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

[lidocafe.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think you can go wrong with Jane Eyre, if only because so many will expect them to know it and because so many other women writers have been affected by it. TB has been teaching it and Wide Sargasso Sea in first year, if you can believe it. Yes, both of them! But I suspect they've not spent enough time on it. If you wanted to do a George Eliot that is more obviously about women, I'd do A Mill on the Floss. I adore Spark, and PoMJB is a masterpiece, and very short and would compliment Northanger Abbey very well. One of the shorter Margaret Drabbles might also capture that period. I have had great fun teaching Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She Devil as well. Are you really confining it to Britain? If not, consider Nadine Gordimer, Isabel Allende, or even The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. The latter is such a jewel of a novel. I also liked Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God.

This is one of the hardest parts about teaching a new course, isn't it? Choosing means saying no to so many things.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I'm not confining it to Britain, just that I tend to read more British, so those are my choices. Allende...? Hmm. I think her books are a bit overwrought, except Of Love and Shadows, which I adore.

Yes, it's an agonizing decision. Whatever I choose, someone (maybe me) will say "why didn't you choose something else"?

I was talking about this with friends last night, and we actually thought Orlando might be a good choice.