Hysterical: Anglophone Women Writers, 1899-today

Harvard FAS

If the nineteenth century was the era of confinement for women in literature – imprisoned inside attics (Brontë’s Jane Eyre), garrets (Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), and bedrooms (Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”) – then the twentieth century is the era when these women begin to break free. In this course, we will survey global anglophone literature written by and about women from 1899 to today. We will consider how conformity, domestic womanhood, and heteronormativity are…