IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN WRITERS

ANGLO-AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS
(FaceToFace workshop - Teacher: Gloria Fortún)
CONTEMPORARY WOMEN WRITERS
And so all good things must end. The workshop finished this Saturday with this selection of a chosen few contemporary women writers brought to us by Gloria.
Thank you for attending, and thank you Gloria for doing a splendid job.
We hope you'll find the time to visit their websites and hopefully read some of their books.

Zadie Smith (UK, 1975)

The daughter of  a Jamaican mother and English father, Smith is married to Northern Irish poet and writer, Nick Laird.

As well as being Professor of Creative Writing at New York University, she is the author of three novels—White Teeth, The Autograph Man, and On Beauty. She has also published a volume of essays: Changing my Mind.


White Teeth was completed during her  final year at Cambridge University. Several publishing companies had bid for the rights before the manuscript was even complete and the novel went on to win numerous awards. The novel depicts the lives of people with a wide range of backgrounds, including Afro-Caribbean, Muslim, and Jewish, set in the multi-cultural suburbs of North London .






Arundhati Roy (India, 1961)
Excellent website, with biography, writings, etc.

Arundhati is an Indian writer who writes in English and a committed activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. 

She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays and non-fiction books.

For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.

The New York Times called her "India's most impassioned critic of globalization".

When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less. (The God of Small Things Ammu, Chapter 4: Abhilash Talkies.


                                                                
                                                          

Susanna Clarke (UK, 1959)

Although you can read her biography on the website, we will comment on the fact that Susanna worked as an EFL teacher for two years, first in Turin and later in Bilbao, where she first got the idea for "Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell" (Booker Prize 2004, Whitbread Prize 2004, Nebula 2006 among other prizes and awards).  

Clarke was born on 1 November 1959 in Nottingham, England, and spent her childhood in various towns across Northern England and Scotland, and enjoyed reading the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and, Jane Austen. 

In 2006, Clarke published a collection of eight fairy tales presented as the work of several different writers: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.  The collection is a "sly, frequently comical, feminist revision" of Jonathan Strange. 
She has published several volumes of short stories and many are included  in  fantasy and science fiction  anthologies.





Susanna Clarke & Neil Gaiman
Cargado por SFLTV. - Videos web independientes.



Azar Nafisi (Iran, 1955)
Also her very interesting blog: http://azarnafisi.com/my-blog/


 Azar was born in Iran under the rule of the Shah. She was sent to England at the age of 13, to study

Azar Nafisi is a professor at John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. She attended The University of Oklahoma and later Oxford University and taught literature at three Iranian universities, including the University of Tehran, from which she was expelled for refusing to wear the veil. Azar Nafisi left Iran with her family in 1997,
and moved to the United States, where she wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a book where she describes her experiences as a secular woman living and working in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The book is translated into 12 languages. In the book, she declares "I left Iran, but Iran did not leave me."
From 1995 to 1997, before she left Iran, Azar Nafisi met with seven students every Thursday to discuss literature. Reading Lolita in Tehran is the memoir of that experience, where the conversations ranged from Jane Austen to Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov.






Barbara Kingsolver (U.S. 1955)
www.kingsolver.com

You can find her biography and works on her website, that features this quote by Barbara on the home page: 

"Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and moving you to answer them for yourself." 

She is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the former Republic of Congo in her early childhood.
Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Starting in April 2005, Kingsolver and her family spent a year   eating only what was produced locally as possible.  Living on their farm in rural Virginia, they grew much of their own food, and obtained most of the rest from their neighbors and other local farmers.  Kingsolver, her husband, and her elder daughter chronicled their experiences that year in the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. 
You can read a review on this book and her very interesting experience with organic gardening here. 




 





Amy Tan (U.S. 1952)

You can find her biography and lots of photos on her website.

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer who explores mother-daughter relationships in many of her writings.
She was born to Chinese immigrant parents living in the US and later learned that her mother had left behind in China an abusive husband and three children. She travelled to China and met her half-sisters.

The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses,  The Bonesetter's Daughter (of which she wrote a libretto for the San Francisco Opera), and Saving Fish from Drowning were New York Times bestsellers. So was her first book, The Joy Luck Club (1989) that was translated into 35 languages and became a highly successful film.






Margaret Atwood (Canada, 1939)

And her wonderful blog full of photos and fun:
http://marg09.wordpress.com/


Margaret Atwood is a poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, writer of children's stories and environmental activist.

She was the winner of the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, (The Handmaid's Tale) to the best science fiction novel in the UK - Margaret preferred to refer to it as "speculative fiction" and finally accepted the designation of "social science fiction." in which she also includes Oryx and Crake. She was  honoured with the  Príncipe de Asturias award for Literature in 2008. There is a version in Spanish of her speech on receiving the prize here.

She is involved in politics and holds strong environmental views. She is a member, with her partner, of the Green Party of Canada.   

The Cat's Eye, Surfacing, The Edible Woman, The Blind Assassin are only a few of her books we highly recommend.




Joyce Carol Oates (U.S. 1938)

Her biography and a list of her works can be found on her website.

Joyce Carol Oates writes short stories, children stories, poetry and non fiction, and has published over 50 novels. She was derided on this account by some critics in the 80's, but her achievements are know widely acclaimed.

Between 1968 and 1978, Oates  published new books at the rate of two or three per year, all the while maintaining a full-time academic career. Teaching and writing are two activities she finds perfectly compatible.

With her first husband Raymond Smith, she founded The Ontario Review (1974), a literary magazine and the independent publishing house, Ontario Review Books (1980).

I'll take you there, Black Water and Blonde are highly recommended.




Toni Morrison (U.S. 1931)

Novelist, playwright (Dreaming Emmett) editor and professor, she was awarded both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize (her citation says: "she gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."). She is the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize. She has played a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream.

The Bluest Eye and Beloved are probably her best known books.
 
From The Bluest Eye (written while raising two children and teaching) : 
"Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her."

In this video, she talks of her beginnings as a writer and about the subject matter of The Bluest Eye.





Ursula K. le Guin  (U.S. 1929)
www.ursulakleguin.com

Her website includes a biography, list of her works and tons of interesting information. (There is also a page in Spanish)

Writer of novels, poetry, children's books, essays and short stories and screenplays, especially in the genre of fantasy and science fiction.
Her works explore Taoist, feminist, physchological and sociological themes.  

In her essay "The Carrier-Bag Theory of
Fiction" (1988 ) she suggests that there are two major forms of fiction :
"the hunter-hero story , which is progressive and linear , involves killing large animals or enemies or overcoming one large but surmountable
problem , and produces a hero ... or the life-story or "carrier bag " type , involves one or more people carrying on and containing or preserving whatever is valued for the current work and for the future . The characters support each others' efforts , or cooperate , and the progress is more web-like than linear." You can read the whole essay here.

In this video, she reads a chapter of her book "Lavinia". 





SAPPHIC VOICES
At the beginning of the 20th century, ambiguous expression and the use of pseudonyms were just two of the subtle devices adopted by women writers to disguise their lesbian identity or that of their characters. Any notion of the existence of lesbianism was suppressed by publishers, while literary critics freely practised condemnation of lesbian writers. These are only a few of the women who managed to break down the barriers of invisibility, seen from three different perspectives: 1) topic: the content of the work is openly lesbian or lesbian related 2) writer: the writer is/was a lesbian 3) reader: the work, although not explicitly sapphic and often ambiguous, carries a subtext that is easily identified by readers.
Dorothy Bussy (née Strachey)
1865 - 1960

Born in the midst of an exceptional family, all ten Strachey children grew up in a period of great change (Victorian England on the way to the beat generation) and excelled in one field or another, openly defending, in the nineteenth century, feminism, the suffrage movement, and making a stand for women's education. Dorothy is the sister of Lytton and Julia Strachey, both part of the Bloomsbury group. Dorothy was bisexual. She fell madly in love with her headmistress at Allenswood Academy, Marie Souvestre, a noted feminist who greatly influenced Eleanor Roosevelt (who also studied there at the time). Dorothy was later involved with Lady Ottoline Morrell. In 1903, she married Simon Bussy, a French painter with whom she had a daughter. She moved to the south of France where she befriended Matisse and translated much of Andre Gide's (whom she admired) work. When Olivia appeared, its authorship was unknown. It was published as "Olivia, by Olivia" when Dorothy was 83 years old! The book is an account of her school love at the age of sixteen.  She writes bravely in the introduction: "I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead..." This is the first part of the beautiful film made from the book. The script was written by Colette. It is in French, with English subtitles and you can watch the whole film (9 parts) in Youtube.




Amy Lowell 
1874 - 1925

Amy was born in Massachusetts, U.S. in a prominent  Episcopalian family. She was an avid reader and a socialite who travelled widely.   She was the lover of Mercedes Acosta before embarking on a lifelong relationship with actress Ada Russell, who was to become the subject of many of her poems. (Two Speak Together) Her relationship with Russell, coupled with her unconventional habits of wearing men’s clothing and smoking cigars, led  her poetry to be dismissed by critics who were uncomfortable with her homosexual and eccentric lifestyle. She was deeply interested in, and influenced by, the Imagist movement (Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle: HD, Ford Maddox Ford) that believed that "concentration is of the very essence of poetry" and strove to "produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite." She moved on later to explore the use of "polypohonic prose", mixing formal verse and free forms. She was also interested in Chinese and Japanese poetry. She had a lifelong love for Keats, of whom she said: "The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius."  She wrote his  biography that was published one year after her death: in 1925, the same year in which she was awarded the Pullitzer Prize for her collection of poems What's a  Clock.
Radclyffe Hall
1880 - 1943

Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and novelist born in Bournemouth, Dorset. She was the only child of an unhappy marriage. Her mother Marie Diehl, an American widow married her extravagant father who left her months before Marguerite was born. She studied at King's College and later in Germany, where she met Mabel Batten, with whom she was involved until Mabel's death in 1916. Mabel called her "John, a name she adopted the rest of her life. In 1917 she began a love affair with the sculptor Una Troubridge that lasted until Radclyffe-Hall's death in 1943. Radclyffe-Hall is the author of many books, some comedies, and Adam's Breed, that was critically acclaimed and earned her two prizes, and  The Well of Loneliness, regarded by most as the first lesbian novel and her most important book. It contains no erotic passages; it is a simple plea for tolerance. Even though it was not openly explicit, in 1928, the book was judged by the British courts to be obscene. Many important writers who were asked to defend the book excused themselves "for reasons you might guess", Virginia Woolf wrote "though they generally put it down to the weak heart of a father or a cousin who is about to have twins."
The Well of Loneliness conforms to the stereotypical image in literature of the misery of lesbian existence, with the main character being left alone at the end because her lover is driven back into the arms of a man. Yet whatever its limitations for contemporary readers, Hall was a pioneer in her courageous defiance of silence.
Lillian Hellman
1905 - 1984

After working as a book reviewer, press agent, and play reader, she began writing plays in the 1930s. Her first major success, The Children's Hour (1934), concerned two schoolteachers falsely accused of lesbianism. She examined family infighting in her hit The Little Foxes (1939) and political injustice in Watch on the Rhine (1941). All were made into successful films. She was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. This committee persecuted actors, painters and writers who sympathized with left wing causes. After working as a book reviewer, press agent, and play reader, she began writing plays in the 1930s. Her first major success, The Children's Hour (1934), concerned two schoolteachers falsely accused of lesbianism. She examined family infighting in her hit The Little Foxes (1939) and political injustice in Watch on the Rhine (1941). All were made into successful films. Lillian was also a close friend of Dorothy Parker. She wrote several memoirs and edited the works of her longtime companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett.

Kay Ryan
1945

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Since 1971, Ryan has lived in Marin County. Her partner of 30 years is Carol Adair. For more than 30 years, Ryan limited her professional responsibilities to part-time teaching. Ryan has written six books of poetry, plus a limited edition artist’s book, along with a number of essays. She describes poetry as an intensely personal experience for both the writer and the reader: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way."  She is the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States 2008-2009 (first lesbian poet) and has received  numerous awards.  Her poems have been widely reprinted and internationally anthologized. Since 2006, she has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Hide and Seek It’s hard not to jump out instead of waiting to be found. It’s hard to be alone so long and then hear someone come around. It’s like some form of skin’s developed in the air that, rather than have torn, you tear. Kay Ryan

 
 Julie Anne Peters
1952

Born in Jamestown, New York, but moved when she was five to Colorado. She is a writer of books for children and young adults.  Her books for young adults include Define "Normal" (2000), Keeping You a Secret (2003), Luna (2004), Far from Xanadu (2005), and Between Mom and Jo (2006). Her young adult fiction frequently deals with LGBT issues. She has also written books for younger readers, such as the Snob Squad series. Her website: http://www.julieannepeters.com/
Carol Ann Duffy 1955 Carol Ann Duffy,  (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.  She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly bisexual person to hold the position, as well as the first laureate to be chosen in the 21st century.

Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female NudeSelling Manhattan (1987) The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993),   The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002),  and RaptureNew & Collected Poems for Children. 

She also writes picture books for children and has been awarded numerous prizes.

Carol Ann Duffy is also an acclaimed playwright, and has had plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London. Her plays include Take My Husband (1982), Cavern of Dreams (1984), Little Women, Big Boys (1986) and Loss (1986), a radio play.  

 

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Carol Ann Duffy - Last Post Cargado por poetictouch. - Descubre más videos creativos. GOTHIC NOVELISTS Gothic fiction (18th century and 19th centuries), rooted in Romanticism, was born as a "genre" with Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto". Ghosts, supernatural events, haunted houses, terror, extreme emotions, mystery and fantasy all contribute to the "atmosphere" that was embraced by many women writers. Gothic novels aside from evoking  terror in their readers also served to show the dark side of human nature. Some of the authors Gloria talked to us about:
Anne Radcliffe 1764 - 1823 Born as Ann Ward in  Holborn, UK, she married a journalist and had no children. She began writing fiction under the name of Anne Radcliffe around 1790. Her blend of moralism, aesthetics and drama struck a chord with the readers of the time, becoming a hugely popular writer. She was also a pioneer, being one of the first writers to make fictional use of landscape, placing her characters in constructed environments and employing vivid contrasts and chiaroscuro effects in the settings of her plots. She seemed to  have invented the technique of proto-cinematic — or narrative description called word-painting. "On the edge of tremendous precipices, and within the hollow of the cliffs, below which the clouds often floated, were seen villages, spires, and convent towers; while green pastures and vineyards spread their hues at the feet of perpendicular rocks of marble, or of granite, whose points, tufted with alpine shrubs, or exhibiting only massy crags, rose above each other, till they terminated in the snow-topt mountain, whence the torrent fell, that thundered along the valley. . .  " Her characters are often allowed to become secondary to the natural world around them, rendering mankind insignificant in comparison to the beauty, splendor, and power of Nature (Romantic influence) The Mysteries of Udolpho is an essential Gothic text, and together with The Italian and The Romance of the Green Forest, considered to be her most representative work. Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, are only a few of the authors that are said to have been influenced by Anne Radcliffe's writing.


Jane Austen 1775-1817 One of the most loved and respected English women writers of all times, there is so much information about her available on and off line, that we will resort to the video below as a summary of her life and works. Northanger Abbey , her first book, was written between 1798–1799 in Austen's home in Hampshire, UK. It was sold to a publisher in 1803 but not published. Later, after her success with other novels, she bought back the manuscript and revised it slightly. Northanger Abbey was published after her death, in 1817. Written at the end of the 18th century, Northanger Abbey is a parody of  the Gothic genre, satirizing the conventions and form of the Gothic novels. The second part, set  in Northanger Abbey, a large stone building that was formerly a church, is converted into the Tilney's home. Catherine Tilney, the main character, reads The Mysteries of Udolpho (by Anne Radcliffe - see below) during her time at Bath, before moving to Northanger, and it is implied that she has read similar novels before.  Isabella has a library of other Gothic novels that the women plan to read once Catherine has finished Udolpho. Gothic novels and their conventions occur throughout the novel.   "Perhaps, after all, it is possible to read too many novels", says Henry Tilney BIOGRAPHY & WORKS


Mary Shelley 1797 - 1851 Mary Shelley, née  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in Great Britain, daughter to  philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died on giving birth to her, and the political philosopher William Godwin. When she was 16, she ran off to continental Europe with Romantic poet Percy Shelley, who was married at the time. Novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer and travel writer, she is best know for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) It was during another trip to Switzerland with Byron and Polidory, that Mary was to write Frankenstein, the only story of the four written as result of a contest between the friends, that was ever to be published as a novel (1818/1822). See video below. In spite of bein considered a science-fiction novel, there are many gothic ingredients  in  Frankenstein.  For example, the use of nature to create atmosphere: The bleak, glacial fields of the Alps and the mists of the Arctic serve to indicate the isolation of the two protagonists or  the solitary character that can apply to both Victor and  his creation, since they both live their lives in social isolation. Percy's wife drowned herself shortly after Mary and Percy returned from Italy (Percy and Mary would then marry, in December 1816), and in later years, the death of her half sister and of two of her own children led her to a depression, in spite of the birth of an only surviving son. After tragic drowning of Percy Shelley in a sailing trip in Italy in 1822.  she continued writing (The Last Man) and published and promoted Shelley's work. She was 53 when she died. 

                                                           
Painted by Evert A. Duyckinick
  Charlotte Brontë   1866 - 1855 Charlotte was born in Thornton, England. She was the third of six children born to Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë . When Maria died in 1821, the five sisters and their brother were put under the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Charlotte was sent off with three of her sisters to the Clergy Daughters' School in Lancashire, where the poor conditions would permanently affect her health and contribute to the early death of her two elder sisters. Their father took them back home to Hawthorne Parsonage, where Charlotte and the surviving children, Branwell, Anne and Emily grew up in the imaginary kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, a life chronicled in sagas, articles and poems they wrote. She worked as a governess and a teacher, and published her first novella (The Green Dwarf) under the name of Wellesley. In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne published a joint collection of poetry under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.  Charlotte used "Currer Bell" when she published her first two novels. ..."Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' -- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.  Jane Eyre is a powerful study of being, identity, autonomy, gender, passion, power — all these and more. Undoubtedly one of the major novels of  British literature, it's a vital link in the Gothic's evolution away from an exterior, often horror-based aesthetic to a more internal, emotion- and psychology-based aesthetic. Yet it retains enough Gothic traces to be quite recognizable as a direct descendant: the isolated building, the pursued young heroine, the darkly Byronic hero. It was not until after the big success of Jane Eyre, that she began to sign her writings with her name and frequent the company of other writers, like Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell.  Charlotte became engaged to Rev. A.B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth, whom she later married.  She had rejected him previously and it seems clear that although she admired him, she did not love him. In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia and after a lengthy and painful illness, she died, probably of dehydration. FaceToFace offers a workshop on Jane Eyre on demand. (4Friends)


Emily Brontë 1818 - 1848 Novelist and poet, Emily was born in Thornton, England, She was the fifth of the six Brontë children. The family later moved to Haworth, west Yorkshire, where the father was perpetual curate (1824) and where she was to spend most of her time and write all her works She travelled to Brussels with Charlotte with the intention of perfecting her German and French, but grew homesick and returned to Haworth, where she kept on writing and collected and organized all her poems. On discovering them, Charlotte insisted on publishing them In May 1846, Emily, Charlotte and Anne published a collection of poetry that sold only two copies. (see above) The poems within it, and others collected later, have now achieved classic literary status. Virginia Woolf believed that Emily's poetry would outlive her more famous novel. She published under the pen name of Ellis Bell.   Emily published the first two volumes of Wuthering Heights in 1847 (It was meant to be published in three volumes  (the last volume being Agnes Grey  by her sister Anne). Its innovative structure   puzzled critics. It received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was  condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion. She caught a cold during the funeral of her brother in September 1848. Refusing medical help, she died on 19 December 1848. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel under Emily's real name. The book is now an English literary classic.

 

Daphne du Maurier 1907 - 1989 Playwright and author, Daphne du Maurier was born in England in the midst of a creative family with a rich artistic and historical background, the daughter of a famous actor-manager, she was indulged as a child and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint.   She began writing short stories in 1928, and in 1931 her first novel,'The Loving Spirit' was published by a prestigious publishing house. It received rave reviews and further books followed. Then came her most famous three novels, 'Jamaica Inn', 'Frenchman's Creek' and Rebecca'.  Her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. She married Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning and enjoyed life in in a mansion in her beloved Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca. While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love or fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story. Rebecca is embodied in a form that represents the first major Gothic romance of the twentieth century and perhaps the finest written to this day. It contains most of the trappings of the typical Gothic romance: a mysterious, haunted mansion, violence, murder, a sinister villain, sexual passion, a spectacular fire, a brooding landscape and a version of the mad woman in the attic. Du Maurier's work, however, is much more than a simple thriller or mystery. It is a profound and fascinating study of an obsessive personality, of sexual dominance, of human identity and of the liberation of the hidden self.  Rebecca and the two short stories, 'The Birds' and 'Don't Look Now', stand out among du Maurier's work as landmarks in the development of the modern Gothic tale. She breathes new life into the old form of the Gothic novel to come up with a classic tale of The Othcr Woman.

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PIONEERS We had the first class of the ANGLO-AMERICAN WOMEN workshop today. Gloria Fortún told us all about the Pioneers, leaving us with much food for thought and hungering for more!! Don't forget to check out the links she recommended. Some of the authors we discussed:

Painting by La Donna Gulley Warrick

Anne Bradstreet 

1612 - 1672 

America's first published poet. Anne Dudley was born in England to a well educated family. She and her husband, Simon Bradstreet (whom she married at the early age of 16) were Purist dissenters who braved the crossing to America in order to escape prosecution by the Church of England. They moved from Cambridge to Ipswich, where her first son was born, finally settling down in the remote wilderness of Andover. Anne cared for her eight children while her husband, Governor of the community, was frequently absent due to his travels. In her poem "A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment", written while in Ipswhich, she pleads: "If two be one, as surely thou and I,   How stayest there, whilst I in Ipswich lie?" Neither her loneliness nor her frequent illnesses, that forced her to remain bed-ridden while raising her eight children,  stopped her from writing. She left behind nothing - no portrait, no diaries, no burial stone - but her poems. Her first poems were published by her brother in law in London, in 1650. Her finer, later poems, are in the John Harvard Library edition of The Works of Anne Bradstreet published by Harvard University Press with an introduction by Adrienne Rich.

                                                        Mary Rowlandson 1637 - 1711 Born in England, Mary White came from a big and wealthy  family who moved to the US  around 1650. She married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson in 1655. She was ordained as a Puritan minister. Towards the end of what was to be called "King Philip's War", she was captured, together with her three children, by Native Americans and remained in captivity for over 11 weeks. After her release (ransomed by money raised by the women of Boston) she wrote an autobiography, telling about her experience "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, published in 1682 and considered a landmark of American captivity narrative    It became a bestseller, running 4 editions. It was very popular both in the US and overseas, in England, where stories about the indians, carried back by sailors, were very popular. You can read an account of what happened in "King Philip's war" and some extracts of the book here: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/mary.html. Religion played a major role in those days, the Native Americans being considered the "infidels" or heathens as opposed to the God-fearing white man.

oil painting by Sarah Belchetz-Swenson

Aphra Behn 1640-1689 She was the first English professional female writer. Aphra Johnson was born near Canterbury, England, and little is known of her life except that she worked as a nurse in the home of a very wealthy family. In 1663 she visited an English sugar plantation on the East coast of Venezuela, Suriname, where she met a slave leader. This experience is the basis of her most famous book, first true epistolary novel Oroonoco. On her return, she married Johan Behn, a marriage that did not last and some believe, did not exist (pretending in order to gain rights to a widowhood pension). Aphra was reported to be bisexual. She was firmly dedicated to restored King Charles II, and was recruited by him as a political spy at Antwerp. (Second Anglo-Dutch War). She adopted the name of Astrea, which she would later use to sign many of her writings.  King Charles' failure to pay for her services cuased her to end up in debtor's prison, from where she was released in 1669 after her debts were all paid by an unknown source. From this point on, she began to write for a living, producing many plays, novels and poems. She is quoted to have said she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry." She proclaimed and analyzed cross-dressing, female friendships and women's sexual desire. The inscription under her tomb in Westminster Abbey reads:  "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be / Defence enough against Mortality. "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she--shady and amorous as she was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits."Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

The Nine Muses

Sarah Fyge Egerton 1670 - 1723 Probably the youngest feminist on record. Born to a well-off family, Sarah seems  to have received some education in fields as diverse as mythology, geography and philosophy, all present in references found in her poetry. She was forced to leave home by her father  at the age of 14, when   "The Female Advocate" (written in response to Robert Gould's mysoginist: A Late Satyr Against the Pride, Lust, and Inconstancy, etc. of Woman) was published. She married an attorney, and was left a widow three years later.  She then married a much older cousin with grownup children. The couple filed for divorce shortly after - he sued on grounds of adultery, she counter-sued on grounds of cruelty, but the divorce was not granted and they remained married until his death in 1720. Her second volume of work, Poems on Several Occasions, was published in 1703. She continued to write poems and lived supported by a close circle of women friends, peers with whom she exchanged verses and opinions. She was one of the nine women poets who signed their contribution to The Nine Muses, Or, Poems Written by Nine severall Ladies Upon the death of the late Famous John Dryden, Esq. , 1700. with the names of the muses. From the mid 1680s until the mid 1710s, women wrote on "the woman question" as never before and Fyge was a fearless and staunch supporter of women, challenging ideas of intellectual inferiority and demanding equal education rights.

 Charlotte Turner

1749 - 1806 English Romantic poet and novelist who helped to establish the foundations of Gothic fiction. Born to a wealthy family, she received the typical education of a woman of the XVIII century. Her father's reckless spending forced her to marry at 16 against her will. She described her marriage as having been "sold, a legal prostitute". She had twelve children with her husband, who ended up in debtor's prison, where she kept him company and wrote her first poetry book: Elegiac Sonnets. Its success allowed her to get her husband out of prison. She eventually left him, to make a living and raise her children on her own with her writing. As a poet, she is a Romantic , as a novelst, she is in some respects Gothic.Her early novels are exercises of sentimentality, and the Gothic, her later ones support the ideals of the French Revolution. Charlotte Smith is regarded today as both an innovator and a significant figure in understanding Romantic conceptions of gender. She was successful, publishing ten novels, three books of poetry, four children's books, and other assorted works. She considered herself mainly a poet, since poetry was seen as the most exalted form of literature at the time. Charlotte was, according to Wordsworth, "a lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely either to be acknowledged or remembered". She was also praised by Coleridge and novelist Walter Scott and is said to have inspired J.Austen. Her popularity waned, however, and she became ill and was unable to write,   having to sell her books in order to survive.

painting by John Singleton Copley

Judith Sargent Murray 1751 - 1820 Essayist, poet, playwright and educator Judit received the typical education of a merchant-class daughter, reading, writing and domestic skills . Realizing the difference with the education bestowed on her brother, she studied and read geography, philosophy, theology, literature on her own. “How is the one exalted and the other depressed by the contrary modes of education which are adopted! The one is taught to aspire and the other is early confined and limited. As their years increase the sister must be wholly domesticated, while the brother is led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science” Stripped of this opportunity for education, women have no way of competing with men who have not been denied access to learning. She wrote poetry, essays and letters from an early age. She was a supporter of John Murray's Universalists, a radical departure from traditional doctrine, an egalitarian view of  religion that believes in the salvation of all souls. She was a religious educator and published a Universalist cathecism that included her first assertion of male and female equality. She married Murray after the death of her first husband, and during the long and painful recovery after giving birth to a still-born child, she wrote poetry and in 1790 what would become her landmark essay: "On the Equality of the Sexes." After the birth of her daughter Julia, she began writing on political and social issues taking on a masculine identity, "Mr. Gleaner" in order to avoid her ideas being dismissed. She wrote plays - was the first American woman to have a play performed in Boston. She was also the first woman to self-publish a book: "The Gleaner," that achieved great literary fame. 

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