If You Were Teaching...

[intertext]

a one semester 2nd year college course in "Women's Lit," what novel would you teach???

I'm thinking about Jane Eyre, but would welcome other suggestions, just NOT The Handmaid's Tale, please.

ETA and not Mrs Dalloway, much as I love it, because I teach it in my 20th century lit course that some of my students in this upcoming course might have taken. And lidocafe teaches it in hers, so the same argument applies.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

A book you've probably never heard of, by a writer who later sold out and became the best-paid female writer of her generation:
Saturday's Child (http://www.amazon.com/Saturdays-Child-Kathleen-Thompson-Norris/dp/1406540161/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208015993&sr=1-4) by Kathleen Thompson Norris. Sister-in-law of Frank Norris and wife of Charles Norris. Resident of Palo Alto, among other Bay Area places, and lyrical writer about nature's beauty -- not that there's a lot of that in this book.

Susan is an orphan living with her widowed aunt and three cousins in a San Francisco boarding house. Unlike her cousins, she insists on going to work -- she wants to make something of herself. And she gets in all kinds of trouble, of course. To escape the meaninglessness of waiting for a man to find her and marry her, she gets work in an office, becomes a companion to a wealthy young invalid (and sees the dark side of wealth), is tempted to start an irregular liaison with a writer, and finally finds satisfying work and marriage.

Norris is notable as the only successful romance writer (and in her day, she was unbelievably successful) to be profoundly distrustful of falling in love. The real plot in most of her novels is "girl finds the work she loves." Often that's "girl meets ranch and raises kids, discovering what a pain the wrong husband can be" or "girl drags herself up from shame and poverty and possibly losing her virginity." It's never about becoming merely a wife, although most of the heroines are married in the end.

I'm really glad to see that this book, one of her early, socialist/feminist period, has been reissued. Some of her middle-period works are just hackery and not worth reading. Her late period stories, after her husband died, are notable for the luxury of their settings and the absolute cynicism with which she writes about life among the wealthy.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Wow - it sounds wonderful. You're right - I've never heard of it (or the author, to be honest). Might be a possibility for the future - not this year, perhaps.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I was going to add that it has the racism of its time and place. Thus the smart, hard-working hero makes "No Chinese workers" one of his strike demands.

If you want to read the book for free, you can download it from Gutenberg.org -- look under Kathleen Norris. The Thompson is used these days to distinguish her from the religious writer.