Heroine of the Peripheral: An Exploration of Feminism and Anti-feminism in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Recognizing that there are many legitimate ways to view Plath\u27s work, this study doesn\u27t claim a definitive reading or even a glimpse into the \u27real\u27 Sylvia Plath. Instead, the following exploration will focus on feminist and anti-feminist renderings of motherhood in Plath\u27s Crosstng the Water, Ariel, and Winter Trees. This study doesn\u27t set out to prove or disprove these labels as they relate to Plath either. My intention is not to make value judgments about various aspects of the poetry but rather to highlight the contradictions and the co-existence of feminist and anti-feminist qualities in the text

Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century.Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim—despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions.Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of “classics,” adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works.In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies

Review of 'Ageing, Gender and Illness in Anglophone Literature: Narrating Age in the Bildungsroman' by Heike Hartung

--

"Me and My Shadow CV"

What would my vita look like if it recorded not just the successes of my professional life but also the many, many rejections

Age and Aging Studies

--