scholarly journals Hilary Mantel: Embodying Thomas Cromwell and Redefining Historical Fiction through ‘Women’s Writing’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Alaa Alghamdi
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Women’S Writing ◽  
Positive Light

Hilary Mantel's Tudor novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, have been credited with rehabilitating the historical fiction genre with their vivid portrayal of life in King Henry's court, through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell. Mantel has received praise for her depiction of Cromwell, but also endured criticism for portraying him in an overly positive light. This paper examines the role of Mantel’s work and depiction of Cromwell in the evolution and potential re-framing of the historical fiction genre. It seeks to achieve four things: to assess the compelling nature of her fiction, to situate her depiction of Cromwell in opposition to other depictions, to highlight her literary approach, and to contextualise Mantel’s writing within ‘women’s writing’. Through this multifaceted approach it is conclusively established that although Mantel’s narratives are situated within a female-dominated genre, they are told from a masculine perspective and gaze. Nonetheless, they still hold a significant subtext suggestive of the ‘feminine’. This paper thereby reinforces the argument of feminist critic Julia Kristeva and shows Hilary Mantel and her ‘embodied’ depiction of Cromwell in a light previously unseen, holding merit for the genre of historical fiction as a whole.

‘The Enjoyment of Literature’: Women Writers and the ‘Battle of the Brows’

Time and Tide ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 177-208
Author(s):  
Catherine Clay
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women’S Writing

This chapter picks up and extends arguments advanced earlier in the book regarding the status of women’s writing and criticism during the years of modernism’s cultural ascendancy and academic institutionalisation. In the contexts of (1) a newly configured ‘University English’ which took an authoritative new role in the cultural field against an earlier belle-lettres tradition, and (2) the unprecedented prestige of middlebrow fiction in the 1930s, the chapter explores how Time and Tide navigated increasing tensions between ‘highbrow’ and ‘middlebrow’ spheres and succeeded in straddling both. First the chapter discusses the introduction in 1927 of a new ‘Miscellany’ section of the paper – home to E. M. Delafield’s popular serial ‘The Diary of a Provincial Lady’ – and argues that these columns created and legitimised a place for the ‘feminine middlebrow’ and amateur writer as the periodical increased its orientation towards the highbrow sphere. Second, with reference to the appointment of Time and Tide’s first two literary editors, the chapter discusses how the periodical negotiated a widening gap in this period between intellectual and general readers, and between amateur and professional modes of criticism.

The Politics of New African Marriage in Segregationist South Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Healy-Clancy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Women’S Writing

Abstract:For the mission-educated men and women known as “New Africans” in segregationist South Africa, the pleasures and challenges of courtship and marriage were not only experienced privately. New Africans also broadcast marital narratives as political discourses of race-making and nation-building. Through close readings of neglected press sources and memoirs, this article examines this political interpolation of private life in public culture. Women’s writing about the politics of marriage provides a lens onto theorizations of their personal and political ideals in the 1930s and 1940s, a period in which the role of women in nationalist public culture has generally been dismissed as marginal by scholars.

Gender, love and recognition in I Love Dick and The Other Woman

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050682199591
Author(s):  
Camilla Schwartz ◽  
Rita Felski
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Sex Identification ◽  
The Other ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The World ◽  
Other Woman ◽  
Women’S Writing

How might the idea of recognition offer a fresh slant on contemporary women’s writing? In this essay, we bring theories of recognition into dialogue with two literary works: Chris Kraus’s widely reviewed memoir I Love Dick and The Other Woman by the well-regarded Swedish novelist Therese Bohman. Our analysis focuses on recognition within the texts as well as its relevance to relations between texts and readers. We seek to clarify how attitudes to heterosexual love, feminism and same-sex identification are entangled and the broader implications of such entanglements. We are interested in how the protagonists engage the world as readers and the role of literature in shaping their identifications and attachments. Yet, a comparative analysis can also bring to light how a feminist habitus is predicated on class and education, suggesting that these two texts may invite rather different experiences of recognition.

scholarly journals The flourishing of female playwriting on the Augustan stage: Mary Pix’s "The innocent mistress"

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
José M. Yebra
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Restoration Drama ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Women’S Writing

This article aims at analysing Mary Pix’s The Innocent Mistress (1697) as a paradigmatic example of the boom in female playwriting at the end of the seventeenth century in England. It is my main aim to determine whether and to what extent Pix’s play can be considered a derivative or innovative text. In other words, does The Innocent Mistress stick to the reformist atmosphere prevailing at the end of the seventeenth century or, on the contrary, is the play fully indebted to the hard Restoration drama of the 1670s? In contrast to the classic view of the Restoration stage as a monolith, this essay shows the evolution from the libertarian Carolean plays to the essentially reformist Augustan drama, and the impact and role of women’s writing in this process. Thus, after briefly delving into the main traits of both traditions –especially those concerning gender relations– my essay concludes that The Innocent Mistress proves to be clearly a product of its time, adapting recurrent Carolean devices to Augustan Reformism, but also the product of a female playwright and her limited room for transgression.

Female physical illness and disability in Arab women’s writing

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abir Hamdar
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Physical Illness ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Illness Narrative ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Female Figure ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Women’S Writing

This article focuses on the representation of female physical illness and disability in the works of two Arab women writers: Iraqi Alia Mamdouh’s Habbat al Naftalin [Mothballs] (1986) and Egyptian Salwa Bakr’s al ‘Arabah al Dhahabiyah la Tas‘ad ila al Sama’ [The Golden Chariot] (1991). It argues that the representation of female illness in these works centres upon the figure of the sick mother. Despite the limitations of this trope of illness, both novels offer a more complex illness narrative than those of their Arab predecessors. By problematizing the representation of the sick woman/mother, both novels challenge the traditional role of the silent, sick female figure whose story remains outside the limits of representation. Finally, the article argues that this textual recuperation of the female suffering body is achieved through the employment of a mother— daughter plot which continues to represent the sick mother as socially and emotionally absent but which nevertheless renders her a central figure in the daughter’s narrative.

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