The Broom Closet: Secret Meanings of Domesticity in Postfeminist Novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy TanA doctorate-holding editor/columnist at an alternative newsweekly, Cooperman dissects the symbolism of and women's ambivalence toward their domestic roles as depicted in recent culturally diverse US feminist fiction. Conceiving housework as "an art and science of the boundaries," she discusses individual authors, novels, and shared motifs: domesticity as ordering chaos, the unappreciated hollow woman, sustaining home ties, powers of life and death, the sacred in the mundane, and reasons for making a home. Includes a decent categorized bibliography, but no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
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Page 89
... Ginny , the dubious heroine in A Thousand Acres , was the eldest of three daughters . She was 36 , married to a nice stoic farmboy named Tyler , skilled in the wifely arts but unable to bear a child . Her sister , Rose , had two , Pammy ...
... Ginny , the dubious heroine in A Thousand Acres , was the eldest of three daughters . She was 36 , married to a nice stoic farmboy named Tyler , skilled in the wifely arts but unable to bear a child . Her sister , Rose , had two , Pammy ...
Page 90
... Ginny knew that people's worth was measured in terms of acreage , financing and agribusiness , and that those standards underpinned even cooperative female work . While the farmers of Zebulon County appraised each other's land ...
... Ginny knew that people's worth was measured in terms of acreage , financing and agribusiness , and that those standards underpinned even cooperative female work . While the farmers of Zebulon County appraised each other's land ...
Page 91
... Ginny had learned certain fixed ways of pleasing her father . She was far more interested in peace and ease than in discovering the range of his tastes , surprising him , asserting her own preferences . Ginny was a careful manager of ...
... Ginny had learned certain fixed ways of pleasing her father . She was far more interested in peace and ease than in discovering the range of his tastes , surprising him , asserting her own preferences . Ginny was a careful manager of ...
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African-American American Amy Tan Asian American Baby Suggs baking Becky Beloved body bread chaos Charlotte Perkins Gilman chores chthonic clean clothes cooking culture daily daughter Denver Dilys Laing dirt dishes domestic ritual economic Ellen emotional Erdrich everyday father feel female feminine feminism feminist Fleur floor gender Ginny Ginny's girl healing household housekeeping housewife housewives housework human husband images Jane Smiley keep Kitchen God's Wife labor laundry Leila literary lives Longings of Women looked Louise Erdrich male Margaret Marge Piercy marriage Mary meals meaning mother Nanapush nature never notes novels Ojibwa Paul D Pauline physical quilt realm relationships role Rose sacred scrubbing sense Sethe Sethe's sewing social society sphere spiritual stitches symbolic tasks things Thousand Acres Tillie Olsen tion told Toni Morrison took Tracks traditional washing Winnie Winnie's woman women writers writing