On a bit of a different note – my latest Amazon order arrived:
Betty Friedan, The Feminist Mystique (1963)
Kat Banyard, The Equality Illusion (2010)
Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender (2010)
I came across a mention of Banyard’s book in a comment on a post on The F-Word blog (I think – anyway here’s the review), and for some reason this sparked off one of my occasional Amazon mini-binges. I'd been meaning to get hold of a copy of Friedan for a while, but never got round to it. During my time at university, I was completely spoiled for choice on the library front, with every book pretty much ever written (or close enough) at my disposal, so I've yet to adjust to the concept of Buying Your Own Books. I'll update you once I've actually read them, but for now, these are the newest additions to my bookshelf, which currently mainly consists of cheap copies of early modern drama and a lot of poetry.
Gender was always the critical perspective to which I was naturally drawn as an undergraduate, even though I deliberately abandoned it for the Masters as too cliched and over-done - but my instinct was to engage with critics and theorists from Judith Butler (even though Gender Trouble, while brilliant, is nigh-on impossible to read!) to the Shakespearean feminists like Juliet Dusinberre and Lisa Jardine. And of course I loved Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic as an eighteen-year-old fresher mad about Hardy and the Brontës. My favourite Finals project was undoubtedly the essay I wrote on gender and linguistics, during which I fell in love with the outspoken (and outdated, but that's another story) critics like Julia Penelope (the astonishing Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues) and Dale Spender (Man Made Language - see what she did there?).
Even writing these few paragraphs has made me regret all the books I didn't read when I had the chance, while they were sitting innocently on the library shelves! Sadly my student budget won't stretch to cover them all (especially given that debilitating addiction to blush), so I'll be pacing myself. And we'll have see how long my resolve to keep up "academic" (the in loosest possible sense - the essay-writing days are definitely over for now!) interests lasts in the face of impending law exams...
And speaking of blush - I have a feeling my next post will be on that very subject.
Gender was always the critical perspective to which I was naturally drawn as an undergraduate, even though I deliberately abandoned it for the Masters as too cliched and over-done - but my instinct was to engage with critics and theorists from Judith Butler (even though Gender Trouble, while brilliant, is nigh-on impossible to read!) to the Shakespearean feminists like Juliet Dusinberre and Lisa Jardine. And of course I loved Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic as an eighteen-year-old fresher mad about Hardy and the Brontës. My favourite Finals project was undoubtedly the essay I wrote on gender and linguistics, during which I fell in love with the outspoken (and outdated, but that's another story) critics like Julia Penelope (the astonishing Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues) and Dale Spender (Man Made Language - see what she did there?).
Even writing these few paragraphs has made me regret all the books I didn't read when I had the chance, while they were sitting innocently on the library shelves! Sadly my student budget won't stretch to cover them all (especially given that debilitating addiction to blush), so I'll be pacing myself. And we'll have see how long my resolve to keep up "academic" (the in loosest possible sense - the essay-writing days are definitely over for now!) interests lasts in the face of impending law exams...
And speaking of blush - I have a feeling my next post will be on that very subject.
Till next time,
LL x
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