Oct 12, 2026 · 1 hr 13 min · 13 segments
The realist novel, so the story goes, isn’t really an American genre but a European and British one. And what the realist novel does—again, according to conventional wisdom—is entrench a liberal model…
Alix BeestonHostSo, um, as an undergraduate, um, I had been trained pretty extensively in the British novel, uh, rise of the novel accounts and so forth, and largely, um, the sort of place in women in all of this tradition.
Um, but in looking at some of the work from the turn of the century, so Edith Wharton and other people, Theodore Dreiser, it seemed that the rules that I had been taught to apply to the British novel absolutely did not obtain, uh, with this, these works.
Specifically, uh, the biggest thing that stood out to me at first was what happened to women who- Broke what were the rules, uh, for 18th and 19th century British fiction.
Um, you know, if they desire in the wrong way, so sex out of wedlock, before marriage, or any of these other things, that novel would kill them.
Uh, either, uh, literally or socially, they were, they were punished, uh, severely.
Um, and sometimes those accounts were sympathetic, right? This fallen woman figure that we know so well from that period.
Um, it-- but sometimes it was a moral judgment on the, the, the part of that author to expel that person, uh, from this world.
Um, then we look at, uh, this work from, uh, the turn of the 20th century in, uh, the United States and, in fact, um, the women there desire excessively, um, and they are, materially speaking, uh, at least, hugely successful.
But they certainly do end up very wealthy, uh, and, uh, materially better off than they had, uh, begun.
Um, I'm thinking specifically of, uh, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, um, whose protagonist, uh, just-- I mean, she moves from, uh, the Midwest countryside, uh, to New York and is there introduced to all of these new things to want, new ways of wanting to be.
So, um, as an undergraduate, um, I had been trained pretty extensively in the British novel, uh, rise of the novel accounts and so forth, and largely, um, the sort of place in women in all of this tradition.
Um, but in looking at some of the work from the turn of the century, so Edith Wharton and other people, Theodore Dreiser, it seemed that the rules that I had been taught to apply to the British novel absolutely did not obtain, uh, with this, these works.
Specifically, uh, the biggest thing that stood out to me at first was what happened to women who- Broke what were the rules, uh, for 18th and 19th century British fiction.
Um, you know, if they desire in the wrong way, so sex out of wedlock, before marriage, or any of these other things, that novel would kill them.
Uh, either, uh, literally or socially, they were, they were punished, uh, severely.
Um, and sometimes those accounts were sympathetic, right? This fallen woman figure that we know so well from that period.
Um, it-- but sometimes it was a moral judgment on the, the, the part of that author to expel that person, uh, from this world.
Um, then we look at, uh, this work from, uh, the turn of the 20th century in, uh, the United States and, in fact, um, the women there desire excessively, um, and they are, materially speaking, uh, at least, hugely successful.
But they certainly do end up very wealthy, uh, and, uh, materially better off than they had, uh, begun.
Um, I'm thinking specifically of, uh, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, um, whose protagonist, uh, just-- I mean, she moves from, uh, the Midwest countryside, uh, to New York and is there introduced to all of these new things to want, new ways of wanting to be.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.