{"product_id":"the-crux-9780822331674","title":"The Crux","description":"Long out of print, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel \u003ci\u003eThe Crux\u003c\/i\u003e is an important early feminist work that brings to the fore complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and frontier nationalism. First published serially in the feminist journal \u003ci\u003eThe Forerunner\u003c\/i\u003e in 1910, \u003ci\u003eThe Crux\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of a group of New England women who move west to start a boardinghouse for men in Colorado. The innocent central character, Vivian Lane, falls in love with Morton Elder, who has both gonorrhea and syphilis. The concern of the novel is not so much that Vivian will catch syphilis, but that, if she were to marry and have children with Morton, she would harm the \"national stock.\" The novel was written, in Gilman's words, as a \"story . . . for young women to read . . . in order that they may protect themselves and their children to come.\" What was to be protected was the civic imperative to produce \"pureblooded\" citizens for a utopian ideal.\u003cp\u003eDana Seitler's introduction provides historical context, revealing \u003ci\u003eThe Crux\u003c\/i\u003e as an allegory for social and political anxieties-including the rampant insecurities over contagion and disease-in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Seitler highlights the importance of \u003ci\u003eThe Crux\u003c\/i\u003e to understandings of Gilman's body of work specifically and early feminism more generally. She shows how the novel complicates critical history by illustrating the biological argument undergirding Gilman's feminism. Indeed, \u003ci\u003eThe Crux\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates how popular conceptions of eugenic science were attractive to feminist authors and intellectuals because they suggested that ideologies of national progress and U.S. expansionism depended as much on women and motherhood as on masculine contest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eCharlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was the author of novels, short stories, poems, and works of nonfiction. She is best known for \"The Yellow Wallpaper\" (1892), \u003ci\u003eWomen and Economics \u003c\/i\u003e(1898), and the novel \u003ci\u003eHerland\u003c\/i\u003e (1915).\u003cbr\u003eDana Seitler is Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Studies at Wayne State University.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50845629186322,"sku":"9780822331674","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_6924bd88-a827-455a-9d88-2056ad243465.jpg?v=1737354584","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-crux-9780822331674","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}