Woman's View

<p>What is it like being a woman – in society, in the home and as a person in one’s own right? Originally published in 1967, here is a collection of passages, all linked by their theme, that of being a woman. They are taken from novels, essays, letters and diaries written by or about women concerning their psychology and position in society from the later eighteenth century onwards. In these days of emancipation and assumed equality (in some countries at any rate) it is as well to remember the very recent past and to look forward to the future, for <i>all</i> girls will have, certain problems to face just because they are girls. It is best to be prepared.</p><p>The anthology was chosen and organised for girls who were taking English, either for General Studies or in preparation for University. The extracts cover a wide range of styles and periods, and were selected both as representative of their time and as good examples of prose. Love, sex, marriage, motherhood and the wider role of women in society are among the topics covered, and there is an ample list of suggestions for further readings, biographical notes on the writers and suggested questions for discussions or essay-writing.</p> <p>Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Young Girls: from <i>The House</i> by Elizabeth Bowen 2. Different Girls: from <i>The Waves</i> by Virginia Woolf 3. Being a Girl: from <i>Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter</i> by Simone de Beauvoir 4. Growing Up I: from <i>The Member of the Wedding</i> by Carson McCullers 5. Growing Up II: from <i>The Rainbow</i> by D.H. Lawrence 6. Wanting a Chance in Life: from <i>The Story of an African Farm</i> by Olive Schreiner 7. Wanting Something More: from <i>Jane Eyre</i> by Charlotte Brontë 8. A Young Girl’s Aspirations: from <i>Journals</i> by Marie Bashkirtseff 9. Being Non-Educated: from <i>Letters</i> by Mary Kingsley 10. Weak Woman: from <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Women</i> by Mary Wollstonecraft 11. Being in Love I: from <i>Emma</i> by Jane Austen 12. Planning for the Future: from <i>Middlemarch</i> by George Eliot 13. Being a Governess: from <i>Agnes Grey</i> by Anne Brontë 14. Being Engaged: from <i>The Egoist</i> by George Meredith 15. Marriage for the Wrong Reasons – Or to the Wrong Man: from <i>Portrait of a Lady</i> by Henry James 16. Love and Commonsense: from <i>Letters</i> by Jane Austen 17. Advising a Daughter on Life: from <i>Letters</i> by Queen Victoria 18. Being Married: from <i>At the Bay</i> by Katherine Mansfield 19. Being Married – and a Little Older: from <i>To the Lighthouse</i> by Virginia Woolf 20. Being a Bluestocking Married to a Genius: from <i>Letters</i> by Jane Welsh Carlyle 21. Wanting a Life of One’s Own: from <i>All Passion Spent</i> by Victoria Sackville-West 22. Escaping Temporarily: from <i>A View of the Harbour</i> by Elizabeth Taylor 23. How Life Passes: from <i>Tenterhooks</i> by Ada Leverson 24. Coming Up for Air: from <i>Dangerous Ages</i> by Rose Macauly 25. Bird in a Cage: from <i>A Doll’s House</i> by Henrik Ibsen 26. Being an Outsider: from <i>The Holiday </i>by Stevie Smith 27. Being Dissatisfied with the Love of Man: from <i>The Echoing Grove</i> by Rosamond Lehmann 28. Being a Sensitive Soul: from <i>Howard’s End</i> by E.M. Forster 29. Loving: from <i>The Woodlanders</i> by Thomas Hardy 30. Being in Love II: from Letters to Imlay by Mary Wollstonecraft 31. Man’s Ideal Wife – and Later: from <i>Middlemarch</i> by George Eliot 32. Man’s Ideal of Woman: from <i>An Ideal Husband</i> by Oscar Wilde 33. Woman Playing up to Her Role: from <i>An Ideal Husband</i> by Oscar Wilde 34. The Shavian Ideal of Woman and Man: from <i>Man and Superman</i> by George Bernard Shaw 35. Being a ‘Free’ Woman: from <i>My Life</i> by Isadora Duncan 36. Bringing up Baby: from <i>A Proper Marriage</i> by Doris Lessing 37. A Man Infatuated – and Out of Love: from <i>Liber Amoris</i> by William Hazlitt 38. Being a Mother: from <i>Look the Other Way</i> by John Branfield 39. A Man in Two Minds: from <i>Nightmare Abbey </i>by Thomas Love Peacock 40. If Shakespeare had Been a Woman: from <i>A Room of One’s Own</i> by Virginia Woolf 41. Being a Political Woman: from <i>The New Machiavelli</i> by H.G. Wells 42. Women and Fiction: from <i>Granite and Rainbow</i> by Virginia Woolf 43. Woman in Present Society: from <i>‘The Guardian’ </i>by Mary Stott. Suggestions for Oral Discussion or Written Work. Suggestions for Further Reading.</p>