Synopses & Reviews
The image of
The Girl in contemporary fiction by women today stands in stark contrast to configurations of girlhood in earlier fiction. No longer banished to the realms of the Victorian "marriage or death" plots, girls in contemporary fiction embrace new challenges and freedoms while still struggling with plots centered on their bodies, societal limitations, and the price for freedom and escape. This unique collection tackles the contemporary forces at work on both the girls in fiction created by women and the writers themselves.
The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the 20th century as portrayed in contemporary fiction by women. The essayists show how new fictions of The Girl provide access to a constellation of themes and narrative patterns--including race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, female subjectivity, and nationalism--in new ways, while also continuing to envision girlhood in relation to such themes as love, separation from the mother, and maternal loss or overprotection. The first collection of critical essays to examine the portrayal of girls in contemporary womens fiction within the context of recent sociological and psychological analyses of girls,
The Girl proposes that contemporary stories of girlhood constitute a new lens for literary and cultural study. Examining the work of authors such as Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joyce Carol Oates for their revelations and representations in regard to girlhood, these essays speak to, complement, and contest one another in a compelling interrogation of what it means to grow up female at the end of the millennium.
Review
"[An] important addition to the growing field of girls' studies."
--Choice
Synopsis
Examines the changing image of the girl in contemporary womens fiction
Synopsis
The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the twentieth century as portrayed in contemporary fiction by women.
Synopsis
No longer banished to the realms of the Victorian "marriage or death" plots, girls in contemporary fiction embrace new freedoms while still struggling with plots centered on their bodies, societal limitations, and the price for freedom and escape.
The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the twentieth century as portrayed in contemporary fiction by women. The essayists show how new fictions of The Girl provide access to a constellation of themes and narrative patterns while also continuing to envision girlhood in relation to such themes as love, separation from the mother, and maternal loss or overprotection.
About the Author
Ruth O. Saxton is Professor of English and Dean of Letters at Mills College where she co-founded the Womens Studies Program. She is the co-editor of
Woolf and Lessing: Breaking the Mold.
Table of Contents
Introduction--Ruth O. Saxton * Where Is She Going, Where Are We Going, at Centurys End? The Girl as Site of Cultural Conflict in Joyce Carol Oatess "The Model"--Brenda Daly * Self-Possession, Dolls, Beatlemania, Loss: Telling the Girls Own Story--Gina Hausknecht * The Battleground of the Adolescent Girls Body--Brenda Boudreau * When the Back Door is Closed and the Front Yard is Dangerous: The Space of Girlhood in Toni Morrisons Fiction--Deborah Cadman * Dizzying Possibilities, Plots, and Endings: Girlhood in Jill McCorkles
Ferris Beach --Elinor Ann Walker * "I Aint No FRIGGIN LITTLE WIMP": The Girl "I" Narrator in Fiction by Women--Renee Curry * Coming of Age in the Snare of History: Jamaica Kincaids
The Autobiography of My Mother --Diane Simmons * Subversive Storytelling: The Construction of Lesbian Girlhood through Fantasy and Fairytale in Jeanette Wintersons
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit --Isabel Anievas Gamallo * But That Was in Another Country: Girlhood and the Contemporary "Coming to America" Narrative--Rosemary Marangoly George * Notes on Contributors