[f]eminist scholars with wide educational experience offer a wake-up call to teachers and students to identify and correct stereotypical interpretations of both traditional and less familiar literary texts....A reliable handbook for the generalist, this book should interest primarily high school teachers as they prepare syllabi but also possibly beginning college students and their instructors....Lower-division undergraduates and general readers.Choice
An important contribution to the fields of literature, education, and women's studies; highly recommended for both academic and large public libraries.Library Journal
Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender would make a wonderful text for continuing education courses for high school English teachers, for adoption as part of the curriculum for teachers-in-train-ing,and,as a handbook or refresher, for college instructors who took women and literature courses as undergraduates. Anyone who took high school or college English in pre-feminist-theory days will also enjoy reading what s/he missed.Feminist Collections
Despite years of feminist criticism, there is still a gap on reference shelves when it comes to a feminine approach to literature. This collection of two- to three page signed essays looking at 96 works of fiction (both canonical works and newer/less familiar titles) is a sorely needed resource....most libraries will want to consider this volume....Teachers looking for ways to shake up their traditional reading lists and students looking for a different approach to some classics will find this book of interest.VOYA
This unique reference offers alternate approaches to reading traditional literature, as well as suggestions for expanding the canon to include more gender sensitive works. Covering 96 of the most frequently taught works of fiction, essays offer teachers, librarians, and students fresh insights into the female perspective in literature.
Fresh insights and interpretations makes these 96 original essays a valuable examination of gender issues in both canonical and contemporary works.
xamination of gender issues in both canonical and contemporary works.
JERILYN FISHER is Associate Professor of English at Hostos Community College, City University of New York, where she also teaches Women's Studies. She coordinated NWSA's Service Learning Project, co-editing the Women's Studies Service learning Handbook. She has published articles on feminist pedagogy, fairy tales and feminist theory. She co-edited with Ellen Silber Analyzing the Different Voice: Feminist Psychological Theory and Literary Texts.ELLEN S. SILBER is Professor of French at Marymount College, where she also teaches Women's Studies and is Director of the Marymount Institute for the Education of Women and Girls. She edited Critical Issues in Foreign Language Instruction and co-edited Analyzing the Different Voice: Feminist Pschological Theory and Literary Texts with Jerilyn Fisher. She was an an associate editor for a special issue of Women's Studies Quarterly: Keeping Gender on the Chalkboard. Silber is actively involved with gender equity in education and has a Ford Foundation grant to work with a team on the creation of gender equitable classroom materials for teacher educators.
Foreword
Introduction
Essays
Sexuality as Rebellion in George Orwell's 1984 by Paul Bail
Woman's Roles and Influence in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Melissa Pennell
The War Against the Feminine: Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front by Mary Warner
"Doctor She": Helena and Sisterhood in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well by Terry Reilly
Mother, Wife, Fallen Woman: Marital Choice in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina by Lucy Melbourne
Righteous Activist or Confrontational Madwoman: Sophocles' Antigone by Karen Bovard
Female Resistance to Gender Conformity in Kate Chopin's The Awakening by Dana Kinnison
Mothers and Children in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees by Mary Jean DeMarr
Faulkner's Male Myth: The Bear by Kim Martin Long
More Than Skin Deep: Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Ellen R. Sackelman
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: Trapped by the Feminist Mystique by Laurie Leach
Toni Morrison's Beloved: Maternal Possibilities, Sisterly Bonding, by Monika Elbert
Richard Wright's Black Boy and Black Women by Kenneth Florey
Culture, Tradition, Family: Gender Roles in Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima by Montye P. Fuse
Girls into Women: Culture, Nature, and Self-Loathing in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye by Barbara Frey Waxman
Founding Women's History: Christine de Pizan Writes The Book of the City of Ladies by Ellen S. Silber
A Dystopic Vision of Gender in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World by Cristie L. March
An Immigrant Girl's Quest for the American Dream in Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers by Norah C. Chase
As My Mother Says: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwige Danticat by Eileen Burchell
Non-Conformists and Traditionalists: Buchi Emecheta's The Bride Price by Osayimwense Osa
The Symbolic Annihilation of Women in Jack London's The Call of the Wild by Michelle Napierski-Prancl
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Gender in the Middle Ages by Michael G. Cornelius
Sex, Violence, and Peter Pan: J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye by PaulBail
Paths to Liberation in Alice Walker's The Color Purple by Ernece B. Kelly
The Women in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment by Sydney Schultze
Witchhunting, Thwarted Desire, and Girl Power: Authur Miller's The Crucible by Karen Bovard
"A Nice Girl Ought to Know!": Henry James's Daisy Miller by Laurie F. Leach
Redefining Female Absense in Death of a Salesman by Dana Kinnison
Black and White Womanhood in Sherely Anne Williams' Dessa Rose: Mammies, Ladies, and Rebels by Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl: Writing a Self--The Female Adolescent Voice by Hedda Rosner Kopf
The Slammed Door that Still Reverberates: Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House by Ann R. Shapiro
Frozen Lives: Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome by Melissa McFarland Pennell
Catherine Barkley: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms by Suzanne del Gizzo
The Invisible Black Female Artist in Alice Childress's Florence by Nassim W. Balestrini
Daring Creation: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Lucy Morrison
Shattered Rainbows in Translucent Glass: Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie by Nassim W. Balestrini
What It Means to Be a Lady: Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind by Jane Marcellus
Patriarchy and Property: Women in Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth by Eleanor Pam
o Expectations at All: Women in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations by James R. Simmons Jr.
Beautiful Fools and Hulking Brutes: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby by Linda C. Pelzer
Reading Between the Lines: Connecting with Gertrude and Ophelia in Hamlet by Elizabeth Klett
Freedom Reconsidered: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale by Magali Cornier Michael
When Women Shape the World: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland by Jerilyn Fisher
Girls and Women in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street by Darlene Pagan
Living in a Borderland: Cultural Expectations of Gender in Julia Alverez' How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Karen Castellucci Cox
A Song of Freedom: Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Yolanda Pierce
Good Mother, Bad Mother in Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Paul Bail
Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country: A Girl's Quest for Her Father and Herself by Jeanne-Marie Zeck
The Invisible Woman in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man by Yolanda Pierce
Be True to Yourself: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre by Barbara Thaden
"Thinking Different" in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club by Cecile Mazzucco-Than
Gender Bending: Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness by Marianne Pita
What a Teacher Learns: Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying by Elise Ann Earthman
The Foreignness of Femininity in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim by Laura McPhee
Boys Club--No Girls Allowed: Absence as Presence in Lord of the Flies by Paula Alida Roy
Unnatural Women in Shakespeare's Macbeth by Elizabeth Klett
Emma Rouault Bovary: Gendered Reflections-- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert by Eileen Burchell
The Road to Nowhere: Stephen Crane's Maggie a Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York) by Marsha Orgeron
(Re)surfacing Main Street by Sinclair Lewis by Shirley P. Brown
Critiquing "The We of Me": Gender Roles in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding by Elise Ann Earthman
Beauty and Gender in Alix Kate Schulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen by Charlotte Templin
Where No Role Fits: Maggie's Predicament in George Eliot's Mill on the Floss by Missy Dehn Kubitschek
Melville's Moby Dick: Epic Tale of Male Destruction by Kim Martin Long
Images of Possibility: Gender Identity in My Antonia by Dana Kinnison
The Good Woman: Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve by Shakuntala Bharvani
Boyhood Unraveled: Elie Wiesel's Night by Sara R. Horowitz
Homer's Odyssey: "The Iliad's Wife" by Deborah Ross
Jocasta and Her Daughters: Women in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by Paula Alida Roy
Women Stripped of Humanity: John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men by Lesley Broder
Role Traps in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Michelle Napierski-Prancl
Under the Burden of Yellow Peril: Race, Class, and Gender in Yoshiko Uchida's Picture Bride by Montye P. Fuse
Woman and Art in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Maria Margaroni
Truths Universally Acknowledged: Stereotypes of Women in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Missy Dehn Kubitschek
Undue Influence in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Cristie L. March
Exploring the Gender Puzzle of Pygmalion by Michael G. Cornelius
Seasoned with Quiet Strength: Black Womanhood in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun by Neal A. Lester
Heroism Against the Odds: William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Lesley Broder
Molly Bolts and Lifelines: Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle by Frances Ann Day
"A" as Hester's Autonomy in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter by Monika M. Elbert
Female Freedom in Other Places and Inner Spaces: Suzanne Fisher Staples' Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind by Zarina Manawwar Hock
Gender in Silas Marner by George Eliot by Debra S. Davis
Empowerment Through Writing in Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter by Ellen S. Silber
Wearing "Her Favour in the Battle": The "Go-between" in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers by Maria Margaroni
Riding Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire by Elise Ann Earthman
Agent or Victim: Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Paula Alida Roy
An African American Woman's Journey of Self-Discovery in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God by Ken Silber
Fragmenting Culture, Fragmenting Loves: Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Rebekah Hamilton
"Just a Lady": Gender and Power in To Kill a Mockingbird by Michele S. Ware
Women Righting Wrongs: Morality and Justice in Susan Glaspell's Trifles by Jerilyn Fisher
"For such as we are made of, such we be": The Construction of Gender in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will by Terry Reilly
The Power of Mothers in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin by Denise Kohn
A Chinese American Woman Warrior Comes of