The Woman in the Red Dress: Gender, Space, and Reading. Minrose C. Gwin. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2002.

Abstract

An eclectic montage of literary analysis, autobiography, and readerresponse, taking the form of personal anecdotes and autonomousessays, The Woman in the Red Dress takes the reader on a journeyin which Minrose C. Gwin analyzes both metaphoric andphysical personal space. As Gwin defines it, space is "not an entitythat contains something else but [is] the swirl of social relationsand productions in particular locations, whether these locationsbe material, cultural, or even psychological" (6). The purpose ofGwin's work, as she says, perhaps too repetitively is: "to dramatizetextual encounters in which narrative, space, and gender inscribethemselves on one another and their readers" (38). The title ofthis volume refers to the first work Gwin discusses in her introduction:Native American poet Joy Harjo's poem, "Deer Dancer,"about a woman in a stained red dress who dances naked on a bar,changing not just the lives of those present, but also those who,like the narrator, merely hear the story (6-7).