Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today

by Rachel Vorona Cote Narrated by Suehyla El Attar, Rachel Vorona Cote

Overview

Lacing cultural criticism, Victorian literature, and storytelling together, "TOO MUCH spills over: with intellect, with sparkling prose, and with the brainy arguments of Vorona Cote, who posits that women are all, in some way or another, still susceptible to being called too much." (Esmé Weijun Wang)

A weeping woman is a monster. So too is a fat woman, a horny woman, a woman shrieking with laughter. Women who are one or more of these things have heard, or perhaps simply intuited, that we are repugnantly excessive, that we have taken illicit liberties to feel or fuck or eat with abandon. After bellowing like a barn animal in orgasm, hoovering a plate of mashed potatoes, or spraying out spit in the heat of expostulation, we've flinched-ugh, that was so gross. I am so gross. On rare occasions, we might revel in our excess--belting out anthems with our friends over karaoke, perhaps--but in the company of less sympathetic souls, our uncertainty always returns. A woman who is Too Much is a woman who reacts to the world with ardent intensity is a woman familiar to lashes of shame and disapproval, from within as well as without.

Written in the tradition of Shrill, Dead Girls, Sex Object and other frank books about the female gaze, TOO MUCH encourages women to reconsider the beauty of their excesses-emotional, physical, and spiritual. Rachel Vorona Cote braids cultural criticism, theory, and storytelling together in her exploration of how culture grinds away our bodies, souls, and sexualities, forcing us into smaller lives than we desire. An erstwhile Victorian scholar, she sees many parallels between that era's fixation on women's "hysterical" behavior and our modern policing of the same; in the space of her writing, you're as likely to encounter Jane Eyre and Lizzie Bennet as you are Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey.

This book will tell the story of how women, from then and now, have learned to draw power from their reservoirs of feeling, all that makes us "Too Much."

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Suehyla El Attar perfectly captures author Rachel Vorona Cote’s in-your-face attitude, confidently delivering her research and humor. Cote describes how men have pathologized women’s emotions as being “too much” for years, often shunting them aside by institutionalizing them or otherwise locking them away from society. El Attar’s upbeat tone is just right for the material. She brings an agreeable insouciance to the author’s examples, and she wonderfully performs snippets from literature, contemporary culture, film, history, and more. Cote’s arguments are clever, reflecting attitudes that go back centuries and support her position that being a woman today still carries with it the stigma of being “too much.” El Attar’s engaging delivery encourages women to embrace who they are. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Suehyla El Attar perfectly captures author Rachel Vorona Cote’s in-your-face attitude, confidently delivering her research and humor. Cote describes how men have pathologized women’s emotions as being “too much” for years, often shunting them aside by institutionalizing them or otherwise locking them away from society. El Attar’s upbeat tone is just right for the material. She brings an agreeable insouciance to the author’s examples, and she wonderfully performs snippets from literature, contemporary culture, film, history, and more. Cote’s arguments are clever, reflecting attitudes that go back centuries and support her position that being a woman today still carries with it the stigma of being “too much.” El Attar’s engaging delivery encourages women to embrace who they are. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173583734
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	02/25/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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