...tradition. The very grounds on which sentimental fiction has been dismissed by its detractors, grounds that have come to seem universal standards of aesthetic...of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority. In this view, sentimental novels written by women in the nineteenth century were responsible for a series...

...But when we late-twentieth-century readers rely on traditional protocols of reading, we are likely "to equate popularity with debasement, emotionality...all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority" (Tompkins, p. 123). In addition, for us the wholesale adoption of the dominant society's bourgeois...

...crusade led by troublesome and self-indulgent women. Their view of the feminine aesthetic has equated "popularity with debasement, emotionality with ineffectiveness,...triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority."12 As women gained influence as critics and scholars, this critical consensus was undermined....

...feminine traditions manifest a "view of the feminine aesthetic" that equates (in Jane Tompkins's words) "popularity with debasement, emotionality with ineffectiveness,...triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority."18 In recent years, critics like Nina Baym, Jane Tompkins, and Cathy Davidson have pushed...

...Tompkins put it, The very grounds on which sentimental fiction has been dismissed by its detractors, grounds which have come to seem universal standards...northeastern United States prior to the Victorian period by a sentimentalist!) that was a passive and hypocritical "rationalization of the economic order," Tompkins...

...connection, for men too wrote sentimental poetry in vast quantities. In Tompkins's important account, "twentieth-century critics have taught generations...triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly fakery." As Joanne Dobson has observed, such criticisms are based in "modes of definition and evaluation...

...additional barriers. "Twentieth century critics have taught generations of students," writes Jane Tompkins, "to equate popularity with debasement, emotionality...all of these implicitly with womanly inferiority." 17 Lawrence Levine calls on scholars to reject these assumptions. 18 Modern consumerism did not create...

...sentimental novel. As Jane Tompkins notes, the dominant twentieth-century views of sentimental fiction "equate popularity with debasement, emotionality with...triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority."36 Hemingway's writing is exemplary in decrying those literary styles that, like inferior...

...very common, owing to the frequent association which [male] twentieth century criticism makes between "popularity with debasement, emotionality with ineffectiveness,...all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority" (Tompkins 123). Literary critics who assume such a stance choose to ignore the equation of the personal...

...the wave of feminist criticism that restored Uncle Tom's Cabin to classrooms and scholarly attention. Critics have taught generations of students to equate...emotionality with ineffectiveness, religiosity with fakery and domesticity with triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority. The thesis...