This book follows the figure of ‘the clever girl’ from the post-war to the present and focuses on the fiction, plays and memoirs of contemporary British women writers. Spurred on by an ethic of meritocracy, the clever girl is now facing austerity and declining social mobility. Though suggesting optimism, a public discourse of ‘opportunity’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘choice’ is often experienced as an anxious and chancy process. In a wide-ranging study, the book explores the struggle to move away from home and traditional notions of femininity; the persistent problems associated with women’s embodiment; the pressures of class and racial divisions; the new subjectivities of the neoliberal era; and the generational conflict underpinning austerity. The book ends with a consideration of feminism’s place as a phantom presence in this history of clever girls. This study will appeal to readers of contemporary women’s writing and to those interested in what has been one of the dominant social narratives of the post-war period from upward to declining mobility.

This monograph is a study of the work of British author A. S. Byatt, exploring the cultural representation of the woman intellectual in her fiction. It argues that Byatt’s representations of this figure show narratives of intellectual women to be inherently mythopoeic, or capable of restructuring the myth of the intellectual as male by default. This mythopoeia is, furthermore, intrinsically feminist in function, thus potentially broadening the conventional, limited view of women in intellectual history. The book will be the first study of Byatt’s work to examine this figure in detail, and the first study of women intellectuals in historical and literary discourse to apply concepts of mythopoeia and sexual difference in ways that allow new readings of women’s status and work in public spheres.

This volume reshapes our understanding of British literary culture from 1945-1975 by exploring the richness and diversity of women’s writing of this period. Essays by leading scholars reveal the range and intensity of women writers’ engagement with post-war transformations including the founding of the Welfare State, the gradual liberalization of attitudes to gender and sexuality and the reconfiguration of Britain and the empire in the context of the Cold War. Attending closely to the politics of form, the sixteen essays range across ‘literary’, ‘middlebrow’ and ‘popular’ genres, including espionage thrillers and historical fiction, children’s literature and science fiction, as well as poetry, drama and journalism. They examine issues including realism and experimentalism, education, class and politics, the emergence of ‘second-wave’ feminism, responses to the Holocaust and mass migration and diaspora. The volume offers an exciting reassessment of women’s writing at a time of radical social change and rapid cultural expansion.

The women's movement is perhaps the most baffling of the recent social reforms to sweep the United States. It is composed of numerous distinct groups, each with specific interests and goals, each with individual leaders and literature. What are the philosophies behind these groups? Who are their leaders and how have their ideas evolved? Do they have a vital connection with the women's movement of the past? And where are feminist groups headed? In this study that brilliantly illuminates the literature and purposes of feminists, What Women Want: The Ideas of the Movement, Gayle Graham Yates has produced the first comprehensive history of feminist women's groups. Concentrating chiefly on the movement from 1959 to 1973, when it erupted in such activist groups as the National Organization for Women (NOW), the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), and the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), the author analyzes in detail their literature, factions, and issues. Her survey encompasses virtually every major expression of the movement's multiple facets, from The Feminine Mystique, Born Female, and Sexual Politics, to Sex and the Single Girl and Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. In a significant breakthrough, the author discerns the pattern underlying this diversity, which should contribute to a fuller understanding of future developments in the women's struggle. She accomplishes this by identifying three key attitudes informing the movement: the feminist, the women's liberationist, and the androgynous or cooperative male-female relationship. The author provides a sensitive, yet critical analysis of the chief spokeswomen in contemporary America, activists like Gloria Steinem, Shulamith Firestone, and Ti-Grace Atkinson. She treats each of the feminist ideologies with balance and respect, yet is refreshingly unafraid to criticize new developments. She bolsters her own conclusions in support of an androgynous or "equal sexual society" with a judicious spirit. Scholars and the general public alike will find Yates's book not only an indispensable contribution to women's studies, but also a strong and timely addition to contemporary American life and thought.

This book explores the career aspirations, achievements and consequent social mobility of a group of British Pakistani women. It uses Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to analyse how these women, living in a segregated Pakistani community located in a deprived northern town in the UK with poor employment opportunities, acquired the resources to pursue further and higher education, obtain qualifications and enter professional careers. The author discusses and analyses how cultural capital features in homes, schools and workplaces, as well as how the women navigate and modify intersecting gender, ethnic and class identities in order to create specific career trajectories. Illuminating the rich intersections of biography, history and society, the author captures important qualitative data which acts as a microcosm for contemporary discussions on social mobility, multiculturalism, Muslim communities, race, and gender in Britain.

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.

A RICH DISPLAY OF SOME OF THE BEST PROSE WRITTEN TODAY IN THE USA.