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Clever Girls and the Literature of Women's Upward Mobility


Clever Girls and the Literature of Women's Upward Mobility



von: Mary Eagleton

96,29 €

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
Format: PDF
Veröffentl.: 15.02.2018
ISBN/EAN: 9783319719610
Sprache: englisch

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Beschreibungen

<p>This book follows the figure of ‘the clever girl’ from the post-war to the present and focuses on the fiction, plays and memoirs of contemporary British women writers. Spurred on by an ethic of meritocracy, the clever girl is now facing austerity and declining social mobility. Though suggesting optimism, a public discourse of ‘opportunity’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘choice’ is often experienced as an anxious and chancy process. In a wide-ranging study, the book explores the struggle to move away from home and traditional notions of femininity; the persistent problems associated with women’s embodiment; the pressures of class and racial divisions; the new subjectivities of the neoliberal era; and the generational conflict underpinning austerity. The book ends with a consideration of feminism’s place as a phantom presence in this history of clever girls. This study will appeal to readers of contemporary women’s writing and to those interested in what has been one of the dominant social narratives of the post-war period from upward to declining mobility.&nbsp;</p>
<p>1. Introduction: The Language of Upward Mobility.-&nbsp;2. Escaping Origins.-&nbsp;3.Relative Values: Career, Marriage, Maternity.-&nbsp;4. Troublesome Bodies.-&nbsp;5. New Forms, New Selves.-&nbsp;6. ‘Top Girls’ and Other Epithets.-&nbsp;7. ‘The Haves’ and ‘the Have-Nots’.-&nbsp;8. Coda: Phantom Feminism.</p>
<p>Mary Eagleton was, formerly, Professor of Contemporary Women’s Writing at Leeds Beckett University, UK. &nbsp;She has published widely on contemporary women authors, feminist literary theory and feminist literary history. Publications include <i>Figuring the Woman Author in Contemporary Fiction</i> (2005), <i>Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader</i> (3<sup>rd</sup> revised edition, 2011) and, with Emma Parker, <i>The History of British Women’s Writing, 1970 – the Presen</i>t (2015).</p>
Is concerned with an issue of central importance – culturally, socially and politically Uses an historical scope from post-war to the present Engages with significant authors, both well-established and the less-known Examines a wide range of texts – fiction, drama and memoirs
<i>'Clever Girls and the Literature of Women’s Upward Mobility</i>&nbsp;remains a compelling account of an important aspect of women’s experience in post-war Britain. In a period when the term ‘girly swot’ is coined as a term of gendered political abuse, Eagleton, in this expansive and nuanced study gives the ‘clever girl’ her rightful place in the story of post-war meritocracy.'&nbsp;<p>- Natasha Periyan,&nbsp;<i>Women: A Cultural Review&nbsp;</i>Vol. 31, Issue 1 (2020), pp. 115-18.</p>

<p><br></p><p>“Mary Eagleton’s important literary and cultural history provides a wide-ranging and thought-provoking account of the fate of young women’s social mobility …<i>Clever Girls</i> is more than a wonderful survey of an extraordinary range of fiction, but also a crucial resource for thinking about what has happened to the UK over the last 50 years – a way of grounding ourselves, to help us to move forward.”</p><p>- Jenny Bourne Taylor, <i>Contemporary Women's Writing</i>, Vol. 13 (2), (2019)</p>

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