Ladies, Please Don't Smash These Windows: Women's Writing, Feminist Consciousness and Social Change 1918-38

Description

This thought-provoking study offers a radically new perspective on the literature of the interwar period. Writing from a feminist-materialist perspective, the author examines novels of sensibility, domestic fictions, lesbian writing, autobiography, speculative fiction and anti-fascist writing by Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Rosamond Lehmann, Radclyffe Hall and many others. Maroula Joannou provides an incisive, scholarly and accessible feminist critique of the masculinist assumptions about literature of the 1920s and 1930s which have passed without adequate critical scrutiny. Selected for the CHOICE list of Outstanding Academic Books for 1995 (Choice current reviews for Academic Libraries)

Maroula Joannou Senior Lecturer in English Studies,Anglia Polytechnic University

'This is an important feminist survey of English women novelists between the two World Wars ... A valuable addition to feminist literary criticism, recommended for upper-division and graduate levels.' Choice 'Academic libraries supporting serious research in European economic history and the history of European industrialization will want this volume. Well indexed.' Academic Library Book Review 'An accessible feminist critique of the masculine assumptions about literature of the twenties and thirties.' Feminist Bookstore News 'Women writers of the inter-war years have traditionally been neglected by literary histories. Joannou's study contributes towards a redressing of this imbalance. ...the study is well-written, free of jargon and accessible to experts and non-experts alike.' Forum for Modern Language Studies 'The project of feminist literary history has hardly begun and Joannou's work suggests numerous rewarding opportunities for further research.' Woolf Studies Annual 'This absorbing study offers a quite new map for understanding women's writing between the wars. Dr Joannou's engaged and learned account productively challenges earlier Marxist readings. It demonstrates, with a wealth of examples, how feminist consciousness emerges in unlikely as well as in familiar texts.' Professor Gillian Beer, University of Cambridge 'Maroula Joannou is a lively and assured new critical voice.' Jane Marcus, Distinguished Professor of English, The City College of New York 'Maroula Joannou's study ... is a welcome addition to an expanding area of research ... particulary commendable for the very full contextualisation it gives for the novels discussed, both in terms of production and in terms of feminist literary critcal theory, which is handled with admirable clarity.' Jenny Hartley, Roehampton Institute