Hagar in Nineteenth-Century Southern Women's Novels
The appropriation by U.S.-American blacks of the Egyptian enslaved woman, Hagar, as she appears in the book of Genesis, is epitomized in black art, literature, and cinema. Yet less familiar is the appropriation of Hagar by nineteenth-century, middle-class, white women novelists, who mostly lived dur...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2020
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| In: |
The Oxford handbook of feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible
Year: 2020 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hagar, Biblical person
/ Femininity
/ Cult
/ Slavery
/ Fiction
/ Writer
/ Geschichte 19. Jh.
/ Exegesis
B Biblical studies |
| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy HA Bible |
| Further subjects: | B
antebellum South
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The appropriation by U.S.-American blacks of the Egyptian enslaved woman, Hagar, as she appears in the book of Genesis, is epitomized in black art, literature, and cinema. Yet less familiar is the appropriation of Hagar by nineteenth-century, middle-class, white women novelists, who mostly lived during the antebellum Southern era. Their novels feature a dark, wild, female protagonist named Hagar who appears as a racially ambiguous woman. She is usually orphaned or abandoned, and she overcomes many obstacles and adversaries to fulfill her life’s purpose in the domestic sphere. Sometimes she is openly compared with the biblical Hagar, depicted as having African ancestry, and characterized as an untamed woman who is free of society’s gender constraints. Nineteenth-century domestic novels thus present stories about Hagar as a temporary escape for middle-class white women’s perceived enslavement to traditional gender expectations, as they experienced them in their individual lives. At the same time, the domestic novels disregard the experiences of nineteenth-century enslaved black women. |
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| ISBN: | 0190462698 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Oxford handbook of feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190462673.013.37 |