For centuries, women who aspired to write had to enter a largely male literary tradition that offered few, if any, literary forms in which to express their perspectives on lived experience. Since the nineteenth century, however, women writers and readers have been producing "disobedient" counter-narratives that, while clearly making reference to the original texts, overturn their basic assumptions. This book looks at both canonical and non-canonical works, over a variety of fiction and nonfiction genres, that offer counter-readings of familiar Western narratives. Nancy Walker begins by probing women's revisions of two narrative traditions pervasive in Western culture: the biblical story of Adam and Eve, and the traditional fairy tales that have served as paradigms of women's behavior and expectations. She goes on to examine the works of a wide range of writers, from contemporaries Marilynne Robinson, Ursula Le Guin, Anne Sexton, Fay Weldon, Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood to precursors Caroline Kirkland, Fanny Fern, Mary De Morgan, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Edith Nesbit, and Evelyn Sharp.

The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition

Literature & Fiction

Walker, Nancy, A.

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.' Heralded as one of the first instances of feminist literature and rejected at its time of publication by the literary set on grounds of moral distaste, Kate Chopin's The Awakening caused consternation in 1899. Constrained and confined by the limitations surrounding marriage and motherhood in the late 1800s, Edna Pontellier begins to challenge the notion of femininity through her thoughts and actions. Questioning her love for her husband, and opening herself up to the possibilities of other men and a life outside of societal convention leads to a gradual awakening of her desires. Chopin's fascinating exploration of one woman challenging the expectation that surrounds her is powerful, daring and ultimately tragic in its conclusions.

The Awakening: Complete, Authoritative Text With Biographical & Historical Contexts, Critical History, & Essays from Five Contemporary Critica. Perspectives (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)

CHOPIN, KATE

Reference

Bedford/St.Martins

During and following World War II, women's magazines served as advice manuals, fashion guides, marriage counselors, and catalogs. This thematically arranged collection of selections from Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, McCall's, Redbook, and others provides a resource for understanding how the popular press perceived and attempted to influence women's values, goals, and behavior in the postwar era.

Women's Magazines, 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

History

Americas

Bedford/St.Martin's

This compendium of compelling articles and advertisements from women's magazines of the 1940s and 1950s chronicles the debate over women's domestic and public roles during two decades of enormous social change in America.

Women's Magazines 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press (The Bedford Series in History)

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson & American Liberalism and: Women's Magazines and American Social Classes in the 1950's

Horowitz, Daniel

PACKARD, VANCE

Schulman, Bruce J.

Polenberg, Richard D.

Women's Magazines, 1940-1960 & Our Hearts Fell to the Ground & Triangle Fire

Calloway, Colin G.

Argersinger, Jo Ann

A Very Serious Thing was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
"It is a very serious thing to be a funny woman." –Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher
A Very Serious Thing is the first book-length study of a part of American literature that has been consistently neglected by scholars and underrepresented in anthologies—American women's humorous writing. Nancy Walker proposes that the American humorous tradition to be redefined to include women's humor as well as men's, because, contrary to popular opinion, women do have a sense of humor.
Her book draws on history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and psychology to posit that the reasons for neglect of women's humorous expression are rooted in a male-dominated culture that has officially denied women the freedom and self-confidence essential to the humorist. Rather than a study of individual writers, the book is an exploration of relationships between cultural realities—including expectations of "true womanhood"—and women's humorous response to those realities.
Humorous expression, Walker maintains, is at odds with the culturally sanctioned ideal of the "lady," and much of women's humor seems to accept, while actually denying, this ideal. In fact, most of American women's humorous writing has been a feminist critique of American culture and its attitudes toward women, according to the author.

A Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture (Volume 2)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Tradition of Womens: Humor in America

Amer Studies Pub Co

Women's Magazines, 1940-1960 & Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975 & 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism & Up from Slavery

Washington, Booker T.

Flehinger, Brett

Gosse, Van

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