Hamlet's Mother and Other Women

by Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Overview

Carolyn G. Heilbrun's groundbreaking essay "The Character of Hamlet's Mother" was published in 1957 at a time when few critics thought seriously about women's issues in literature. In the years since, Heilbrun has emerged as a feminist leader through her commitment to women's writing and feminist literary critique. Now in a new paperback edition with a new preface by the author, this collection explores feminism in literary studies during the last three decades. By questioning the gender arrangements of society, Heilbrun has helped to transform them. Taken together, these graceful essays demonstrate the consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision and her deep respect for the lives of women who write.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231071765
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/25/1990
Series:	Gender and Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	0.75(w) x 6.00(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carolyn G. Heilbrun is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She has written Christopher Isherwood, Toward Androgyny, Reinventing Womanhood, Writing a Woman's Life, and numerous works of detective fiction under the name Amanda Cross.

What People are Saying About This

Andrea Dworkin

A wonderful, living book for those who love to read and to think. It is engaged, fervent, good-humored; it is wise and intellectually substantive and a real pleasure to read.

Editorial Reviews

[Heilbrun's] arguments for the centrality of feminist criticism are advanced with passion and enlivened with wit.

The New York Times Book Review

A wonderful, living book for those who love to read and to think. It is engaged, fervent, good-humored; it is wise and intellectually substantive and a real pleasure to read.

Andrea Dworkin

[Heilbrun´s] arguments for the centrality of feminist criticism are advanced with passion and enlivened with wit.

New York Times Book Review

A book to delight the heart . . . filled with delicate, sometimes startling gems of perception.

New York Newsday

In this collection of essays and speeches advocating the application of feminist criticism to the canon of English literature, Heilbrun ( Writing a Woman's Life ), humanities professor at Columbia University, also offers an acute view of the politics of academia. Leading off with a reprint of her first published article, ``The Character of Hamlet's Mother'' ( Shakespeare Quarterly , 1957), in which she argues ably against the then-prevailing interpretation of Gertrude as frail and passive, Heilbrun organizes pieces written in the '70s and '80s according to such topics as ``Exemplary Women'' and ``Feminism and the Profession of Literature.'' During these years she declared herself more fully a feminist--one who ``questions the gender arrangements in society and culture . . . and works to change them.'' Calling upon such related fields as psychology and semiotics, she focuses on the lives and writings of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, E. M. Forster, Vera Brittain, May Sarton and others. As an academic, she is forthright and courageous; as a feminist, eloquent and persuasive; as critic, erudite, graceful and revolutionary: ``Tender buttons as well as phalluses can organize a vision.' ' (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly