectual practice—literary, political, and cultural—became increasingly separated” (166). The text ends with a close reading of Larsen’s Quicksand and a critique of the trend of black women writing studies that has tended, through the project of reclamation, privileged texts interested in the “folk” over the urban.
Carby’s project begins at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, comparing the contributions of Frances Harper and other black women to the Congress of Representative Women (in contrast to Ida B. Wells’s activism at the same Exposition). Carby’s project has four major concerns: 1) black women confronting dominant domestic ideologies from which they are excluded; 2) question contemporary feminist historiography that claims an early black and white sisterhood; 3) recover black women’s intellectual activity of the era; 4) write literary history of emergence of black women as novelists. She critiques the emerging canon of black feminist thought for relying on a common, or shared, experience between critics and writers “is essentialist and ahistorical” and does a disservice to the field (16). Carby then covers the ideologies of female sexuality in the antebellum period and the distinctions between women of different races. She then looks at Nancy Prince, Harriet Wilson, and Harriet Jacobs to see how black women before emancipation incorporated these ideologies into their narratives. She notes that the “transition from slave to free woman did not liberate the black heroine or the black woman from the political and ideological limits imposed on her sexuality” (61). Carby then turns to the work of Frances Harper, Iola Leroy in particular, to look at the representations of a black intelligent elite and the narrative function of the mulatto character. This brings us to the important year, 1892, with major publications by Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida B. Wells. Carby looks at this period as a shift in black feminist thought and activists working to dismantle hierarchies of race and gender in organizations and society in general. The next two chapters focus on Pauline Hopkins who, as an editor and contributor to the Colored American Magazine greatly impacted the black magazine-reading public. She reimagined the history of race relations and used fiction as a vehicle to both teach and entertain. Carby concludes this section with the claim that “perhaps the most apt word to describe Hopkins’s writing is testimony” (162). The concluding chapter shifts to the 1920s and the Harlem renaissance, a partial misnomer according to Carby. Carby argues that what actually takes place in the 20s is a shift in “stressing the discontinuities and contradictions surrounding issues of representation” (164). Who “the people” represented shifted, on some occasions, in fiction to the folk. This group became less homogenous after the start of the great migration, “and the variety of intellectual practice—literary, political, and cultural—became increasingly separated” (166). The text ends with a close reading of Larsen’s Quicksand and a critique of the trend of black women writing studies that has tended, through the project of reclamation, privileged texts interested in the “folk” over the urban.
Read
January 15, 2026State exams 4/5: Love when academics use words you can actually understand
December 26, 2020
I think the idea behind this project is important, but there could have been more done with the execution. It just feels like a lot of history and summary whereas I would have liked the see more emphasis on the analysis. It also felt a bit fragmentary. I'm not really sure what the overall argument ultimately was. At the same time, it is a sign of progress that you couldn't write this book today. Back in 1987 you could do a recovery project of people like Larsen, Fauset, Hopkins, Cooper, etc. And while people still ignore Black women far too much, I think you'd definitely draw some funny looks if you claimed to work in late 19th/early twentieth c. Afam fic and didn't engage some or all of these figures as a starting point to then work on whatever theoretical contribution you wanted to make.
October 5, 2017
Carby's recovery work on Afro-American women authors is phenomenal and traces the role that authors like Harriet Wilson, Frances Harper, and Pauline Hopkins played in shaping a distinctive tradition of American literature that has been historically underrepresented. My only critique of Carby's work is that it lacks any form of conclusion. This may be intentional as there is more to this tradition begin what Carby describes, but the abruptness of the ending makes me long to know what lies in the empty space beyond Reconstructing Womanhood.
September 24, 2021
Really marvelous overview/history: women's issues, Black political rights, literature. Excited to read the works referenced!
September 21, 2013
This is a groundbreaking book for Black women's literature studies, giving voices to writers, teachers, and public orators whose names have been largely disregarded or lost. Hazel Carby cites the Stanton/Douglass debate in her 1987 critical work to pose these questions, challenge the idea that women’s movements have been historically inclusive of Black women, and confront an idealized notion of a universal sisterhood. She points to particular events in history, including this 1869 moment and the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, considered “the greatest fair in history” (5), in which Black women were given few leadership opportunities and were refused an equal footing to white women when speaking to the World’s Congress of Representative Women (4). In seeking to rearticulate what constitutes as Black Women studies and Black feminist criticism, Carby argues in favor of viewing both as areas constituting a “problem, not a solution,” for to seek answers and “academic legitimation” for critical treatments of Black womanhood would be to ignore the problematic political and cultural structures in which those answers would be housed (15). She deconstructs notions of gendered and racial identity to help contemporary readers think carefully about issues of representation and about those excluded from the canon of American literature and history (164).
Carby’s work demystifies the existence of a universal, historical sisterhood that unites women of all races against the same patriarchal injustice, while also sharing the work of important and frequently overlooked Black women writers. She shows that examining the ways in which both feminist and African American movements have excluded Black Women from their central aims helps contemporary readers to rediscover the essential contributions Black women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have made to literature, politics, and culture, changing our perception of male-centered Black intellectual history. Her work also helps us meditate upon the direction of contemporary feminism, especially in regards to the inclusion of those of different races, cultures, economic levels, ages, etc. Carby’s critical text opens up conversations about sisterhood and the legacy of Black women writers, foregrounding new definitions of feminist action to do more than envision the equality of a singular representative woman.
Carby’s work demystifies the existence of a universal, historical sisterhood that unites women of all races against the same patriarchal injustice, while also sharing the work of important and frequently overlooked Black women writers. She shows that examining the ways in which both feminist and African American movements have excluded Black Women from their central aims helps contemporary readers to rediscover the essential contributions Black women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have made to literature, politics, and culture, changing our perception of male-centered Black intellectual history. Her work also helps us meditate upon the direction of contemporary feminism, especially in regards to the inclusion of those of different races, cultures, economic levels, ages, etc. Carby’s critical text opens up conversations about sisterhood and the legacy of Black women writers, foregrounding new definitions of feminist action to do more than envision the equality of a singular representative woman.
Want to read
December 7, 2012Feminist revision of the traditions of American black women's writing, contrasting the image of the slave woman as victim in men's slave memoirs with a very different image that emerges in autobiographies such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs), From the Darkness Cometh Light (Lucy Delany), The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (Mary Prince).
November 24, 2009
It's striking how fresh this text still seems, even as its basic argument has been foundational for numerous other quite similar studies, and its subjects--Frances Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Nella Larsen, Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper--have become canonical, at least within certain discourses.
July 26, 2007
I loved reading this book. There was a lot I already knew, which is to be expected, but i was excited about all the things I didn't know and discovered after reading this book. Fantastic!
Read
May 29, 2013read "Slave and Mistress: Ideologies of Womanhood under Slavery" for Peculiar Intimacies course
July 8, 2013
Amazing! It gave a great overview of 19th century black feminist theory as well as late 19th century and early 20th century black women's literature!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews