Violence and the female imagination : Quebec's women writers re-frame gender in North American cultures / Paula Ruth Gilbert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilbert, Paula Ruth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence in literature.

Women in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Violence in women--North America.

Violence in women.

North America.

Physical Description:

xi, 426 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2006]

Summary:

In the past twenty years Quebec women writers, including Aline Chamberland, Claire De, Suzanne Jacob, and Helene Rioux, have created female characters who are fascinated with bold sexual actions and language, cruelty, and violence, at times culminating in infanticide and serial killing. Paula Ruth Gilbert argues that these Quebec feminist writers are "re-framing" gender.

Gilbert examines the degree to which women are imitating men in the outward direction of their anger and hostility, suggesting that such "tough" women may be mocking men in their "macho" exploits of sexuality and violence, and illustrates the ways in which Quebec female authors are "feminizing" violence or re-envisioning gender in North American culture. An interdisciplinary study, Violence and the Female Imagination bridges methodological gaps and integrates history, sociology, literary theory, feminist theory, and other disciplinary approaches to provide a framework for the discussion of important ethical and aesthetic questions.

Contents:

Introduction: Regendering Violence and Appropriating Power: Beyond the Binary 3

1 Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Violence and Gender: From "Real Life" to Theory to Literary Representation 9

2 Living Together in North America: Canada, Quebec, and the United States 85

3 Who's the Subject Now? The Female Imagination and Representations of Sex and Violence 146

4 Public and Private Violence: The Novels of Infanticide/Filicide of Aline Chamberland and Suzanne Jacob 242

5 Regendering and Female Serial Killing in the Fiction of Helene Rioux, Anne Dandurand, and Claire De 296

Conclusion: Women Imitating Men or the Feminization of Violence? Re-Framing Gender in North American Cultures 323.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [355]-412) and index.

ISBN:

0773530312

OCLC:

62181441

Publisher Number:

9780773530317