Contributions in Women's Studies - Böcker

A valuable contribution which breaks new territory of research and analysis into women's roles as sisters and wives.

The first in-depth empirical study that goes beyond the initial trauma of rape and considers the interplay between society and the experience of rape, the interaction between the victim and her own social world.

This book is a timely contribution to the study of the impact of trade unionism on women in the work force and how women have exercised power within trade unions. This collection of essays contains brief yet comprehensive histories of women's trade union movements in many of the principal industrial nations of the world--Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Argentina, Italy, and the United States. The authors survey the impact of the cult of true womanhood on the growth of trade unionism. Each author analyzes the relationship between early women's trade unions and guilds, identifies the important leaders, and explains how ideologies affected the expansion of trade unions. Among other subjects treated are the movement's relationship to the feminist movement, the effects of economic depression and rationalization of industry, women's attitudes toward protective legislation and political action, and the effect of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, the authors assess the advances made as the result of equal-pay legislation and progress in the areas of training, promotion, safety, child-care, maternity leave, and reentry into the work force.

Bassein examines the pervasive linkage between women's sexuality and death in Western thought and literature and concludes that there is no reasonable basis for much of it. She first explores how language reveals and reinforces the bond between women and death. She then discusses traditional Christianity as a vehicle for perpetuating this tie and demonstrates that negative attitudes and brutality associated with women find expression in otherwise commendable works of art. The author examines nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction and poetry to show the different ways writers have handled women in sexual situations. Bassein concludes that tracing the origins and prevalence of the automatic association and seeking alternatives help us recognize the irrational and unconscious tendencies that are at the basis of stereotype formation and tacit acceptance of brutality.

Only Mothers Know is a very good, indeed a consummate, summary of research, discussion, and controversy, and it is also a very levelheaded as well as compassionate appeal to common sense, to valid cultural experience, and to the realism of Third World modernization. Raphael's project has come a long way from the passionate concern of the early days of the rediscovery of breastfeeding and of female wisdom. Such concern still guides her, of course and righly, but it is tempered (and honored) by her balancing of the politics and faddism of the movement she put into motion so long ago with the realities of the traditions and resources of women in the changes and the calculations of the modern world. She's written us a saga of survival and devotion that must not be missed, either by mothers and their doulas or by doctors, or by an educated, independent public. Conrad Arensberg, Columbia University

Jack S. Blocker Jr. traces the Women's Temperance Crusade of 1873-74 from its origins in public lectures by health reformer Dio Lewis through its rapid spread across the nation, to its culmination in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The non-violent tactics of the Crusaders are described, and their progression from meetings to marches and occasional political campaigning is explored, along with the responses, ranging from active support to violent opposition, that the Crusade evoked. An analysis of causation critically examines previous explanations for the Crusade's timing, location, and composition before concluding that a concurrent rise in alcohol consumption and a decline in liquor-law enforcement produced the movement. A discussion of relations between suffragists and Crusaders helps to clarify the place of the Crusade among nineteenth-century reform movements. The ways in which the movement ended reveal the Crusaders' determination to achieve their goals and the nature of their opposition. Finally, Blocker explores the effects of the Crusade upon male politics and drinking and upon women's organizing as an independent force for reform.

In recent years, despite widespread interest in feminism, women's studies, and socio-historical perspectives in general, scholars have failed to unearth a body of historical knowledge related to women in the area of American foreign policymaking--until now. This unique volume brings to light the experiences of eight courageous women, who over a century and a half, had a concrete influence in this area. From Abolitionist critic Lydia Maria Child, to former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, a number of American women have attempted to shape and define the nation's foreign policy, admittedly with varying, often limited degrees of success. In doing so, however, they expanded women's role in the public eye, helped shape public consciousness about the nation's diplomacy, and frequently offered alternative policies that ultimately infiltrated the inner sanctum of the foreign policy establishment.

This penetrating study explores some of the critical approaches common to works written by women about an extreme situation--the Holocaust--affecting both sexes. The two novels and four fictionalized memoirs on which Heinemann's analysis is based describe experiences unique to women in the Holocaust. Among Heinemann's chief areas of focus are themes, modes of characterization, peer relations, and authenticating strategies and how they differ significantly from the ways that men have shaped their prose versions of the Holocaust. This first critical treatment of Holocaust literature from a feminist perspective effectively challenges the widespread assumption that the literature of the Holocaust reflects identical experiences for both men and women.

This new, uncluttered study of Sylvia Plath's poetry offers a calculated balance between feminist theory and the old heritage of the New Criticism. The apparent thematic peg here is Plath's fascination with mirrors in her life and in her work. . . . This is a very solid work; it is the most readable of the recent books on Plath, and, among the recent works this reviewer knows of, none is comparable. ChoiceMuch of Sylvia Plath's poetry springs from her attempts to recognize and reconcile her own paradoxes: the ones she found inside herself and the ones she faced in the world in which she lived. Like the work of a number of twentieth-century women poets, her poetry can be characterized as a search not so much for definition of self as for redefinition of self. This penetrating study traces, through the internal dialectics that structure poems, the evolution of Plath's imagery, and examines the way the poems embody the tension between images of self and images of world. A developmental study of Plath's poetry, A Disturbance in Mirrors considers various aspects of her work: the social implications of mythic imagery in her early poems; the relationship between language, imagery, and sexual/social context in the poems of the middle period; the connections between aesthetic and biological creativity in a bureaucratic, depersonalized world; the internalized conflict of self and society within the poet; and Plath's attempts, metaphorically and within the poems, to narrate the possibilities for a transformed self reborn into a transformed world.

In her examination of women characters created by American novelists from the 1940s through the 1980s, Thelma Shinn traces the emergence of new definitions of self and society as reflected in both the fictional characters she considers and in society as a whole. She argues that the social dislocation resulting from American involvement in World War II and the repercussions from that dislocation in American society initiated a cycle of growth in women that is accurately mirrored in the fiction of the period. Selecting more than 125 works of fiction, she examines the images of women and their lives created by both men and women writers. Particular attention is paid to the female self-images that have come to us through the writing of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Ann Petry, Jean Stafford, Hortense Calisher, Shirley Jackson, and Joyce Carol Oates.

In the recent debate over the growing poverty among blacks, attention has increasingly focused on the role of women heading households as a contributor to poverty. Throughout the debate, however, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the workplace. This study examines how structural change in the U.S. economy and particularly the rise of new service sectors have reshaped the work content, opportunity, and wages of one labor group--black women. Evidence for the study comes from two sources--statistical data from U.S. Census data on employment, particularly the Current Population Survey file, and interviews with black women in several representative industries surveyed in the book.The initial chapters in the book explore the contradiction between evolving trends in the economy, including the decline in manufacturing, and a government policy that continues to rely on the marketplace to provide jobs. Chapters 4-6 explore, in more detail, the outcomes of the shift from manufacturing to services. These chapters examine how sectors individually shape job markets and may in the process provide mobility and wage gains or intensify the ghettoization of women and the stratification of women by race. The final chapters examine case histories of several black women and look at the future of black women in the emerging workplace of the twenty-first century.

The Language of Exclusion is a pioneering feminist critical study of two of the most enigmatic 19th-century women poets--Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. The authors take as their point of departure the spinster/recluse model, which they argue has characterized most biographies of 19th-century women poets written before 1960. Rejecting this model, they build instead on the rich tradition of feminist literary criticism exemplified by the work of writers like Elaine Showalter, Lillian Robinson, and Martha Vicinus. In The Language of Exclusion they focus on the shared historical experience of these two most private poets to reveal their public significance and demonstrate the inadequacy of the spinster/recluse model.

Recent scholarship suggests that farm women have characteristically tried to improve their societal positions by pursuing strategies of mutuality with men, rather than by forming relationships of sisterhood with each other. Nowhere is this premise more clearly illustrated than in the rituals and programs of the Grange, the secret fraternal organization established to serve farmers. In this work, Donald Marti examines the important roles that women have always played in the Grange, and explores the opportunities for sociability and cooperation that fostered sisterhood and encouraged women to pursue their own distinctive interests.Marti's book offers a careful and detailed analysis of women's roles in the Grange, and introduces readers to thoughtful, articulate farm women who have been virtually ignored in historical literature. His well-balanced study deflates some of the claims that have been made for the order's liberating influence, but at the same time takes that influence very seriously. Along the way, he traces the growth of women's roles from the promise of equality made by the Grange's founders, to the turn-of-the-century strides that made women some of the leading state and local officers. Although mainly focusing on the years up to 1920, the study also surveys more recent developments such as Grange women's continued interest in public reform, their narrowed focus on domestic crafts beginning in the 1950s, and the striking changes of the 1980s. This work represents an important new chapter in the historical discussion of the Grange, and will be a welcome publication for students of American history, women's studies, and agricultural history.

This series of essays on Toni Morrison's first four novels--The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula, and Tar Baby is the delightful, intelligent collaboration of a white of Greek descent (Demetrakopoulos) and a black American (Holloway). In addition to the influence of their respective backgrounds, Demetrakopoulos is particularly interested in women's studies and Jungian psychology, and Holloway in black studies and linguistics; these fields inform their individual contributions. . . . The clear writing is free of academic jargon and makes exceptionally good sense. Very highly recommended to academic libraries, especially for women's studies and black literature collections. ChoiceThis first full-length study of the novels of Toni Morrison is a breakthrough in literary criticism, not only from the standpoint of feminist critique but as a biracial, bicultural dialogue on literary, social, and spiritual themes. Holloway, a specialist in Black studies and psycholinguistics, and Demetrakopoulos, whose academic interests include women's studies and Jungian psychology, weave their multidisciplinary interests and divergent experience into an integrated study of Toni Morrison's novels. The authors' introductory essays put Morrison's work in critical perspective and approach her literary vision in terms of its cultural, racial, and historical linkages and meanings. The novels are then considered chronologically by both authors, who each comment freely on the interpretations and viewpoints of the other.

This work demonstrates the ways in which a complex of ideas with a misogynistic basis relates to the image of the venomous woman--the woman who uses poisons or potions, who has a relationship with a venomous animal, or who is herself poisonous. Hallissy suggests that the venomous woman is an image of feminine power reflected in masculine fear. The study concentrates on periods when ignorance of the medicinal effects of poisons exaggerated the potency of this image. It examines works of literature which span a large period of time but are linked by this persistent image. Through its examination of the venomous women, it clarifies the function of misogyny as an expression of masculine fear.

The history of women's rights has usually been defined in terms of the fight for suffrage. Yet the agenda of the women's rights movement in the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth centuries embraced a broader spectrum of goals, goals that were reflected in the women's rights periodicals of the era. One of the goals--securing women's rights to higher education--has remained virtually unexamined and, consequently, all but unknown.In filling that gap, Butcher links two little-known aspects of the women's rights movement: its press and its struggle to secure for women the advantages of higher education. Eleven of the best-known papers, written by women, for women, are analyzed here in chapters covering the women's rights press, the purpose of women's education, coeducation, women as teachers, and the professional and graduate education of women. In offering this analysis, and in exploring the fight for higher education, Butcher broadens our understanding of the history and the legacy of the women's rights movement.

Few books in this field focus solely on beauty ideals, and this volume is unique in terms of its scholarly, interdisciplinary approach. The eleven chapters offer readers a comprehensive analysis of beauty and patriarchy. They reflect a variety of approaches to the study of feminine beauty, including philosophical, historical, sociological, cross-cultural, and empirical. Feminine beauty is discussed as a means of patriarchal, social control, which shapes the socio-cultural, political context as well as the everyday lives of women.

During World War II, women correspondents wanted to be a part of the dramatic and exhilarating scene of wartime conflict as much as their male colleagues. They reported from the war scene because that was where the big story was. This study is an important part of the growing literature which deals with women in journalism. The women who were interviewed were asked about their experiences, including conditions under which they reported, the types of stories they wrote, and their accomplishments as journalists. Those studied were largely newspaper or wire service reporters who were at the front. A few others who wrote for magazines are included because of particularly interesting experiences or personalities. The obstacles that women correspondents faced are recounted here. For example, they found it difficult to get passports from the State Department and accreditation from the War Department. They faced antagonism from certain generals and sometimes bias and fear of competition from their male colleagues. On the other hand, many women discuss the help and support they received from men at the front.Women War Correspondents of World War II is an in-depth analysis of the life of the woman correspondent. The problems of censorship, a war fought on different fronts, and the dangers of then-modern warfare are recounted. Many women entered the field through newspaper jobs vacated by men who left for the front; they then worked their way into becoming war correspondents. For the most part they did not expect preferential treatment and avoided exceptional notice. According to their own accounts, they encountered problems unique to their sex, but were adept at handling the problems and were professional in their work.

With the rise of the women's movement during the last fifteen years, gender differences in the use of time have received increased attention. Shelton describes changes in women's and men's use of time and analyzes the factors associated with these patterns. Based on national survey data, this study focuses on gender differences in time given to household labor, paid labor, and leisure, and assesses the impact of personal characteristics and structural determinants on time use. While popular opinion holds that the roles of men and women have converged, Shelton concludes that important differences remain in their use of time.The author begins by overviewing the available research on gender differences and time use. She then outlines her research methodology and analyzes the roles of women and men in the labor force. Shelton next examines changing trends in household labor and gender differences in leisure activities. The concluding chapter interprets her empirical findings and suggests the extent to which time use patterns can be placed within a larger context. Anyone interested in the sociology of gender will find this study enlightening.

This literary critical book deals exclusively with contemporary fiction by women that focuses on aging of women. It discusses the emergence of a new fictional genre, the novel of ripening or Reifungsroman. This emerging genre about the aging heroine reconceptualizes middle and old age for women, taking it from a formerly stereotypical state of passivity and deterioration (by the hearthside) into one of adventure, growth, self-discovery, self-affirmation, and integration (on the open road). The book contains an extensive bibliography of twentieth-century popular periodical articles on aging (Canadian, American, and British); literary critical articles on aging in the fiction of Doris Lessing, Alice Adams, Paule Marshall, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, May Sarton, and Margaret Laurence; as well as general literary critical works on these authors; and some general (non-literary) studies of aging, often from a feminist framework (such as Simone de Beavoir's The Coming of Age).Using a feminist theoretical approach, with some influence from social literary critics such as Lentricchia and Said, the book surveys, in the first chapter, selected popular magazine articles written over this century. The next chapter analyzes fiction on middle-aged women, in works by Doris Lessing and Alice Adams. Chapter Three analyzes young-old women, in works by Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, and Paule Marshall. The final chapter looks at frail, or dependent old women, in works by May Sarton and Margaret Laurence. This work should be well received by students and scholars engaged in the study of literary criticism, women's studies in literature, gerontology, the life-cycle in literature, and contemporary women in literature.

This volume represents the first book-length study of attitudes toward women in revolutionary France. Based on extensive research in the libraries and archives of Paris, the book examines the impact of the Revolution's ideology of liberty and equality. When the men of 1789 wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they were thinking in terms of man the male, not man the species. But there were some men and women who interpreted it in terms of all humanity. The outrage of these individuals over what they perceived as a discrepancy between the principles and the practice of the Revolution motivated them to produce some of the most unhesitating declarations of sexual equality that had ever been seen in history. Dr. Proctor demonstrates, however, these claims of equality were not simply ignored; they were categorically rejected by the mainstream revolutionaries.The book examines the typical 18th-century concept of women as alien and in some ways inferior beings and traces the striking continuity between pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary thought on the subject. Against this background, Proctor addresses a number of important questions: How widespread was the support for a movement in favor of sexual equality? What was the response of the Revolution itself to demands for equal rights for women? How did the men of the French Revolution justify the contradiction between their suppression of women and the ideologies for which they claimed to be fighting? To arrive at the answers, an abundance of material produced in France in the 18th century is identified and analyzed, and cited in an extensive bibliography of original sources. What finally emerges is not only a clearer picture of the French Revolution and its attitude toward women, but a deeper understanding of the ambivalent attitudes toward women that still affect our society today. This book will be an important resource for courses in European history, the French Revolution, and women's studies, as well as a valuable reference for college, university, and public libraries.

Most of the women described in this study were atypical biblical women. Israelite women, like women in most cultures of the world, had status principally within the home. However, exceptional women occasionally had prominent roles outside the home and dared to assert themselves. The chapters contain biographical sketches, with comparisons to contemporary women's roles, of two dozen women. Beginning with Sarah of Ur and ending with Priscilla of Rome, their lives range over an era of nearly two millennia.These women were, at crucial times, sagacious in decision making and skillful in executing their decisions. They made such a distinctive mark on the events of their time to be remembered by subsequent generations as more than breeders of male heirs. Each woman's story relates how a dynamic woman was able to swim against the strong currents of patriarchy. To make explicit the relevancy of this study, the brief biographies are related to such current feminist issues as surrogate parenting, gender stereotyping, and civil disobedience over unequal treatment by governments.

Expounding the view that the feminist movement has both encouraged and enriched literature by women, Katherine Payant examines a large body of popular fiction of the late 1960s through the early 1990s, relating these writers and works to the women's movement and feminist theories. The study concentrates on popular fiction, which is seen as evidence of the widespread influence of feminism and as a vehicle for dissemination of mainstream feminist ideas.The opening chapter argues that feminist-influenced popular literature has been neglected by critics and stresses the importance of its study to discern how social movements, such as feminism, affect the arts. Chapters dealing with the 1970s and 1980s survey relevant feminist theories and tie them to representative novels. Especially characteristic of the 1970s was the novel of development, of growing up female, or, in feminist terminology, the social construction of femininity. The 1980s and early 1990s showed themes broadening into women's experiences, such as motherhood, and bonds between women, including mother/daughter relationships and friendships. Chosen for special focus in individual chapters are Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, and Toni Morrison, all immensely successful during the last twenty years and reflecting divergent perspectives on feminism. Gordon, writing from an Irish Catholic perspective, synthesizes feminist ideas with traditional feminine experiences. Morrison celebrates the strength and laments the pain of African-American women, but shows ambivalence toward some feminist issues in the light of the experiences of black women. Written in accessible prose, this work will deepen the appreciation of readers of these novelists and can serve as valuable supplementary reading for courses in women's studies and women in literature. An extensive bibliography includes primary sources and studies in feminism, literary criticism, and contemporary women's writing.