Aahh, the sweet news. Elaine Showalter has single handedly created yet another work that has been added to my “list.” She has constructed an enormous novel titled “A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.” In an upbeat and energetic fashion, Showalter describes the work of our many past influential (and sadly some long-forgotten) female writers and poets that together created the foundation for a vast amount of our American Literature. Showalter was a professor at Princeton for over two decades, and actually taught the author of the NYTIMES article I have gained this information from.
The part that excites me the most is the fact that, though she refers to this book as a literary history, she is more focused on the impact each writer had on the development of women’s rights or feminist themes. (I know, you read “feminist” and you think of butchy women and picket signs, though that is not at all what the original idea set out to portray. It the most vague explanation, it is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights to men in a time when they were bound to child bearing and floor scrubbing while holding zero jurisdictions concerning their own futures.) She does not dwell on whether or not fame or fortune their works brought them, but if it posed a question – begged for change. (Thank you Betty FriedanJ)
Anyhoo, sounds like a kick ass read. Here is the link to the article if any of you are just about to explode from all of this literary excitement…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/books/review/Roiphe-t.html?_r=1&ref=books
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