The Politics of the Feminist Novel (Contributions in Women's Studies) - Hardcover

Roller, Judi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0313246637 ISBN 13: 9780313246630

Publisher: Praeger, 1986

Synopsis

The Politics of the Feminist Novel. (Contributions in American Studies, #63) [ The Politics of the Feminist Novel. (Contributions in American Studies, #63) by Roller, Judi M ( Author ) Hardcover Mar- 1986 ] Hardcover Mar- 18- 1986

About this title

About the Author:

ller /f Judi /i M.

Review:

"...it is Greenwood's Judi Roller who impresses with her energy and critical appetite.  Ms. Roller,...writing from her women's group in Dayton, Ohio, connects with a dynamic critical system, feminism, and produces a series of important insights.  Within her long and detailed analyses of specific novels she often writes extremely well."  M.A. Sperber, Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 32, No. 4, Winter, 1986.

Judi M. Roller THE POLITICS OF THE FEMINIST NOVEL Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986. Pp. 206, $12.95 Reviewed by Mary Beth Pringle
Judi M. Roller's The Politics of the Feminist Novel demonstrates powerfully that a female writer's political attitudes are likely to influence her style as well as her choice of subject and material. In compact, yet stunningly comprehensive chapters, Roller shows that political novels by women share several characteristics: an anti-authoritarian perspective, a rejection of traditional sex roles, an end that involves death or escape, and similar symbolic patterns.
In Chapter 1, Roller defines categories in an intriguing, original reading of The Awakening that explains Edna Pontellier's suicide as underscoring "her sense of hopelessness and the mixture of passivity and daring that forms her personality" (p. 18). Chapter 2 examines women writers' use of the autobiographical, anti-authoritarian, first-person narrative form which, according to Roller, may be a "form of female authorial rebellion" (p. 36). She goes on to argue more generally that other decisions of narrative form may also be political acts. Roller's third chapter explores women writers' recognition that, given society as we know it, individual and social "fragmentation" are inevitable. Even so, says Roller, women writers of political novels don't expect in either area a "unity" impossible to achieve. As Roller writes, real "wholeness in the modern world implies an acceptance of disorder and a concomitant rejection of both the deceptive unity offered by roles and the destruction of the personality implicit in separation and fragmentation" (p. 68). In a fourth chapter, Roller suggests that female protagonists in political novels usually share some responsibility for the ending of their stories. Such novels often end in flight (escape) or death (literal or symbolic). In a small group of novels, she notes, however, that "heroines neither flee nor die. Instead, they fight back, and they all enjoy some measure of success" (p. 131). Finally, in Chapter 5, Roller traces symbol patterns common in women's political novels and shows them to be expressive of slavery vs. freedom.
The range of Dr. Roller's knowledge of both halves of her studv--political criticism, feminist and otherwise, as well as women's fiction-- is impressive. She moves easilv from de Beauvoir to Howe, from Lessing to Jong. An intersection of these two bodies of information under Roller's astute guidance results in new insights for readers in either discipline. Along the way, Dr. Roller assigns political importance to a wide range of contemporary, popular
Book Reviews 107
women's novels, while connecting these novels to others considered "more serious." This work, in itself, is a significant political act. In short, The Politics of the Feminist Novel is a "must read" for specialists in women's studies, for those who do social-political examinations of literature, and for others who, quite simply, like to think about women's lives.

The politics of the feminist novelTitle: The politics of the feminist novelAuthor: Roller, Judi M.Personal Author: Roller, Judi M.Publication Information: New York : Greenwood Press, 1986.Physical Description: 206 pages ; 23 cm.Series: Contributions in women's studies no. 63Choice ReviewThis seems an unusually well thought out addition to the ever increasing volume of women's studies. Working with 25 novels, Roller discusses not only the obvious political implications but some that are not so immediately apparent. As is customary in such studies, the feminist novels are seen as beginning with Kate Chopin's The Awakening. But Roller includes for analysis other works, such as The Dollmaker or The Man Who Loved Children-works that are not usually encountered in feminist writing. The author considers most feminist writing as attacks on the structures of modern life, attacks that are ideological and (contrarily) anti-ideology, defenses of the individual sensibility and subjectivity against the constant pressures of objectivity and sense. Almost too well documented, the monograph provides a lucid and (for all the author's commitment to the sensibilities supported in the novels examined) objective reading of the novels. Very thorough apparatus. Useful for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students.-T.S. Kobler, Texas Woman's University

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0313246637
• ISBN 13: 9780313246630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206