"Of No Use to Anybody". Domestic Ideology and Female Ambition in "Christine, Or Woman's Trials and Triumphs"

Domesticity, Intellectual Desire and Female Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Felix Konermann

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783389192436
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Seminar paper from the year 2026 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, , course: Marriage and Divorce, language: English, abstract: In the first chapters of "Christine, Or Woman's Trials and Triumphs", the Elliot farmhouse emerges as the system that defines a woman's place within it. Order, efficiency, and submission rule the housewives, whose labor defines their worth. Christine's failures to live up to the impossible expectations placed on her are not seen as unfortunate mistakes but as evidence of moral failings. Her burning desire to read, think, and ask questions reveals an inner life that cannot be quenched or satisfied by the tedium of domesticity. In "Christine, or Woman's Trials and Triumphs", Curtis uses the domestic space of the famous to define female worth through usefulness, submission, and practical competence, through Christine's bodily awkwardness, her forbidden reading, and her spiritual unrest. The novel exposes how nineteenth-century ideals of female dependency transform intellectual ambition into moral failure, suggesting that the problem lies not in Christine's character but in the restrictive definition of womanhood itself. Diese wissenschaftliche Arbeit untersucht Laura Curtis Bullards Roman "Christine: Or Woman's Trials and Triumphs" im Kontext der Geschlechter- und Rollenbilder des 19. Jahrhunderts. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, wie häusliche Ideologien weibliche Identität, Bildung und Selbstverwirklichung begrenzen. Anhand der Figur Christine zeigt die Arbeit, wie weiblicher Wert innerhalb der patriarchalen Ordnung über Nützlichkeit, Unterordnung und häusliche Kompetenz definiert wird, während intellektuelle Neugier, Lesen und persönlicher Ehrgeiz als moralische Defizite erscheinen. Die Analyse argumentiert, dass der Roman nicht Christines Charakter problematisiert, sondern die gesellschaftlichen Vorstellungen von Weiblichkeit selbst kritisiert. Christine wird dabei als Figur dargestellt, deren geistige und emotionale Ambitionen mit den restriktiven Erwartungen an Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert unvereinbar sind.