{"product_id":"the-female-complaint-the-unfinished-business-of-sentimentality-in-american-culture-9780822342021","title":"The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture","description":"\u003ci\u003eThe Female Complaint\u003c\/i\u003e is part of Lauren Berlant's groundbreaking \"national sentimentality\" project charting the emergence of the U.S. political sphere as an affective space of attachment and identification. In this book, Berlant chronicles the origins and conventions of the first mass-cultural \"intimate public\" in the United States, a \"women's culture\" distinguished by a view that women inevitably have something in common and are in need of a conversation that feels intimate and revelatory. As Berlant explains, \"women's\" books, films, and television shows enact a fantasy that a woman's life is not just her own, but an experience understood by other women, no matter how dissimilar they are. The commodified genres of intimacy, such as \"chick lit,\" circulate among strangers, enabling insider self-help talk to flourish in an intimate public. Sentimentality and complaint are central to this commercial convention of critique; their relation to the political realm is ambivalent, as politics seems both to threaten sentimental values and to provide certain opportunities for their extension. \u003cp\u003ePairing literary criticism and historical analysis, Berlant explores the territory of this intimate public sphere through close readings of U.S. women's literary works and their stage and film adaptations. Her interpretation of \u003ci\u003eUncle Tom's Cabin\u003c\/i\u003e and its literary descendants reaches from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Toni Morrison's \u003ci\u003eBeloved\u003c\/i\u003e, touching on Shirley Temple, James Baldwin, and \u003ci\u003eThe Bridges of Madison County\u003c\/i\u003e along the way. Berlant illuminates different permutations of the women's intimate public through her readings of Edna Ferber's \u003ci\u003eShow Boat\u003c\/i\u003e; Fannie Hurst's \u003ci\u003eImitation of Life\u003c\/i\u003e; Olive Higgins Prouty's feminist melodrama \u003ci\u003eNow, Voyager\u003c\/i\u003e; Dorothy Parker's poetry, prose, and Academy Award-winning screenplay for \u003ci\u003eA Star Is Born\u003c\/i\u003e; the Fay Weldon novel and Roseanne Barr film \u003ci\u003eThe Life and Loves of a She-Devil\u003c\/i\u003e; and the queer, avant-garde film \u003ci\u003eShowboat 1988-The Remake\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eThe Female Complaint \u003c\/i\u003eis a major contribution from a leading Americanist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English and Chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project at the University of Chicago. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship\u003c\/i\u003e, also published by Duke University Press, and \u003ci\u003eThe Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the editor of \u003ci\u003eCompassion\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eOur Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest\u003c\/i\u003e (with Lisa Duggan); and \u003ci\u003eIntimacy\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50527349702930,"sku":"9780822342021","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_4962cd4c-fbe6-4faa-b07d-3bbf51d90644.jpg?v=1731299108","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-female-complaint-the-unfinished-business-of-sentimentality-in-american-culture-9780822342021","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}