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

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Oh, pity about Northanger Abbey, as it would be my first choice. I think. (Yeah, impossible decision!) It's such a delight to read it in light of early feminist thought and to see JA take on the literary establishment at the same time. Fewer people likely to have read it than Jane Eyre as well. I also agree with the Elizabeth Gaskell suggestion - especially as I'm betting you're going to say Middlemarch is too much. (Yep - checked later replies.)

Not to be argumentative, but I wouldn't be sure about the Fanny Burney - I think you really might want a bit of experience with Austen and all to get the step 'back' to Burney.

I'm useless at anything of this type out of the 19th century, but we did Frankenstein in an OU second level lit course and it was fascinating. Or how about pushing it way out there and doing an Ursula Le Guin? With Orlando! (I'll stop now.)

(Except to say very unhelpfully that I hated Wide Sargasso Sea and loathed having to study it.)

Oh - and a question - are you doing short stuff too?