Books on Books: 'The Madwoman in the Attic' by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

August 27, 2014 Natalie Morath

I first came across The Madwoman in the Attic via Madeleine's thesis project in The Marriage Plot, but I'm surprised that I made it through four years of humanities studies without having read it, as I, much like the fictional Madeleine, spent a lot of time with books that were described as "discourses." The Madwoman in the Attic is the O.G. of feminist readings of fiction, and its influence cannot be overstated. I've been thinking a lot about it recently as I was reading Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, whose very title and premise are something of an homage. The book is largely concerned with female authors like Jane Austen, the Brontes, and Virginia Woolf, and it's a really excellent follow-up to anyone who has already read and enjoyed some of the major women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It's easy to find a first edition at any decent used book store (especially those in college towns), but do yourself a favor a pickup a newer copy that include their revised introduction, which should give you a better taste of the cultural impact the book had on feminism and literature.

The Better Beach Read

August 20, 2014 Natalie Morath

I have always hated the phrase "beach read," and the notion it represents, that somehow your vacation is the only appropriate time for pleasure reading or genre fiction. It seems like the kind of unrealistic trope that is exacerbated by magazines, like you should buy some sunglasses based on your "face shape" and a swim suit that emphasizes your "small bust" and get a "beach read" for your vacation. I have a tendency to bring on vacation any book on my TBR list that is compact and lightweight, i.e. paperback, and there is usually no rhyme or reason to it. That said, I can concede that people often want good books for vacation time with the implication being that they'll be sitting in a hammock, on a beach, or poolside for long stretches of time and need a book that they can really disappear into. Thus, the following, my recommendations for beach books this summer:

#ReadWomen2014: Edith Wharton

June 26, 2014 Natalie Morath

I think Edith Wharton is one of the most under-rated female authors. Yes, she is a bit well-known and some of her novels appear on AP reading lists, but most people manage to get through high school and college without ever having read her work, and if The House of Mirth were a Henry James novel (which it kinda could be), it would be put up on a higher pedestal. I don't know what it is about Edith Wharton -- maybe because her novels are about the American upper classes, or maybe because she was herself an extraordinarily wealthy and independent woman, no one takes her as seriously as an author who struggled a bit more? Wharton was widely celebrated in her own time, but her work seems to have fallen out of favor over other American women writers of the same era who were more concerned with class struggle, racism, and the immigrant experience (Willa Cather, for example). If nothing else, she should be lauded as the proof of concept for Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own; as an independently wealthy woman with few domestic concerns, Wharton was a very productive and successful writer.

#ReadWomen2014: Virginia Woolf

June 12, 2014 Natalie Morath

This week's #ReadWomen2014 author recommendation is going old school. Virginia Woolf is the O.G. advocate of women in literature-- she read plenty of women authors and was a notable appreciator of George Eliot before it was cool; she delivered a lecture on why there aren't more women writers historically, which was subsequently turned into the excellent little volume known as A Room of One's Own; perhaps most importantly, she was a critically-acclaimed novelist herself, which only served to legitimate her opinions even further.