Odd Women? : spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s-1930s
Liggins, EmmaAuthor
Women outside marriage between 1850 and the Second World War were seen as abnormal, threatening, superfluous and incomplete, whilst also being hailed as 'women of the future'. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book considers how Victorian and modernist women's writing challenged the heterosexual plot and reconfigured conceptualisations of public and private space in order to valorise female oddity.
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Women outside marriage between 1850 and the Second World War were seen as abnormal, threatening, superfluous and incomplete, whilst also being hailed as 'women of the future'. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book considers how Victorian and modernist women's writing challenged the heterosexual plot and reconfigured conceptualisations of public and private space in order to valorise female oddity.
Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on November 18, 2014).
Female redundancy, widowhood and the mid-Victorian heroine -- Bachelor girls, mistresses and the New Woman heroine -- Spinster heroines, aunts and widowed mothers, 1910-39 -- The misfit lesbian heroine of inter-war fiction -- Professional spinsters, older women and widowed heroines in the 1930s.
English fiction
English fiction
English fiction
Women in literature
Single women in literature
Widows in literature
Lesbians in literature
English
Languages & Literatures
English Literature