Modern Women Writers

Catalog description

This course examines the work of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American and British "sisters in error" (as described by poet Dilys Laing). We consider literature and its contexts - social, historical, political, ideological, artistic, and more. Among the concerns raised by these women are the following: the body, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, domesticity, vocation, the making of art and the artist, the homosocial, patriarchy, the struggle for individuality, relations between the sexes, tensions between True Woman and New Woman, and what it means to be "modern." The reading list embraces fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction prose. Writers of focus may include Bowen, Chopin, Dinesen, Eaton, Gilman, Glaspell, Hurston, Larsen, Mansfield, O'Connor, Parker, Porter, Spencer, West, Wharton, and Woolf.