TY - BOOK AU - Ellerby,Janet Mason TI - Embroidering the Scarlet A: unwed mothers and illegitimate children in American fiction and film SN - 9780472072637 (hardcover) AV - PS374.M547 E45 2015 U1 - 813.009/3526947 23 PY - 2015///] CY - Ann Arbor PB - University of Michigan Press KW - Ellerby, Janet Mason. KW - American fiction KW - 20th century KW - History and criticism KW - 21st century KW - Unmarried mothers in literature KW - Illegitimate children in literature KW - Unmarried mothers in motion pictures KW - Illegitimate children in motion pictures KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies KW - bisacsh KW - LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-272) and index; Introduction -- The unwed mothers of the early American Novel -- Theodore Dreiser's all-giving angel: Jennie Gerhardt -- Edith Wharton's female enforcers -- The scarlet women of William Faulkner's The sound and the fury -- The unwed mother triumphant: Celie and Alice Walker's The color purple -- Illegitimacy and sexual violence -- Birthmothers in exile -- Fathering iIllegitimacy -- The legacy of secrets -- Birthmothers in the adoption triangle: Caroline Leavitt's Girls in trouble and Tim Kirkman's Loggerheads -- Comedy and the unwed mother -- Bearing sorrow -- Conclusion N2 - "Embroidering the Scarlet A traces the evolution of the "fallen woman" from the earliest novels to recent representations in fiction and film, including The Scarlet Letter, The Sound and the Fury, The Color Purple, and Love Medicine, and the films Juno and Mother and Child. Interweaving her own experience as a pregnant teen forced to surrender her daughter and pledge secrecy for decades, Ellerby interrogates "out-of-wedlock" motherhood, mapping the ways archetypal scarlet women and their children have been exiled as social pariahs, pardoned as blameless pawns, and transformed into empowered women. Drawing on narrative, feminist, and autobiographical theory, the book examines the ways that the texts have affirmed, subverted, or challenged dominant thinking and the prevailing moral standards as they have shifted over time. Using her own life experience and her uniquely informed perspective, Ellerby assesses the effect these stories have on the lives of real women and children. By inhabiting the space where ideology meets narrative, Ellerby questions the constricting historical, cultural, and social parameters of female sexuality and permissible maternity. As a feminist cultural critique, a moving autobiographical journey, and an historical investigation that addresses both fiction and film, Embroidering the Scarlet A will appeal to students and scholars of literature, history, sociology, psychology, women's and gender studies, and film studies. The book will also interest general readers, as it relates the experience of surrendering a child to adoption at a time when birthmothers were still exiled, birth records were locked away, and secrecy was still mandatory. It will also appeal to those concerned with adoption or the cultural shifts that have changed our thinking about illegitimacy"-- ER -