Janice A. Radway Janice A. Radway teaches in the literature program at Duke University. Before moving to Duke, she taught in the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She says that her teaching and research interests include the history of books and literary production in the United States, together with the history of reading and consumer culture, particularly as they bear on the lives of women. Radway also teaches cultural studies and feminist theory. A writer for Chronicle of Higher Education described Radway as "one of the leaders in the booming interdisciplinary field of cultural studies." Her first book, Reading the Romance (1984) has sold more than 30,00 copies in two editions. Her second book, A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire appeared in October of 1997. What follows is a topic-outline of the introduction to the English version of her first book. Reading Reading the Romance 1. introduction I am writing a new introduction to the English edition (1987) of Reading the Romance (1984), in which I study the particular nature of the relationship between audiences and texts. My theoretical claim to be doing something new will seem odd to a British audience. Nevertheless, my book takes up questions that British feminists and cultural studies scholars have tackled. I would like to discuss those questions, and so say something about the political implications of Reading the Romance (p. 62). British readers will note that the argument is directed to American Studies scholars working in the USA, who have been preoccupied with the following question: What can a literary text be taken as evidence for? This focus may seem oblique to peop... ... middle of paper ... ... Over the years, the romance is being changed--and the women who write romances have struggled with the form. In fact, the struggle over the romance is itself part of the larger struggle for the right to define/control female sexuality. Catherine Kirkland--who studied a group of romance writers--found that most had been avid readers before they turned their hand to writing. Some may want to promote changes outside the privatized family environment (p. 75). Romance writers and readers are themselves struggling with gender definitions and sexual politics on their own terms and what they may need most from those of us struggling in other arenas is support rather than criticism (p. 76). Works Cited Radway, Janice. 1987. "Reading Reading the Romance." In Studies in Culture: An Introductory Reader, ed. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997, pp. 62-79.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Much discrimination and misogyny still permeate our social stratosphere, but while reading written words one cannot help but to be placed in the author’s shoes, and therefore accept their words as our own. Cain writes, “Many of the texts written by women during this time reflect the idea that there are natural differences between the sexes. Usually a female narrator…privately addresses a mainly female audience about issues that might seem mainly to concern women” (825). Because the text is written in a female voice, the reading adapts themselves to that voice, and gives credit to the
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
Virginia Woolf, an original, thought-provoking feminist author, influenced women to fight for equality and to question the opportunities for women in literature. With her diaries, novels and poems, she stunned her readers with something they have not seen much before: women rebelling. Woolf was frustrated with women and the untouched and suppressed skills they harbor. She once said, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their created force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics” (Feminist 595). Woolf sought to eliminate the perceived ideas of women and enlighten readers of the skills that women possess.
In the Harlequin romance Time of the Temptress, by Violet Winspear, the author seems to be trying to write an intelligent story of romance, bettered by its literary self-awareness. She fails on both counts. Winspear appears to recognize that more valued literature tends to involve symbolism and allusions to other works. It seems she is trying to use archetypes and allusions in her own novel, but her references to alternate literature and culture are embarrassingly obvious and awkward. Another inter-literary connection, though, is more difficult to notice unless the book is pondered -- something the typical romance reader is not likely to do. Although Winspear attempts to give her book literary value by tying it to Gone With the Wind, because of the limitations of her chosen genre, and her own apparent inabilities as a writer, she cannot grasp the depth that makes Gone With the Wind a highly regarded romance work.
Gendered strategies, in the criticism of early fiction, made feminine fiction incapable of excellence. By using conventional heterosexual relationships in their prefaces, authors only succeed in supporting the masculine control over fiction. The appraisals women gained only reinforced their inferior status. "Criticism placed female authors in a specific and confined critical sphere, while it located male authors in an other, more respected field" (375). By aligning their works with popular male literature, women inadvertently strengthened male authority. Women were only granted recognition in terms of their limited social stature. It is these gendered values and strategies that makes the history of the novel and feminine achievement difficult to assess.
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
Boyle, Coraghessan. "The Love of My Life." Making Literature Matter. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2012. 55669. Print.
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 3-23. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. Print. The. Bailey, Carol. "
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Robert DiYanni, ed. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
I shall endeavour to explore and analyse how women are presented in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Duffy’s “Human Interest”.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf