WOMEN'S LITERATURE FROM 1900 TO 1960: FURTHER READING

Criticism

Abramson, Doris. "Rachel Crothers: Broadway Feminist." Modern American Drama: The Female Canon (1990): 55-65.

Discussion of Crothers as a feminist playwright.

Bair, Deirdre. "Simone de Beauvoir: Politics, Language, and Feminist Identity." Yale French Studies, no. 72: 149-62.

Examines Beauvoir's views on political action in the context of her philosophy and views on feminist theory.

Barbeito, Patricia Felisa. "'Making Generations' in Jacobs, Larsen, and Hurston: A Genealogy of Black Women's Writing." American Literature 70, no. 2 (June 1998): 365-96.

Theorizes that the lineage of black women's writing places an immense significance on the procreative nature of the black female body, and that this image shapes the work of Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston in very distinct ways.

Calder, Jenni. "World War and Women—Advance and Retreat." In War and the Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain, edited by Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider, pp. 163-82. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 1994.

Offers a brief history of women during the world wars, noting the ways in which each war redefined notions of femininity and the challenges faced by women.

Flores, Yolanda. Introduction to The Drama of Gender: Feminist Theatre by Women of the Americas, pp. 1-20. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

Studies interactions between female playwrights and the development of theater and feminist literary theory in the works of women writers of the Americas, noting the literary and historical context of Latina and African-American women playwrights.

Gubar, Susan. "'This Is My Rifle, This Is My Gun': World War II and the Blitz on Women." In Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by Margaret Randoph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz, pp. 227-59. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987.

Contends that the literature written by women during World War II had more to do with sexual antagonism directed toward women rather than with the war itself, as reflected in female literary works that depict the ruin of their lives and communities during this time.

Hebble, Susan Morrison. "Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance." In The History of Southern Women's Literature, edited by Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks, pp. 298-308. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Provides an overview of women writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance, theorizing that the movement's focus on race and racial identity actually served to suppress issues of gender and sexism in the work of African-American female writers.

Higonnet, Margaret R. "Realism: A Feminist Perspective." In The Powers of Narration, edited by Gerald Gillespie and André Lorant, pp. 267-75. Tokyo, Japan: International Comparative Literature Association, 1991.

Argues that nineteenth-century female writers such as George Sand have been wrongly excluded from literary realist classifications, and that Sand's writings exemplify the ways in which women authors use and deviate from the conventions of literary realism to create a unique female perspective.

Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1987, 240 p.

Includes essays on the subjects of race, gender, and poetry during the Harlem Renaissance, with detailed discussion of works by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimké, and Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Keyssar, Helen. "Rites and Responsibilities: The Drama of Black American Women." In Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights, edited by Enoch Brater, pp. 226-40. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Offers analysis of Angelina Weld Grimké's Rachel, including discussion of the play's diverse range of opinions and views, including the celebratory.

Lesinska, Zofia P. Perspectives of Four Women Writers on the Second World War: Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner, Kay Boyle, and Rebecca West. New York: Peter Lang, 2002, 189 p.

A study of various lesser-known texts by female authors that respond to World War II and its accompanying political turmoil.

Lucky, Crystal J. "Black Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance." In Challenging Boundaries: Gender and Periodization, edited by Joyce W. Warren and Margaret Dickie, pp. 91-106. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.

A comparative analysis of women writers during the Harlem Renaissance, calling for a reevaluation of their works in the context of gender studies.

Marcus, Laura. "Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press." In Modernist Writers and the Marketplace, edited by Ian R. Willison, Warwick Gould, and Warren Chernaik, pp. 124-50. New York: Macmillan, 1996.

A brief overview of Woolf's history with the Hogarth Press, stressing her concern with experimental freedom and reaching a sympathetic readership.

Noe, Marcia. "The New Woman in the Plays of Susan Glaspell." In Staging a Cultural Paradigm: The Political and the Personal in American Drama, edited by Barbara Ozieblo and Miriam López-Rodríguez, pp. 149-62. Brussels, Belgium: Peter Lang, 2002.

Studies the figure of the "new woman" in the plays written by Glaspell between 1914 and 1922.

Oles, Carol Hilda Raz. "The Feminist Literary Movement." In Poetry after Modernism, edited by Robert McDowell, pp. 1-36. Brownsville, Oreg.: Story Line Press, 1998.

Survey of feminist poetry from the 1960s and 1970s, including the works of Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker.

St. Germain, Amos. "The Flowering of Mass Society: An Historical Overview of the 1920s." In Dancing Fools and Weary Blues: The Great Escape of the Twenties, edited by Lawrence R. Broer and John D. Walther, pp. 13-44. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1990.

Provides a social, historical, and cultural overview of life in the United States during the 1920s.

Schroeder, Patricia B. "Realism and Feminism in the Progressive Era." In The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights, edited by Brenda Murphy, pp. 31-46. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Argues that many feminist playwrights in the Progressive Era used stage realism to highlight feminist issues, in contrast to the prevailing critical and academic view that realism on the stage was fundamentally incompatible with feminist interests.

Schofield, Mary Anne. "Underground Lives: Women's Personal Narratives, 1939-45." In Literature and Exile, edited by David Bevan, pp. 121-48. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 1990.

Maintains that personal narratives are fundamental in gaining an understanding of feminist theory since they present and are grounded in the real-life experiences of women writers.

Schweik, Susan. A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, 385 p.

Collection of essays on notable women poets writing during and about World War II. Includes detailed analysis of Muriel Rukeyser's Letter to the Front and works by Gwendolyn Brooks, H. D., Elizabeth Bishop, and others.

Schweizer, Bernard. Rebecca West: Heroism, Rebellion, and the Female Epic. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2002, 160 p.

Comprehensive appraisal of West's writings, drawing attention the epic quality of her works.

Susag, Dorothea M. "Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin): A Power(full) Literary Voice." Studies in American Indian Literature 5, no. 4 (winter 1993): 3-24.

Analysis of three autobiographical essays by Zitkala-Sa published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900, noting that these works reveal a powerful feminine and ethnic point of view.

Tylee, Claire M. "'Despised and Rejected': Censorship and Women's Pacifist Novels of the First World War, 1916-18." In The Great War and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Womanhood in Women's Writings, 1914-64, pp. 103-29. New York: Macmillan, 1990.

Survey of war literature in England during World War I, noting that many novels written during this period avoided the subject of war altogether, while others were censored because of their pessimism about the conflict.

Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995, 246 p.

Includes essays on the Harlem Renaissance in general, as well as specific articles focusing on the works of Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, and a bibliography of writings by women writers during the Harlem Renaissance.

Williams, Deborah Lindsay. "Sisterhood and Literary Authority in The House of Mirth, My Ántonia, and Miss Lulu Bett. "In Not In Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship, pp. 87-123. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Places Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Zona Gale in the political and intellectual context of their times and offers analysis of Wharton's The House of Mirth, Cather's My Ántonia, and Gale's Miss Lulu Bett, which are presented as breakthrough achievements in establishing all three authors as significant literary figures.

Yogi, Stan. "Rebels and Heroines: Subversive Narratives in the Stories of Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto." In Reading the Literatures of Asian America, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling, pp. 131-50. Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 1992.

Offers analysis of several short stories by Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto that evoke the struggles of Japanese immigrant women who chafe against the strict codes of Issei family and culture.