Rebellious Women Writers

Catalog description

This course explores how British and American women of the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries used writing to rebel against the status quo. We will examine both the historical circumstances in which women found themselves and the literary production that resulted. We will examine a wide variety of women's texts-- narrative fictions, poetry, political polemics, conduct books, letters, autobiographies, social theories, sermons, and protest leaflets--and we will discuss the effects of these different responses to women's plight. We will look closely at the influences that British and American writers exerted upon one another.