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The New Woman of the Tenements: Anzia Yezierska’s Salome
- MFS Modern Fiction Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 56, Number 2, Summer 2010
- pp. 233-261
- 10.1353/mfs.0.1679
- Article
- Additional Information
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This essay focuses on twentieth-century Jewish immigrant author Anzia Yezierska’s proto-feminism and how she employed the genre of the romance novel in order to promote new ideas about ethnic identity and female independence. A focal point is her relationship to the trope of the New Woman, especially through her 1923 novel Salome of the Tenements, a work that simultaneously incorporates fresh perspectives concerning popular genres, feminism, and sexuality.