The Evolution of Alice Walker

Ruth Vanita. Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same‐sex Love and the English Literary Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Leah Blatt Glasser. In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.     

Liberated Alice: Dodgson's female hero as domestic rebel

Sally Patterson Tubach. Memoirs of a Terrorist. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Kenneth L. Holmes, ed. Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1850. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Linda Schelbitzki Pickle. Contented Among Strangers: Rural German‐Speaking Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth‐Century Midwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Brigitte Georgi‐Findlay. The Frontiers of Women's Writting: Women's Narratives and the Rhetoric of Westward Expansion. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996.     

Invisible cities,hidden agendas

The Invisible City. Monetary, Administrative and Popular Infrastures in Asia and Europe, 1500–1900, by Frank Perlin. Aldershot: Variorum, 1993. Pp.xii + 366. £49.50. ISBN 086 078 342 1

This review article examines briefly the recent publication by Frank Perlin of a series of revised articles dealing with theoretical and methodological issues in South Asian history, in particular the period from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Perlin's approach to the problems he perceives is to analyse the ways in which the process of state formation is based on concentric and intersecting sets of social and economic relationships, which both establish the space for the evolution of state‐like political power and which can at the same time be themselves destroyed, transformed, constituted or reproduced by the existence of such powers. This approach also underlies his interest in the patterns and functions of local, inter‐local and international exchange of money‐media for roughly the same period. His purpose is at the same time to challenge the ‘substantivising’ assumptions about the bounded nature of both the historiographical problem and the object of study made by much modern historiography.     

Rethinking Constructs of Maternity in the Novels of Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold

This article explores how Alice Sebold and Elena Ferrante place the feminine—and indeed often the maternal—body at the very centre of their narratives. The body—as a locus that filters the broader tensions and conflicts experienced by their female protagonists—in fact emerges as a key site of ‘contestation’ in their works. Through a close analysis of a selection of ekphrastic images, and photographic metatexts in particular, the author draws attention to how the two authors employ textual negotiations of the feminine body to question and problematize normative conceptions of femininity and motherhood. Ultimately, the author suggests that they not only challenge but also shift the perspective of, or indeed refocalize the dominant visual narrative of, the maternal/feminine body and the long history of objectification of the latter. In so doing, the author situates the two writers at the forefront of rethinking contemporary constructs of maternity and femininity.     

The prison letters of Alice Ker and Mary Ellen Taylor: suffragettes and mothers

ABSTRACT

This article considers the prison letters of Dr Alice Ker and the relatively unknown Mary Ellen Taylor which are held in the Women’s Library at LSE Library. These women were suffragettes and mothers who were both arrested on 4 March 1912, in separate incidents, but as part of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s window-smashing campaign. The letters allow us to consider what these women must have been feeling and reveal what factors they felt were important to write about at that time. Of even more significance is that they provide an insight into these women as people. The article also considers the effect that suffrage campaigning had on family life and family relationships and whether the letters convey any sense that campaigning caused tensions or concerns within families.     

Invited Address: James Joyce,Alice in Wonderland,the Rolling Stones,and Criminal Careers

The study of criminal careers generally, and patterns of continuity and change in criminal offending in particular, has been a long-standing interest to social scientists across many disciplines. This article provides readers with an overview of this line of research. After an introduction to the criminal career perspective, the article presents several ‘facts’ that have emerged from criminal career studies. This material segues into a discussion of theories based on criminal careers research as well as a related discussion of the emerging methods and trends in the area. The article closes with some observations about public policy with respect to criminal careers knowledge and identifies some neglected research needs. A key summary conclusion is that the processes associated with continuity and change are not mutually exclusive, but instead are important and complimentary aspects of criminal careers research.     

We are the ones that we have been waiting for: Political content in Alice Walker's novels

In this essay, I'd like to look at political concepts in Alice Walker's fiction, that is in her three novels and her two collections of short stories. There are two specific areas I'd like to focus on: (1) Walker's use of the interconnection between the domestic sphere (family, emotional relationships, etc.) and the social sphere, e.g. movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, in analysing sexism and racism; and in suggesting effective means to change. (2) Her use of black female protagonist who challenge ideologies, in the domestic and social sphere, e.g. the nationalist Black Muslims, the liberal Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement.Although these two areas seem to be large areas of concern and that it would seem that it would be practical to focus on only one of them, they intersect in Walker's work at critical points. Who does what and why is as important a political concept in her work as is her analysis of the intersection of the domestic and social sphere. Her fiction, as a whole, is an illustration of how inner personal transformation and wider social action are both necessary elements in an effective political philosophy.     

Supporting the underdog: feminism,animal rights and citizenship in the work of Alice Morgan Wright and Edith Goode

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the overlap between feminism and animal causes, particularly through the lives of two women, the sculptor, Alice Morgan Wright (1881-1975), and her friend, Edith Goode (1882-1970). Feminism and animal causes had connections in the late nineteenth century, particularly in campaigns to abolish vivisection. Wright and Goode held to these politics throughout their lives, and were ‘precursors of a generation yet to come’ who would argue the connections – as many ecofeminists do today. Both women were involved in suffrage campaigns, and continued to be involved in women's organisations such as the National Woman's Party. They were, however, opposed to all injustice, including human mistreatment of animals. Feminism was, to Wright and Goode, part of a wider set of problems; animal cruelty reflected a greater barbarism leading to mistreatment of humans. Accordingly, they actively campaigned for legislation to protect animals and the environment, and lobbied the fledgling United Nations to include such measures. That challenge to the United Nations represented a unique attempt to bring animals into citizenship' a move being made again today, through initiatives such as the Great Ape Project.     

Alice Havergal Skillicorn,Principal of Homerton College,Cambridge, 1935-60: a study of gender and power

This article sharpens our understanding of the intersection of the discourses of gender and power in the woman principal's role by an in-depth study of Alice Havergal Skillicorn, Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, 1935-60. Like previous principals, Skillicorn constructed a subjectivity which was dual gendered. In her public life as principal, she adopted a masculine discourse of power which subordinated feminine discourse into the private sphere. But this marginalisation of feminine discourse in her public role made her unable, except in her most intimate emotional relationship, to enact an appropriate femininity in her private life. After a theoretical and contextual introduction, it is shown how Skillicorn marginalised and negated her femininity through her body, by failing to adopt feminine standards of attractiveness in her appearance and clothes. She successfully wielded autocratic power in the public sphere with a masculine discourse of political skill, financial acumen and, most importantly, an instrumentality in her dealings with staff and students, which was entirely devoid of a feminine desire to be liked. The difficulties she faced in the private sphere - difficulties which were assuaged but not overcome by homoerotic friendship - are also discussed.     

Struggling and surviving: The life style of European immigrant breadwinning mothers in American industrial cities, 1900–1930

Immigrant working mothers created strategies to meet increasingly competing demands of family and job. Despite their wage-earning capacity and rising expectations, ethnic mores, patriarchy, poverty and discrimination perpetuated a rigid family hierarchy which precluded freedom for these women to seek alternatives to their traditional life styles.