Title: Boss ladies, watch out! : essays on women, sex, and writing /
Authors: Castle, Terry
Publisher: Routledge,
Year: 2002
Subjects: English literature Women authors History and criticism Theory, etc.; American literature Women authors History and criticism Theory, etc.; Authorship Sex differences; Feminist literary criticism.; Feminism and literature.; Women and literature.; Women in literature; Sex in literature; Feminism and literature English-speaking countries.; Women and literature English-speaking countries.
Abstract: "Boss Ladies, Watch Out! brings together in a convenient format Terry Castle's most scintillating recent essays on literary criticism, women's writing and sexuality. Readers of Castle's many books and reviews already know her as one of the most incisive and witty critics writing today." "The articles collected in Boss Ladies, Watch Out! constitute an extended meditation - both learned and personal - on just what it means to be a Female Critic. In the book's opening essays Castle examines how women became critics in the first place - scandalously at times - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She explores in particular Jane Austen's "talismanic" role in the establishment of a female critical tradition. In the second part of the book, Castle embraces, with gusto, the role of Female Critic herself." "In lively reconsiderations of Sappho, Bronte, Cather, Colette, Gertrude Stein, and many other great women writers - "Boss Ladies" all - Castle pays a moving and civilized tribute to female genius and intellectual daring."--Jacket.
Contents: Women and literary criticism -- On Northanger Abbey -- Austen's Emma -- Ann Radcliffe's The mysteries of Udolpho -- The gothic novel -- To the friends who did not save my life -- Was Jane Austen gay? -- Sublimely bad -- Resisting Casanova -- The juvenilia of Charlotte Brontë -- Shut up, sweet Charlotte -- Always the bridesmaid, never the groom -- Flournoy's complaint -- Pipe down back there! -- Very fine is my valentine -- If everybody had a wadley -- Night and day -- The will to whimsy -- Terror on the vineyard -- Yes, you, sweetheart.