Reading from the heart
Subtitle: women, literature, and the search for true love
By: Suzanne Juhasz.
Publisher: Viking; Viking Adult
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
Subjects: Love stories, English -- History and criticism.; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Women -- Books and reading -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century.; Love stories, American -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century.; Love stories -- Appreciation.; Women -- Psychology.; Love.
Description: Passionate readers know who they are and since they always recognize one another, they will immediately identify Suzanne Juhasz as one of their own. Reading from the Heart is an engrossing exploration of the needs and desires that lead to a reading "habit." Part paean to the reading life, part autobiography, it shows that reading and "real life" are not warring enterprises but interrelated experiences, each composed of need and fantasy, yearning and satisfaction.

As every reading woman knows, novels are not escapes from reality but spaces of the possible, where they can experiment with other ways of feeling and being.

Interweaving the story of her journey to self-discovery with her girlhood infatuation with Little Women, her adolescent immersion in Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and her adult experiences reading Gloria Naylor's Mama Day and Isabel Miller's famous lesbian novel Patience and Sarah, Juhasz convincingly demonstrates that the "romance" plot of finding, losing, and regaining true love is as much about identity as it is about love.

And she makes the provocative argument that women's fantasy of true love is a version of mother love, in which the hero of a novel offers the unconditional, maternal acceptance that enables the heroine to develop an authentic self. Like Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life and Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, Reading from the Heart is a personal book that transcends the purely personal. It will be a touchstone for women who love to read and believe that reading can change their lives.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-283) and index.