Sex Changes: The Politics of Pleasure in the Novels of Michèle Roberts

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Winners include Melvyn Bragg (1993), Philip Hook (1994), Philip Kerr (1995), David Huggins (1996), Nicholas Royle (1997), Sebastian Faulks (1998), A. A. Gill (1999), Sean Thomas (2000), Christopher Hart (2001), Wendy Perriam (2002), Aniruddha Bahal (2003), Tom Wolfe (2004), and Giles Coren (2005). In “Revision of the Theory of Dreams,” Freud associates the image of the Medusa's head with male fears of castration. Anita Brookner was born in 1928 and Michèle Roberts was born in 1949, but their literary careers run almost parallel with each other. Roberts published her first novel in 1978; Brookner published hers in 1981. For an alternative view of Reyes, see Philippa C. E. Caine's essay “Alina Reyes's Entre-Deux Writing of the Erotic Female Body.” Caine argues that Reyes's “‘fantastical’ inscription of the sexual female body goes beyond stereotypical sexual fantasy and counters an objectifying, pornographic portrait of women's bodies.” This poem was published in Hesperides (1648). Roberts's ninth novel, Fair Exchange, develops her interest in the women in Wordsworth's life; it offers a fictional account of his relationship with Annette Vallon, the French mother of his illegitimate child, who has been largely written out of history. For evidence of Wordsworth's debt to his sister, compare her journal entry for 25 January 1798 to his poem “A Night Piece” (1798). The remarkable similarities between the two suggest that her journal entry is the basis of his poem. See Jeanette King, Women and the Word: Contemporary Women Novelists and the Bible. Additional informationNotes on contributorsEmma ParkerEmma Parker is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester. She is editor of Contemporary British Women's Writing (2004) and a founding member of the Contemporary Women's Writing Network (www.cwwn.org.uk)