Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender: Jerilyn Fisher: Greenwood

Women in Literature

Reading through the Lens of Gender

Women in Literature

Reading through the Lens of Gender

Description

With the literary canon consisting mostly of works created by and about men, the central perspective is decidedly male. 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. The list of titles, created in consultation with educators, includes classic works by male authors like Dickens, Faulkner, and Twain, balanced with works by female authors such as Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Also included are contemporary works by writers such as Alice Walker and Margaret Atwood that are being incorporated into the curriculum, as well as those advancing a more global view, such as Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The essays are expertly written in an accessible language that will help students gain greater awareness of gender-related themes. Suggestions for classroom discussions—with selected works for further study—are incorporated into the entries. The volume is organized alphabetically by title and includes both author and subject indexes. An appendix of gender-related themes further enhances this volume's usefulness for curriculum applications and student research projects.

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