Senior Lecturer in English and Creative\nWriting (Fiction)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My\nfavourite book is The Wolf Border<\/em> by Sarah Hall. This novel follows\nRachel as she moves back from her job on a wolf reserve in the USA to the\nborders of England and Scotland to run a rewilding programme. Dealing with her\nmother’s death, and reconnecting with her estranged brother as she negotiates\nthe project and the politics of wealthy Lairds\nand local communities, Rachel is a character of great strength and humanity:\nflawed, intelligent, determined, and responsive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hall’s\nability to portray a\nwoman so genuine and uncompromising in the face of so many literary tropes\nabout motherhood, relationships, and landscape is thrilling. Her prose is\nprecise, and her evocation of place and people captures the nuances of both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Talking\nabout her process, she says: ‘I\u2019m interested in the working nature of the land\nas well as its resistance to what we place upon it, metaphysically, and\nsometimes physically. This is what I\u2019ve grown up with when it comes to Cumbria\n\u2013 farming, sheep, rain, difficulties travelling, self-sufficiency, obduracy,\nrespect’ (Hall, 2009), and this close attention to details shines through in her clear depiction not of only of\nplace but the emplaced human within it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is\nan author and novel I return to over and again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Brown<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior Lecturer in English and Course\nDirector for Sound and Communication<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sylvia\nPlath\u2019s The Bell Jar<\/em> is an exploration of the social, economic, and\nsexual pressure on young women that seems as relevant today as it was in the\n1950s, when the book is set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At\nfirst glance, The Bell Jar<\/em> does not strike the reader as an overtly\npolitical novel. The key themes that present themselves, and for which the book\nis popularly renowned, are the explorations of growing up in America, mental\nillness, teenage suicide, and the angst of a young woman finding her way in a\nlarge and scary world of work, fashion, education, and relationships.\nConsequently, The Bell Jar<\/em> is often seen as a rites of passage novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These\nconcerns are given added interest for the reader by the autobiographical detail\nthat haunts Esther\u2019s Greenwood’s narrative and continues to hold the public\u2019s\nattention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nnovel was originally published in 1963 under a pseudonym. At the time critics\nfound the book to be a thoughtful exploration of a young woman\u2019s mind. However,\nwhen the book was published under Plath\u2019s own name in 1966 its reception was\nstrongly influenced by the circumstances surrounding her suicide at the age of\n30in 1963, just after the book\u2019s original release. Much attention, unsurprisingly,\nhas been given to the stormy relationship with her husband, the British poet\nTed Hughes, and her relationship with her two children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But is\nall the biographical attention to the novel justified. Well, to some extent it\nis. The Bell Jar<\/em> is an account of Esther\u2019s time at college, her\nexperiences as a ‘guest editor’ on a New York magazine and her subsequent\nbreakdown – all supported by a wealthy sponsor. \nPlath too went to an all-girl college, won a scholarship to Mademoiselle<\/em>\nmagazine and attempted suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\ntitle itself speaks of both clarity and constriction. The bell jar is a glass\ncontainer in which the contents can be seen clearly but can also be read as the\nshop windows in which the fashion-conscious characters check their reflections.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it is\nalso about the suffocating constraints of Esther’s situation and society:\nfashion and commodity as part of 50s social ideology in America, the role of\nthe patriarchal medical profession in Esther’s illness, and the constraints of\nthe social and political environment on Esther’s gender role and in her\nrelationships with men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nnovel\u2019s opening reflects on the execution in the electric chair of the\nRosenbergs for spying for the USSR and goes on to explore the effects of\nElectro Convulsive Therapy on Esther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nissue of gender roles and freedom for women in this book is specifically\nrelated to the issue of sexual freedom. Before the pill, sexual and moral\npolitics revolved around ideas of health, hygiene, and conformity. Esther’s\nmother, for example, sends her an article entitled ‘In Defense of Chastity’,\nwhich concludes that the best form of birth control is abstinence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the\nconclusion of the novel Esther is assessed by the hospital board for a return\nto the society that she has rejected. To do so she must show that she is a\nwell-adjusted, socially integrated, mentally well citizen of 1950s American\nsociety. You will have to read the book to find out if she succeeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amy Louise Blaney<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Associate Lecturer in English<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\nare so many literary works by female authors that I adore: Margaret Atwood\u2019s The\nHandmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s Hamnet<\/em>, Jane Austen\u2019s Northanger\nAbbey<\/em>, Margaret Cavendish\u2019s The Blazing World<\/em>…the list goes on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For\nthis piece, though, I wanted to share my love of Donna Tartt\u2019s debut novel, The\nSecret History. <\/em>Partly because it is a brilliant piece of fiction that\nplayfully inverts the rules of genre and can be seen to have kick-started a\ntrend for so-called \u2018dark academia\u2019, but also because its conflicted central\ncharacters \u2013 and their struggles to find their place and identity within the\nworld \u2013 continues to resonate with me in new ways every time I re-read the\nnovel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Set at\nan elite New England university, The Secret History<\/em> tells the story of a\nclose-knit group of six classic students who, it becomes apparent, have\ncommitted a terrible crime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nnovel is narrated by Richard Papen: a young man from a modest background who\nfinds himself, through an unusual twist of fate, becoming part of an elite\nclique of students, hand-picked by charismatic classics professor Julian\nMorrow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Richard\u2019s\nposition as an outsider is crucial to the novel. As the reader, we see the\nevents of the novel solely through his eyes and we are, initially at least,\ninvited to sympathise with this awkward, isolated young man, marooned and\nadrift amidst an elite world of apparent social, intellectual, and financial\nprivilege. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the\nnovel progresses, however, the novel plays with and inverts ideas of tragedy,\nmelodrama, and detective fiction to rewrite this singular worldview. As\nreaders, we begin to question the veracity of Richard\u2019s narrative and the\nplausibility of his perceptions. As we follow this murder mystery in reverse,\nwe are invited to consider not who the killer is \u2013 we know this from the outset\n\u2013 but who the victim is and, more importantly, why<\/em> they are the victim\nand what <\/em>the significance of their murder is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simply\nput, The Secret History<\/em> is, like all the best novels, a book that merits\nrepeated reading and that, as I age and evolve as a reader, unpacks itself in\nnew ways with each revisit. Read it, think about it, then put it on a shelf and\ncome back to it in five- or ten-years’ time. I guarantee you will experience it\nagain anew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want\nMore Female-Authored Fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nlonglist for the 2022 Women\u2019s Prize for\nFiction<\/a> was announced on International Women\u2019s Day and\ncontains a fantastic line-up on contemporary novels written by women. Past\nwinners of the prize include Madeline Miller, Barbara Kingsolver, Tayari Jones,\nAli Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, Helen Dunmore and Carol\nShields, whilst this year\u2019s shortlist features novels by Louise Erdrich, Ruth\nOzeki, and Elif Shafak amongst others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here in the English and Creative Writing department, we like to think we celebrate amazing women every single day. From our brilliant staff and students through to the wonderful female novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, essayists, and literary critics … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2022\/03\/IWD-1.jpg\")
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\nYou can read more of Sarah Hall\u2019s 2009 interview\nwith the Lunecy Review <\/em>at: https:\/\/performativeutterance.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/28\/sarah-hall-interviewed-2009\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2022\/03\/IWD-2-768x1024.jpg\")
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