Criticism
While MacDonald's work was popular with critics at its release, modern reappraisals of the book have been critical of the book's treatment of native Americans. Her treatment of the rural working class "spawned a perception of Washington as a land of eccentric country bumpkins like Ma and Pa Kettle."
Those who defend MacDonald's overall catalog of work counter that these findings are measured against modern cultural standards, and not in the context of American pop culture of the 1940s, when such stereotyping was more widely accepted.
Read more about this topic: The Egg And I
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)