Hamlet's mother and other women / Carolyn G. Heilbrun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heilbrun, Carolyn G., 1926-2003.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--Women authors.

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Women and literature.

Women in literature.

American literature--Women authors.

Literature.

Women.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xviii, 317 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Ballantine Books edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Ballantine Books, 1991.

Summary:

Shakespeare's Gertrude was first among many literary figures illuminated by Heilbrun's feminist sensibility. Others include Homer's Penelope--an archetypal single parent, weaving herself a new life for which she was given no script; Jo in Little Women, a model of autonomy for generations of female readers; Elizabeth Bennet, remarkable for the promise of friendship in her marriage with Darcy; and Harriet Vane, outrageously unique on many counts. The consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision is matched only by its heterogeneity, as she discusses Margaret Mead and Freud's daughters, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, resistance to feminist studies in academia, mothers and daughters, fiction and myth, tomboys and surrogate sons, and the detective story, of which Heilbrun herself (as Amanda Cross) is one of the ablest practitioners. Hamlet's Mother and Other Women will spark recognition, again and again, in readers on their own quest for female redefinition.

Contents:

Character of Hamlet's Mother

Margaret Mead and the question of woman's biography

Freud's daughters

Vera Brittain's Testament of experience

Winifred Holtby

Virginia Woolf and James Joyce

Virginia Woolf in her fifties

What was Penelope unweaving?

Marriage perceived

To the lighthouse

Alcott's Little women

May Sarton's Mrs. Stevens Hears the mermaids singing

May Sarton's memoirs

Bringing the spirit back to English studies

Women, men, theories, and literature

Feminist criticism in departments of literature

Presidential address

Politics of mind

Detective novel of manners

Gender and detective fiction

Sayers, Lord Peter, and Harriet Vane at Oxford.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0345372085

9780345372086

OCLC:

23752067