Women's Literature Research Articles

Compilation of stories “On Both Sides” by Dewi Lestari: belles-lettres as the foundation of literary unity

This article examines the modern Indonesian women's prose. The object of this research is novelistics of the prominent Indonesian writer Dewi Lestari and the compilation of stories “On Both Sides” (Rectoverso; 2013). The collection demonstrates the features common to popular women's literature, as well as to meaningful, socially biased women's prose of Indonesia of the XXI century, known as “sastra wangi”. The subject of this analysis is the correlation of characteristics inherent to the two aforementioned phenomena in the stories by Dewi Lestari; while the goal consist in finding the beginning that allows the writer to blend different literary codes. The research is based on descriptive and comparative methods. Neither in Indonesia nor outside it, the women's prose “sastra wangi” has not been considered as a holistic literary phenomenon due to diversity of the discourses applied therein. The scientific novelty and relevance of this study are defined by the attempt to analyze sastra wangi based in on the works of the prominent contemporary Indonesian writer. It is revealed that literary unity of the texts of stories of Dewi Lestari imparts belletristic character on her writing, which allows combining the fields of classic and popular literature. This fact is important for understanding the artistic peculiarities of contemporary Indonesian women's prose sastra wangi as a whole.

Henry James' Character Traits and Carding of His Pessimistic Feminist Works

Henry James is a great novelist in the history of British and American literature. This paper is based on the relevant theories of literary criticism. Character traits are the key factors leading to success. To study James' character traits, including the influence of back injury, father, European and American culture on his character, explore the formation of James' character psychology, and provide guidance for studying James' works. James is close to women's ideas, understands women's needs, sympathizes with women's fate, and understands women's choices. Represented by the three works of "The Tragic Muse", "The Wings of the Dove" and "The Golden Bowl", research and analysis James' pessimistic feminist works, and abandon the trite and empty ethical preaching and narrow patriarchal thoughts that wrap women. The James-style view of women and moral standards are used to guide women's literary creation.

Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature by Julia Frengs

Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature by Julia Frengs

Beyond Authorship: Reconstructing Women's Literary Labor

Beyond Authorship: Reconstructing Women's Literary Labor

Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature by Julia L. Frengs

Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature by Julia L. Frengs

Templates for Authorship: American Women's Literary Autobiography of the 1930s by Windy Counsell Petrie

Templates for Authorship: American Women's Literary Autobiography of the 1930s by Windy Counsell Petrie

The Politics of African Heritage in Black Brazilian Women's Literature

This article explores the contemporary literature of Afro-Brazilian women writers Lívia Natália, Cristiane Sobral, and Cidinha da Silva to understand how they cope with the personal impact of various forms of racial discrimination. The analysis fleshes out the imaginative juxta-position of African heritage, diasporic Black identities, and discriminatory contexts, with an emphasis on literary representation and interpretation of African religious symbols such as Eshu and Pomba Gira and how such symbols underscore the survival of African cultures on Brazilian soil vis-àvis the history of Black subjectivity. Literature as antiracist armament used by Black female subjects testifies to their resilience and demonstrates how their transformational discourses are necessary to revise the historical epistemic violence of oppressive systems and to express their personal and collective identities.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature: Note to Contributors

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature: Note to Contributors

Recollecting Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Archival Labor and Women's Literary Recovery

Recollecting Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Archival Labor and Women's Literary Recovery

"Books Continue Each Other": A Room of One's Own in Barbara Pym's Jane and Prudence

In Jane and Prudence, Pym not only presents female characters possessing stores of poetry in their minds but also takes up issues vital to the time, such as the conditions necessary for women to write, changing gender roles, and tenaciously held narrow expectations for women—subjects under scrutiny in A Room of One's Own. Recognizing the dynamic between these texts, I heed Erica Delsandro's call to understand "modernist women writers [as] nodes in the network of modernism, conduits and creators" (6, original emphasis). In looking to A Room of One's Own as a conduit for her own writing, Pym reaffirmed Woolf's findings and also afforded fresh insights into women's lives and literature.

Woman's Voice Speaks Out for Gender and The Environment in Gadis Pesisir

The life of women in Indonesia’s coastal areas tends to have limitations in accessing education. They are a minority group who often have to stay at home and do domestic work. The purpose of this paper is to explore the environmental issue, ecological, mixed with feminist criticism in Gadis Pesisir, a short story by Zainul Muttaqin. By defining the woman's minimum role in studying at the college and her desire to develop the coastal society, the author exposes the contrast between them, related to the coastal welfare and cultural conflicts between the gender relation and the spirit to advance the community. This research is a descriptive qualitative method that uses library research. Ecocriticism and feminist criticism are highlighting the interaction among literary text, nature, and women's voices. By raising this local issue, the writer described the women empowerment loss of patriarchy culture. This short story perpetuates the powerlessness of coastal women in fighting patriarchal culture, stigma, and the marine environment. They can only dream and wait for a miracle to change their destiny. It is contrary to women's rights which are fought for by feminists on the equality of women and men in accessing education, obtaining job opportunities, and careers in various fields.

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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz e Kate Chopin: literatura de resistência em sociedades moralistas e repressoras

O presente artigo traz uma breve biografia sobre duas escritoras que abordaram nas linhas de suas obras importantes questionamentos sobre o papel da mulher dentro de sociedades nas quais as vozes femininas não costumavam ser ouvidas. A poeta barroca mexicana Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651 – 1695) e a escritora norte-americana Kate Chopin (1851-1904) foram duas precursoras da literatura de conscientização feminina. Procuramos mostrar como as autoras transgridem várias regras sociais e históricas em termos de questões de gênero no contexto de sociedades conservadoras – nas quais viviam. Como exemplo das suas escritas traremos o romance O Despertar (1899), no qual Chopin traça o desenvolvimento psicológico e sexual de uma jovem norte-americana em meio à comunidade creole de Nova Orleans. E Hombres Necios, poema de Juana Inés que faz uma crítica às sátiras que ridicularizavam as mulheres e eram muito comuns naquela época. Este trabalho aborda a contextualização literária, social, histórica e cultural das autoras, trazendo informações sobre as suas relações com o feminismo e, por fi m, uma breve análise de suas obras sob a ótica feminista. É possível concluir que Juana Inés de la Cruz e Kate Chopin representam a vanguarda na luta pela eliminação das discriminações de gênero.

Women’s Literature in Emigration in 1950–1990: the Issue of the Canon

The article was inspired by the World Congress of Lithuanian Writers held in Vilnius, in May 2019, during which the literary canon was discussed – not only in Lithuania, but abroad as well: what determines the entry of some books into the school canon, their assessment with literary prizes, various nominations, and why other books remain less noticed by readers and / or literary critics. The theme of this article was further highlighted by the heated debate on the elections of the Book of the Year that took place throughout the autumn (and is still ongoing). Various top five, top ten, top twelve lists, debates over the update of the contents of the curriculum of secondary schools inevitably raise the issue of the literary canon. Therefore, it is considered that perhaps the problem is not what falls or does not fall into the literary canon, but rather how much power society gives to the literary canon itself. The main tasks of the research: to introduce the main theoretical aspects of the literary canon; to discuss the issue of literary canon and women’s creative works; to identify the dominants of the literary canon in the diaspora. The article discusses the issue of the literary canon precisely in women’s literature that was created and is still being created in the diaspora. Research sources: various literary and cultural presses of the Lithuanian diaspora in the US (Aidai (The Echoes), Darbininkas (The Worker), Draugas (The Friend), Gabija, Naujienos (The News) etc.), Literatūros lankai (Literary Folios) (Buenos Aires, 1952-1959), the book by Vladas Kulbokas Lithuanian Literary Criticism in Exile (Rome, 1982). The main reason for this discussion of (non)canonization of women’s literature is that statistically female authors write more on emigration topics. There were more women writers outside Lithuania in the second wave of emigration (DPs); more women than men give a sense to their exile experience even today. The article emphasizes that women’s involvement in public life has never been either simple or natural. Even greater challenges awaited the creating women in 1944, when they moved to the West – Germany, Austria, and from 1949 – to the US, Canada, Australia. Questions are raised as to how and why public attitudes towards the writing, creative woman have changed; how the community of the Lithuanian diaspora, influenced by a new context, new economic and political conditions in the US, thought about new creative challenges, what kind of goals and objectives were set for it. If feminization processes call for rebellion against the dominant (male) canon, if today we are talking about not a single existing canon, but rather about canons, if it is emphasized that the canon is nonetheless a changing thing related with a system of certain time values, then the canon may not exist at all and it cannot exist? The article also actualizes modern migration processes and their reflections in literature (created both in Lithuania and abroad, outside Lithuania; written not only in Lithuanian but also in English) as well, opens new possibilities for reading and interpreting women’s works – and above all – the article dedicated to the World Lithuanian Year, seeks to create a dialogue field that can help deepen the understanding of today’s (e)migration.

Alias in women's literature: feminist aspects in a gender context

The problem of the identity of the woman hiding her gender under a male pseudonym makes us recollect U. Eco’s arguments about the truth and the purpose of literature as well as A. F. Losev’s ideas about the name and the meaning, the theories of the feminist literary critics K. Millett, M. Ellman, T. Moi, E. Showalter, etc. who have presented "women`s writing" and "writing about women" in the feminist field. As one of the central principles of feminist criticism is that no scientific view can ever be neutral, the problem of pseudonyms occupies an important place in the contemporary gender studies, explicitly or implicitly highlighting the artificially constructed debate, which divides "serious male literature" and "superficial and secondary female writing". On the one hand, this is the problem of feminism itself, on the other, it is a question of the role and place of the woman in the world` culture and history. In this kind of the analysis we cannot ignore such an epiphenomenon of postmodernism as "label change" with the postmodern emphasis on the sociocultural role of the context, which is especially relevant in aspects of the gender "name problem". The last one, undoubtedly, is included in the problematization of postmodern culture on the whole, since all cultural narratives have always been gender "stories". Today an individual construct his or her gender-reflecting reality, still the modelling of the new gender system is far from being complete. The created sign systems are ambivalent, the meanings are very unstable and can easily be hermeneutically interpreted. However, the role of hermeneutics in analyzing the relationship between the author and the sociocultural context is in the core of the gender aspects of literature, in general, and in the problems of the pseudonym as a change of "name", in particular. The latter is by all means relevant and important. Undoubtedly, one of the main incentives for feminist scholars in their turn to women's literature is connected with the patriarchal demand for women's "silence", their "dumbness" in culture and, accordingly, in literature. Obviously, there are two main interpretations of the concept of "female literature" in feminist criticism. The first one is the representation of female subjectivity in its difference from the male one. The second approach is the representation of "non-essentialist" female subjectivity, which is understood as the logical structure of the difference. In general, in the patriarchal dichotomy of the femininity and masculinity "women who write" are always dangerous. "Three strange sisters" – Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bronte wrote their novels under disguise of male pen names, exactly specifying two conceptual motives: the "Other" concept and the image of "Veil". In this context the motive of androgyny is also important from the point of view of both analysis and literary criticism. In ХIXth century George Sand (Aurora Dupin), having most vividly represented this concept, became an example for many subsequent generations of feminists – writers, actresses and media representatives. However, in our era of gender plurality, the question of the pseudonym as a problem of "genders" is not so relevant; more likely it is still a question of the priorities in the feminist theory. In the contemporary discourse of literary criticism many of the author’s socially significant features are perceived as gender neutral. In the postmodern paradigm the question of the androgynous identity of the man/woman writer requires its further actualization as the androgynous is often replaced by the bisexuality (J. Irving` "In One Person"). In general, it should be recognized that postmodern approaches to gender identity, which paint a "picture of the world" today, transform the female experience of being as the "Other", secondary and insignificant with a conceptual orientation to a fundamental variety of postmodern cognitive perspectives.

From the Editors

Dear JMRC Readers,We sincerely wish to thank our readers, contributors, and board members over the years for their support of JMRC. After many years of coediting (over ten for Christine Cooper-Rompato and five for Sherri Olson), we have decided to step down and hand the journal on to the next generation of coeditors, Barbara Zimbalist and Jessica Barr. Barbara Zimbalist is a newly promoted associate professor of English at the University of Texas El Paso with a specialty in medieval women's religious literatures from England and the Low Countries, and Jessica Barr is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a specialty in medieval European vision literature and hagiography. Together they have great plans for future directions for the journal. We look forward to seeing JMRC continue to grow and to maintain the important place that it has held for nearly forty years in the ranks of smaller, specialized journals that particularly welcome the contributions of younger scholars.JMRC was originally founded in 1974 as the 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter by Valerie M. Lagorio and Ritamary Bradley. The newsletter became Mystics Quarterly in 1984 under the editorship of Lagorio and Bradley. In 1991, Elizabeth Psakis Armstrong took over the editorship until passing it to Alexandra Barratt in 1997. Barratt then passed MQ on to Bob Hasenfratz in 2005, and he was joined by Cooper-Rompato in 2008. Hasenfratz started the process of reimagining the journal with a broader, more interdisciplinary focus, and in 2010 JMRC published its first issue from Pennsylvania State University Press. When Hasenfratz stepped down from the journal to become a department chair, Olson joined Cooper-Rompato as coeditor in 2015.We have been working happily together since then. Both of us are being drawn in new directions by professional and personal obligations, which have made it necessary to relinquish the editorship of JMRC. We are delighted to turn the reins over to Zimbalist and Barr. We wish them the very best. We would also like to thank Paul Patterson, our book review editor, who will also be stepping down at this time after dedicating many years to the journal. In addition, we owe a debt of gratitude to the PSUP journals editors, production managers, and production assistants, especially Rachel Ginder, Julie Lambert, Astrid Meyer, and Diana Pesek, who have nurtured and helped us produce JMRC for the last decade. We also must thank all of PSUP's copyeditors who have worked tirelessly with authors and editors alike to improve the journal's writing.Before signing off, we owe yet another thank you to all those presenters and audience members who have attended the MQ-and JMRC-sponsored sessions at Kalamazoo over the years. We look forward to being audience members (and perhaps panelists) in future years!Many thanks,Christine and Sherri

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Gender of internal medicine resident impacts cancer preventive care for women

Mammography and cervical screening are effective methods for early cancer detection in women. Recent reports showed that 69% of women ³45 years had a mammogram in the past 2 years and 16-55% of women had a Pap smear regularly. Internal medicine (IM) physicians are crucial players in women's health management and literature has identified that a physician’s gender impacts patient management in many areas of healthcare.
 We investigated mammogram and Pap smear recommendations by IM residents and examined differences in approaching women’s health issues between female and male residents. With IRB approval, one-hundred charts of new female patients were reviewed, which included female patients 45 years or older seen by IM residents for their first visit. All patients completed a questionnaire concerning previous medical conditions and care as part of clinic routine. Patient chart information, recommendations for mammogram and cervical cancer screening by the resident were recorded, along with the gender of the resident and supervising attending.
 The mean age of the patients was 61±9.3 years. Female residents were more likely to recommend a mammogram compared to male residents (36.7% and 16.4%, respectively). No significant differences in Pap smear recommendations were observed between female and male residents (9.3% and 10.1%, respectively). Attending physician’s gender did not influence screening recommendations.
 The recommendation rate for female patients to obtain important screening mammograms and Pap smears was low. These results are consistent with previous literature and indicate an urgent need for improved women’s health education in residency, with special attention to male residents.
 
 Keywords: Cancer prevention, Breast cancer, Cervical Cancer, Primary Care, Gender Disparity

Several Keywords that Read Zainichi Women's Literature : Separation and Colonial Experiences, Patriarchy, Minority

Several Keywords that Read Zainichi Women's Literature : Separation and Colonial Experiences, Patriarchy, Minority

SOPHIE VON LA ROCHES ZEITSCHRIFT POMONA FÜR TEUTSCHLANDS TÖCHTER UND DER LITERARISCHE MARKT DER 1780ER JAHRE IM LICHTE UNVERÖFFENTLICHTER BRIEFE

AbstractThis article presents an edition of letters by the readers of Sophie von La Roche's journal Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter (1783–4). In the introductory commentary, I examine the extent to which the letters provide evidence of women participating actively in the literary market as readers and writers and consider how far the correspondents were constrained by ideological discourses of the period. The article demonstrates how La Roche's interaction with readers shaped her self‐representation and her writing career beyond Pomona. It questions the view that La Roche's interactive relationship with her readers was a unique innovation by La Roche and demonstrates that its origins in fact lay in a competitor journal, the Magazin für Frauenzimmer, on which La Roche had previously collaborated. The article also examines the extent to which La Roche was responsible for giving her correspondents and readers the courage to publish. While some older correspondents showed considerable reluctance to appear in print, for other, younger writers La Roche served as a role model, while still others had little need of La Roche's encouragement and protection. Finally, the article shows that the scope and reach of the journal exceeded that of a literary women's group, and that La Roche relied on a network of supporters of both sexes.