Between the sheets
Subtitle: nine 20th-century women writers and their famous literary partnerships
By: Lesley McDowell
Publisher: Overlook Duckworth
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 365
ISBN-13: 9780715641453; 9781590204382
Copyright date: 2010
Subjects: Women authors; Relations with men; Women and literature; History
Description: Why did a gifted writer like Sylvia Plath stumble into a marriage that drove her to suicide? Why did Hilda Doolittle want to marry Ezra Pound when she was attracted tom women? Why did Simone DeBeauvoir pimp for Jean-Paul Sartre? The list of the damages done in each of these sexual relationships between female writers and their male literary partners is long, but each relationship provokes the same question: would these women have become the writers they became without the experience of their own particular literary relationships? Focusing on the diaries, letters, and journals of each woman, this work explores nine famous literary liaisons of the twentieth century. The author examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners these women felt themselves to be. She probes the consequences of the women's codependence and reveals how in many instances, their partnerships liberated unspoken desires, encouraged artistic innovations, and even shored up literary reputations.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-354) and index.
Table of contents: title: The "companion" : Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry; title: The "novice" : H.D. and Ezra Pound; title: The "mother" : Rebecca West and H.G. Wells; title: The "ingénue" : Jean Rhys and Ford Madox Ford; title: The "mistress" : Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller; title: The "long-termer" : Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre; title: The "survivor" : Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway; title: The "chaser" : Elizabeth Smart and George Barker; title: The wife" : Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.