SOURCE: Abbott, Reginald. “‘All Fashions Feud’: Images of Fashionable and Unfashionable Women in Lorine Niedecker.” Sagetrieb: A Journal Devoted to Poets in the Imagist/Objectivist Tradition 8, no. 1 (spring-fall 1989): 149-74.

In the following essay, Abbott explores representations of women in Niedecker's work, especially within the context of contemporary trends in women's clothing fashions.

In her short-story entitled “Uncle” (Niedecker, From This Condensery 257-78), Lorine Niedecker presents a traditional, hardworking family, the Beefelbeins, who are prone to financial failure in an increasingly untraditional world where hard work does not always guarantee success. Throughout the story, it is quite clear that Niedecker's sentiments are with the Beefelbeins in all their unsuccessful attempts “to win the good things of life” (Condensery 257). But it is equally clear that the Beefelbeins cannot win “the good things of life” because they preserve their traditional concepts of work and the rewards of work in a modern...