The Girl: Constructions of the Girl in Contemporary Fiction by Women

by Ruth O. Saxton (Editor)

Overview

No longer banished to the realms of the Victorian 'marriage or death' plots, girls in contemporary fiction embrace new freedoms while still struggling with plots centered on their bodies, societal limitations, and the price for freedom and escape. The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the twentieth century as portrayed in contemporary fiction by women such as Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joyce Carol Oates. The essayists show how new fictions of The Girl provide access to a constellation of themes and narrative patterns - including race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, female subjectivity, and nationalism - in new ways, while also continuing to envision girlhood in relation to such themes as love, separation from the mother, and maternal loss or overprotection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312173531
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	08/14/1998
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

RUTH O. SAXTON is Professor of English and Dean of Letters at Mills College where she co-founded the Women's Studies Program. She is the co-editor of Woolf and Lessing: Breaking the Mold and has published essays on mothers and daughters, Doris Lessing, Anne Tyler, and Virginia Woolf.

Table of Contents

Introduction; R.O.Saxton Where Is She Going, Where Are We Going, at Century's End? The Girl as Site of Cultural Conflict in Joyce Carol Oates's The Model ; B.Daly Self-Possession, Dolls, Beatlemania, Loss: Telling the Girl's Own Story; G.Hausknecht The Battleground of the Adolescent Girl's Body; B.Boudreau When the Back Door is Closed and the Front Yard is Dangerous: The Space of Girlhood in Toni Morrison's Fiction; D.Cadman Dizzying Possibilities, Plots, and Endings: Girlhood in Jill McCorkle's Ferris Beach ; E.A.Walker 'I Ain't No FRIGGIN' LITTLE WIMP': The Girl 'I' Narrator in Fiction by Women; R.Curry Coming of Age in the Snare of History: Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother ; D.Simmons Subversive Storytelling: The Construction of Lesbian Girlhood through Fantasy and Fairytale in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit ; I.A.Gamallo But That Was in Another Country: Girlhood and the Contemporary 'Coming to America' Narrative; R.M.George Notes on Contributors

Editorial Reviews

[An] important addition to the growing field of girls' studies.

Choice

The last ten years have seen an upsurge of interest in the life experiences and development of girls. Focusing initially on psychology and sociology, the attention has spread to popular culture, technology, and literature. The essays in this collection analyze recent fictions that shape and have been shaped by these larger contemporary discussions of female adolescence. Saxton's (English/women's studies, Mills Coll.) stated purpose is "to interrogate the cultural stories we tell ourselves about girls and [to] seek to trace some of the ways contemporary women authors are subverting narrative genres." The essays here offer detailed readings of authors such as Toni Morrison, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jamaica Kincaid. While varying in approach, theme, and sometimes quality, these essays reflect current theoretical perspectives and pedagogic practices, and the collection as a whole is a useful contribution to contemporary literary studies.--Julia Burch, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA

Library Journal

Nine contributions investigate contemporary works of fiction by women to explore the legacies of expectation and competing cultural ideologies of growing up female in British, American, and postcolonial societies at the end of the 20th century. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"[An] important addition to the growing field of girls' studies." --Choice

From the Publisher