English 350-243-001
Women’s Literature: Women Novelists of the Twentieth
Century
Instr:
Soyoung Park
Office:
CRT 524, 229-5140
e-mail:
soyoung@csd.uwm.edu
Office hours: by appointment.
Course Information:
TR 9:30-10:45 am. AUP 189
Course Description
In this class, we will read women’s literature of the twentieth century
focusing on women’s breakdown, madness and self-discovery, which constitute
persistent subjects in women’s narratives. Think about all the novels,
memoirs, biographies, and films that investigated and spectacularized these
subjects (most recently the film Girl, Interrupted). In this course, we
will be examining a wide selection of short stories, fictions, and films
created by women of 20th century U.S., South Africa, Canada and Caribbean
countries. Starting with theoretical reading on these subjects, we will
consider the following questions throughout the semester:
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Why are these subjects pervasive in women’s narratives?
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What is it that makes women in trouble so interesting?
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How do we relate the women’s experiences in the novels to the women
writers’?
-
How do gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity and place affect
the women in these narratives and how do they intersect with one another?
How does white middle class women’s experience in the first world differ
from lower-class women’s, African-American women’s, and the third-world
women’s experience?
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Can madness be a subversive way for women to resist the limitations
society places on them?
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How do some female protagonists attain self-discovery after suffering
and madness, while others don’t? What are the obstacles to their journey
to self-discovery?
This course invites the students to consider how the human subject, more
specifically, the female subject is "constructed" in each different circumstances
and to take a close look at how each female subject deals with her given
situation.
Tentative Reading List:
The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
"The Yellow Wall-paper" – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
"To Room Nineteen" – Doris Lessing
Praisesong for the Widow – Paule Marshall
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Selections from:
Shoshana Felman, Writing and Madness; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar,
The Madwoman in the Attic; Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady; Virginia
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.
Films:
An Angel at My Table- Jane Campion
Girl, Interrupted- James Mangold
Assignments and Grade Percentage:
-one weekly response (1 typed page) + occasional quizzes = 30%
-One 5-pager paper due at midterm = 20%
-Final 6 to8-page paper = 20%
-oral presentation = 20%
-attendance and participation = 10%
