Odd women? : spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s-1930s / Emma Liggins.

Author/creator Liggins, Emma author.
Format Book
PublicationManchester : Manchester University Press, 2014.
DistributionNew York : Palgrave Macmillan.
Descriptionviii, 275 pages ; 23 cm
Subjects
English fiction--19th century. --History and criticism.
English fiction--20th century. --History and criticism.
English fiction--Women authors. --History and criticism.
Women in literature.
Single women in literature.
Widows in literature.
Lesbians in literature.

Summary This genealogy of the ‘odd woman’ compares representations of spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women’s fiction and auto biography from the 1850s to the 1930s. Women outside heterosexual marriage in this period were seen as abnormal, superfluous, incomplete and threatening, yet were also hailed as ‘women of the future’. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters in British women’s fiction, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book examines how women writers, including Charlotte Brontë, Elisabeth Gaskell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, May Sinclair, E. H. young, Radclyffe Hall, Winifred Holtby and Virginia Woolf, challenged dominant perceptions of singleness and lesbianism in their novels, stories and autobiographies. 0.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN9780719087561
ISBN0719087562

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks PR878 .W6 L54 2014 ✔ Available Place Hold