Middlebrow Affective Mapping: Reading Modern Motherhood in Louis Bromfield's Mrs. Parkington (1942)

Abstract:While New Modernist Studies is growing as it aims at a more inclusive literary modernism, critical interest in middlebrow literature is declining. This article argues that middlebrow literary scholarship is crucially important for understanding nuances in middle-class American culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Engaging with affect theory, this article claims that "affective mapping," as a method of interpretation, an effect of reading, as well as a narrative style, is especially useful for reading seemingly unremarkable texts. Specifically, through an affective reading of motherhood in Louis Bromfield's Mrs. Parkington (1942), the article demonstrates how middlebrow literature can convey reimagined maternal norms of modernity.