Women and Fiction

By: Susan Cahill

Book Overview

From the late 19th-century writings of Kate Chopin to the contemporary works of Alice Walker, this unique collection of 26 stories celebrates the specialness of growing up female and captures the experience of being a woman--in all its similarities and diversity. Includes works by Willa Cather, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Gertrude Stein, Tillie Olsen, and Colette.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451627296
• ISBN13: 9780451627292
• Release Date: December 1975
• Publisher: Signet Book
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

One of my most treasured volumes.

Contains a pleasing and interesting collection of women's writing. I have purchased several copies over the years as gifts. This is one of my all time favorites that I will read again and again.

Inspiring!

I first encountered this book over ten years ago and have recommended it occasionally since then, remembering how much I enjoyed it. I am in the process of re-reading and re-discovering the joys of this gem. The book is a collection of short stories, written by and about women, edited lovingly and perspicaciously by the talented Susan Cahill. She introduces each story with a brief history of the writer and her impact on the writing world. The stories are by the best and brightest of women writers, many of whom are household names, while others may be new to the reader, as they were to me. Protagonists are strong, are vacillating, are rich, are poor, are young, are old, smart or dull, lucky or unfortunate. One thing all the stories have in common, however, is the extraordinary sense and perception the writer brings to the state of woman. From the sensitivity of Kate Chopin's newly widowed young wife in the famous "The Story of an Hour," to the crassness of Flannery O'Connor's farmer's wife in "Revelation," all these women are alive and touch the reader in ways beyond all expectation. A wonderful, wonderful read!

Women writers you will never forget

I read this book for a literature course that included women writers of the past 100 years. I have not forgotten these writers or this book.It is a "handbook" to carry with you to read and read again.The women writers may have been born long ago or in the 20th Century.Their short stories are all valid today. I love this book .I handle it with care. Kate Chopin, Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf,and more.I never knew how a short story could affect me.Cahill has put together a great collection of women writers.

here's the table of contents

IntroductionKate Chopin (1851-1904): The Story of an HourEdith Wharton (1862-1937): The Other TwoWilla Cather (1873-1947): A Wagner MatinéeColette (1873-1947): The Secret WomanGertrude Stein (1874-1946): Miss Furr and Miss SkeeneVirginia Woolf (1882-1941): The New DressKatherine Mansfield (1888-1923): The Garden PartyKatherine Anne Porter (1890-1980): RopeKay Boyle (1902-1992): Winter NightEudora Welty (1909-2001): A Worn PathHortense Calisher (1911- ): The Scream on Fifty-Seventh StreetAnn Petry (1911-1997): Like a Winding SheetMary Lavin (1912-1996): In a CaféTillie Olsen (1913- ): I Stand Here IroningMaeve Brennan (1917-1993): The Eldest ChildCarson McCullers (1917-1967): WunderkindDoris Lessing (1919- ): To Room NineteenGrace Paley (1922- ): An Interest in LifeFlannery O'Connor (1925-1964): RevelationJean Stubbs (1926- ): Cousin LewisEdna O'Brien (1930- ): A JourneyAlice Munro (1931- ): The OfficeJoyce Carol Oates (1938- ): In the Region of IceMargaret Drabble (1939- ): The Gifts of WarJulie Hayden (1939-1981): Day-Old Baby RatsAlice Walker (1944- ): Everyday UseBibliography

"What the heart is ... and what it feels."

The original edition of this anthology was published in1975 by the New American Library, under the same title.This volume contains 26 short stories written by women,and arranged in chronological order by the authors'birthdates. Kate Chopin (1851-1904) appears first withher magnificent, ironic short masterpiece "The Story ofan Hour." The anthology contains a very good "Introduction,"short biographies (a page or more) of the authors beforetheir stories, and a Bibliography at the end which liststhe author's major works. The editor, Susan Cahill, has given the best insightinto the purpose and virtue of this collection in the"Introduction": "In each story in this collection an artist expresseswith realistic compassion the consciousness of anindividual woman. To label any of the writers 'feminist'would be to force that writer into an easy category, toinsist her home is not the house of fiction but a smallerplace. Yet it is no error to see these fictions asfeminism's sacred texts, their authors as the movement'sgreatest prophets, for they tell us more about what itfeels like to be a woman than all the gray abstractionsabout Women heard on the talk shows or read in grayreviews about gray books on sexual stereotypes. In aworld whose future may be rationalized by the abstractionsof _realpolitik_, anything that takes us closer to theheart, that makes us respond seriously and sympatheticallyto the individual human being is to be revered. 'In theend, our technique is sensitivity,' Eudora Welty writesabout the crafting of the short story." * * * "The twenty-six stories in this book have beenselected because they are extraordinarily moving andconvincing portraits of women and their lives by extraordinary writers." * * * "...women in the city,suburb, country, ghetto, working-class Jewish, celibateCatholic, Irish, English, American Canadian, and a fewsecret French women. Women who choose women over men,women who choose husband over personal fulfillment, women who know self, women who are too oppressed or too weak to know or choose anything. The twenty-sixstories in this anthology show that a woman's destinyis as mysterious and individual and various as thehuman personality itself. * * *these fictions ...unfolda deep understanding of what Stephen Daedalus's motherin _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ prayedher son would someday learn: 'What the heart is...andwhat it feels."