Odd women?: Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s
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- Synopsis
- This genealogy of the 'odd woman' compares representations of spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women’s fiction and auto/biography from the 1850s to the 1930s.Women outside heterosexual marriage in this period were seen as abnormal, superfluous, incomplete and threatening, yet were also hailed as ‘women of the future’. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters in British women’s fiction, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book examines how women writers, including Charlotte Brontë, Elisabeth Gaskell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, May Sinclair, E. H. Young, Radclyffe Hall, Winifred Holtby and Virginia Woolf, challenged dominant perceptions of singleness and lesbianism in their novels, stories and autobiographies. Drawing on advice literature, medical texts and feminist polemic, it demonstrates how these narratives responded to contemporary political controversies around the vote, women’s work, sexual inversion and birth control, as well as examining the impact of the First World War.
- Copyright:
- 2014
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 288 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781526111647
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780719087561, 9781526111654
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 10/31/24
- Copyrighted By:
- Emma Liggins
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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