Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction describes the vital rebirth in sentiment’s lived and literary form that occurs in interwar America. The result is an aesthetic of “modern sentimentalism.” The chapter defines this aesthetic of mixed feelings as it captures the conflicted affective dynamics of icons of modern femininity and the stylistic practices of interwar female novelists. The chapter discusses the assumptions that have led scholars to overlook this aesthetic’s purchase in modernist literature and culture, and indicates its consequences for understandings of modernity, sentiment, and interwar gender and affect. The chapter lays out the study’s methodology, which synthesizes traditional and quantitative research methods, features a transatlantic archive of period discourse and critical theory, and establishes a novel approach to evaluating literary affect. The chapter concludes that the crisis in female character can be best understood as a matter of practical experience and lived reality, not a problem of abstract representation.