Table Of ContentDETERMINED WOMEN
Also published by Jennifer Birkett
SAMUEL BECKETT: Waiting for Godot
THE BODY AND THE DREAM: French Erotic Fiction,
1464-1900
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS: Decadence in France and
Europe, 1870-1914
Determined Women
Studies in the Construction of the Female
Subject, 1900-90
Edited and introduced by
JENNIFER BIRKETT
Professor of French Studies, University of Strathclyde
and
ELIZABETH HARVEY
Lecturer in German, University of Salford
M
MACMILLAN
Editorial matter and selection © Jennifer Birkett and Elizabeth
Harvey 1991
Chapter 4 ©Stan Smith 1991; Chapter 5 ©Coral Ann Howells
1991; Chapter 7 ©Patricia Harbord 1991; Chapter 8 ©Robin
Adamson 1991; Chapter 9 ©Helga Geyer-Ryan 1991.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited
copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
33-4 Alfred Place, London WClE 7DP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation
to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution
and civil claims for damages.
First edition 1991
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Determined women: studies in the construction of
the female subject, 19~90
1. Literature. Women writers. Special themes: Women -
Critical studies
I. Birkett, Jennifer II. Harvey, Elizabeth
809'.89287
ISBN 978-0-333-44839-7 ISBN 978-1-349-21292-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21292-7
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors ix
1 Introduction 1
Jennifer Birkett and Elizabeth Harvey
2 Private Fantasy and Public Intervention: Girls' Reading
in Weimar Germany 38
Elizabeth Harvey
3 Doubly Determined: the Ambition of Storm Jameson 68
Jennifer Birkett
4 The Negative of a Person: Media, Image and
Authenticity in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar 95
Stan Smith
5 A Question of Inheritance: Canadian Women's Short
Stories 108
Coral Ann Howells
6 Whistling like a Woman: the Novels of Alice Walker 121
Jennifer Birkett
7 Beyond Paper Heroines: Maxie Wander's Guten
Morgen, du SchOne and its reception in the GDR 146
Patricia Harbord
VI Contents
8 Sexism in French: a Case Study 173
Robin Adamson
9 The Castration of Cassandra 195
Helga Geyer-Ryan
Index 208
Acknowledgements
Robin Adamson wishes to thank the Scottish Universities French
Language Research Association for the grant she received for travel
to Paris for research on her chapter. Jennifer Birkett wishes to
acknowledge the kind assistance of the British Academy in financing
the research for her chapters. Elizabeth Harvey would like to thank
the Research Committee of the University of Salford for assistance
with research expenses. Coral Ann Howells wishes to thank the
British Association for Canadian Studies and the Research Board of
the University of Reading for financial assistance in her research.
Notes on the Contributors
Robin Adamson is Lecturer in French and Director of the Language
Unit at the University of Dundee. Her research has focused on
computer-assisted stylistics and advanced language learning. She
contributed to and edited Le Franr;ais en faculte (2nd edn, 1986) and
En fin de compte ... (1988).
Jennifer Birkett is Professor of French Studies at the University of
Strathclyde and Convenor of the M.Litt. in Women's Studies. Her
publications include The Body and the Dream: French Erotic Fiction
1464-1900 (1983), The Sins of the Fathers: Decadence in France and
Europe 1870-1914 (1986) and Samuel Beckett: 'Waiting for Godot'
(1987). She has also written essays and articles on English, American
and French women writers and she is currently preparing a book on
Sexuality, Politics and Fiction in the French Revolution and complet
ing (in collaboration with James Kearns) The Macmillan Guide to
French Literature.
Helga Geyer-Ryan is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature
at the University of Amsterdam and has taught German literature
at the Universities of Geneva and Cambridge. She has published
widely on literature and feminism, popular culture and literary
theory, and her major publications include Der andere Roman:
Versuch uber die verdriingte Asthetik des Populiiren (1983), Popular
Literature in the Third Reich (1980), Literary Theory Today (co
editor, with Peter Collier) (1990) and Fables of Desire: Essays in
Feminist Criticism (forthcoming, 1991).
Patricia Harbord lives in Edinburgh. She has translated articles by
West German feminists and has published an interview with the film
maker Jutta Bruckner. She has written on the representation of
femininity in the work of several East German women writers.
X Notes on the Contributors
Elizabeth Harvey is Lecturer in German at the University of Salford.
Her publications include a study of youth welfare in Weimar Ger
many and articles on youth unemployment during the Depression.
She is currently preparing a book on Youth and the State in Weimar
Germany.
Coral Ann Howells lectures in English at the University of Reading,
where she teaches courses on British fiction and Canadian women's
fiction. Her publications include Private and Fictional Words: Canad
ian Women Novelists of the i970s and 80s (1987), Love, Mystery and
Misery: Feeling in Gothic Fiction (1978) and essays on Ann Radcliffe,
George Eliot, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro,
Audrey Thomas and Marian Engel. She is currently completing a
book on Jean Rhys, to be followed by one on Margaret Atwood.
Stan Smith is Professor of English at the University of Dundee. He
has published widely on modern literature, and his books include A
Sadly Contracted Hero: The Comic Self in Post-War American Fiction
(1981), inviolable Voice: History and Twentieth-Century Poetry
(1982), W. H. Auden (1985), Edward Thomas (1986) and W. B.
Yeats: A Critical introduction (1990). He co-edits the Longman
Critical Reader series, with Raman Selden.
