18 books like Victorian women's fiction

What to read after Victorian women's fiction — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Women and Marriage in German Medieval Romance D. H. Green · 2009 · 276p · ≈ 9h · Moderate D. H. Green shows how German romances found ways to debate and challenge the conventional antifeminism of the medieval period. Shares: Marriage in literature, Women in literature

Unbecoming women Susan Fraiman · 1993 · 189p · ≈ 6h · Moderate "Is there a "female Bildungsroman"? Can the story of Elizabeth Bennet's development be yoked to a genre conceived in terms of Wilhelm Meister and David Copperfield? Unbecoming Women unpacks the ideological baggage of the Bildungsroman, and turns to novels of development and conduct books by women for a new poetics of growing up." "In subtle readings of works by Frances Burney, Jane Austen,… Shares: English Psychological fiction, Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism

The wife of Bath Geoffrey Chaucer · 1960 · ★ 3.6 · 306p · ≈ 10h · Moderate The Wyves Tale of Bathe and prologue are among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They give insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and are probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her prologue twice as long as her tale. Shares: Marriage in literature, Women in literature, History and criticism

Women's Life Writing And Imagined Communities Cynthia Huff · 2004 · 337p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Engaging Donna Haraway: Lives in the Natureculture Web explores the impact of major theorist, Donna Haraway, in such diverse areas as feminisms, Marxism, new materialism, science studies, posthumanism, animal studies, ecocriticism, digital media, and life narrative. The book shows how Haraway’s decades-long career as a major theoretical voice and provocateur of thinking about new and complex… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism

Writing a woman's life Carolyn G. Heilbrun · 1988 · ★ 4.1 · 144p · ≈ 4h · Moderate Drawing on the experience of celebrated women, from George Sand and Virginia Woolf to Dorothy Sayers and Adrienne Rich, Heilbrun examines the struggle these writers undertook when their drives made it impossible for them to follow the traditional "male" script for a woman's life. Refreshing and insightful, this is an homage to brave women past and present, and an invitation to all women to write… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, Histoire et critique, History and criticism

New perspectives on the European Bildungsroman Giovanna Summerfield · 2010 · 204p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Shares: Women authors, History and criticism

Partial visions Angelika Bammer · 1991 · 198p · ≈ 6h · Moderate What would a good world for women look like? How would we get there from where we are and how would we have to change ourselves in the process? This book examines a critical moment in recent American and western European history when the utopian dimension of political movements was particularly generative and feminism was at their core. The imaginative literature that emerged out of American,… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism, History

To Cut a Long Story Short Jeffrey Archer · 2000 · ★ 3.8 · 294p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Fourteen all new short stories. Shares: English Psychological fiction, Psychological fiction

Where No Man Has Gone Before Lucie Armitt · 1991 · 244p · ≈ 8h · Moderate How do women writers use science fiction to challenge assumptions about the genre and its representations of women?To what extent is the increasing number of women writing science fiction reformulating the expectations of readers and critics?What has been the effect of this phenomenon upon the academic establishment and the publishing industry?These are just some of the questions addressed by… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism

Gender and the self in Latin American literature Emma Staniland · 2015 · 251p · ≈ 8h · Moderate This book explores six texts from across Spanish America in which the coming-of-age story ('Bildungsroman') offers a critique of gendered selfhood as experienced in the region’s socio-cultural contexts. Looking at a range of novels from the late twentieth century, Staniland explores thematic concerns in terms of their role in elucidating a literary journey towards agency: that is, towards the… Shares: Women in literature, Women authors, History and criticism

Portrait of a genius Richard Aldington · 1930 · 43p · ≈ 1h · Challenging American ed. (New York, Duell, Sloan and Pearce) has title: D. H. Lawrence, portrait of a genius, but ... Includes bibliographical references: (p. 355-356). Shares: English Psychological fiction, Psychological fiction, History and criticism

A good man is hard to find Flannery O'Connor · 1955 · ★ 3.8 · 251p · ≈ 8h · Moderate The collection that established O’Connor’s reputation as one of the American masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive The Misfit, as well as “The Displaced Person” and eight other stories. Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History

Cold counsel Karen Swenson · 2000 · 300p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Cold Counsel is the only collection devoted to the place of women in Old Norse literature and culture. It draws upon the disciplines of history, sociology, feminism, ethnography and psychoanalysis in order to raise fresh questions about such new subjects as gender, class, sexuality, family structure and ideology in medieval Iceland. Shares: Women in literature, Histoire et critique, History and criticism

Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen's Life Writing Julie A. Eckerle · 2013 · 230p · ≈ 7h · Moderate Juxtaposing life writing and romance, this study offers the first book-length exploration of the dynamic and complex relationship between the two genres. Through close analysis of a wide variety of life writings by early modern Englishwomen, Eckerle shows how deeply influenced these women were by the controversial romance genre. Her analysis adds a layer of significant nuance to our understanding… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism, History

White woman speaks with forked tongue Nicole Ward Jouve · 1991 · 217p · ≈ 7h · Moderate The appraisals here of a broad range of women's writing suggests a different direction for feminist criticism, combining as it does intellectual debate and textual analysis with fictional example and autobiographical detail. In addressing the need for the critic to say "I" and to own judgements and statements instead of attributing these to an apparently impersonal third person, the author points… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History and criticism, History

Arthurian women Thelma S. Fenster · 2000 · 424p · ≈ 14h · Moderate Featuring three original and 14 classic essays, this volume examines literary representations of women in Arthuriana and how women artists have viewed them. The essays discuss the female characters in Arthurian legend, medieval and modern readers of the legend, modern critics and the modern women writers who have recast the Arthurian inheritance, and finally women visual artists who have used the… Shares: Women in literature, History and criticism

Room of Ones Own Three Guineas Virginia Woolf · 1984 · ★ 4.0 · 432p · ≈ 14h · Moderate A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. Three Guineas was published almost a decade later and breaks new ground in its discussion of… Shares: Women and literature, Women authors, History

Arthurian literature by women Alan Lupack · 1999 · 300p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Arthurian Literature by Women: An Anthology is a collection of Arthurian poems, stories, and plays by women, from Marie de France to the present, all of which are either significant examples of Arthurian literature or innovative interpretations of Arthurian tradition. Rather than reproducing brief selections from contemporary novels that are readil Shares: Women and literature, Women authors

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