Women's fiction 1945-2005 : writing romance

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Women's fiction 1945-2005 : writing romance

Deborah Philips

Continuum, c2006

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

Includes index

Bibliography: p. [146]-154

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Organised around each decade of the post war period, this book analyses novels written by and for women from 1945 to the present. Each chapter identifies a specific genre in popular fiction for women which marked that period and provides case studies focusing on writers and texts which enjoyed a wide readership. Despite their popularity, these novels remain largely outside the 'canon' of women's writing, and are often unacknowledged by feminist literary criticism. However, these texts clearly touched a nerve with a largely female readership, and so offer a means of charting the changes in ideals of femininity, and in the tensions and contradictions in gender identities in the post-war period. Their analysis offers new insights into the shifting demands, aspirations and expectations of what a woman could and should be over the last half century. Through her analysis of women's writing and reading, Philips sets out to challenge the distinction between 'popular' and 'literary' fiction, arguing that neat categories such as 'popular', 'middle brow' and 'serious fiction' need more careful definition.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. 1950s: What did Women want?: Post-war masculinity in the women's novel of the 1950s
  • (Includes Barbara Cartland, Monica Dickens, Rose Franken, Storm Jameson, Betty MacDonald, Iris Murdoch)
  • 3. 1960s: 'Mothers Without Partners: the single mother narrative
  • (Includes Lynne Reid Banks, Monica Dickens, Margaret Drabble and Nell Dunn)
  • 4. 1970s: She's Leaving Home: the 'college girl' narrative
  • (Includes Rita Mae Brown, Rona Jaffe, Deborah Moggach, Andrea Newman Judith Rossner and Alice Walker)
  • 5. 1980s: Shopping as Work: the sex and shopping novel
  • (Includes Barbara Taylor Bradford, Zoe Fairbairns, Judith Gould, Judith Krantz, Terry McMillan, Danielle Steel, Fay Weldon)
  • 6. 1990s: Keeping the Home Fires Burning: the Aga Saga
  • (Includes Elizabeth Buchan, Philippa Gregory, Alice Hoffman, Anita Shreve, Adriana Trigiani, Joanna Trollope)
  • 7. 2000: Shopping for Men: the Chick Lit novel. (Includes Helen Fielding, Kathryn Flett, Jane Gordon, Jane Green, Marian Keyes, Caroline Knapp, Freya North)
  • 8. Resentful Daughters: the post-feminist novel?
  • (Includes Esther Freud, Martha McPhee, Clare Morrell, Kathleen Tessaro, Rebecca Wells)
  • Afterword.

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