The Woman Reader - Softcover

Jack, Belinda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300197209 ISBN 13: 9780300197204

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

How have women read differently from men through the ages? In all manner of ways, this book asserts.

This lively story has never been told before: the complete history of women's reading and the ceaseless controversies it has inspired. Belinda Jack's groundbreaking volume travels from the Cro-Magnon cave to the digital bookstores of our time, exploring what and how women of widely differing cultures have read through the ages.

Jack traces a history marked by persistent efforts to prevent women from gaining literacy or reading what they wished. She also recounts the counter-efforts of those who have battled for girls' access to books and education. The book introduces frustrated female readers of many eras—Babylonian princesses who called for women's voices to be heard, rebellious nuns who wanted to share their writings with others, confidantes who challenged Reformation theologians' writings, nineteenth-century New England mill girls who risked their jobs to smuggle novels into the workplace, and women volunteers who taught literacy to women and children on convict ships bound for Australia.

Today, new distinctions between male and female readers have emerged, and Jack explores such contemporary topics as burgeoning women's reading groups, differences in men and women's reading tastes, censorship of women's on-line reading in countries like Iran, the continuing struggle for girls' literacy in many poorer places, and the impact of women readers in their new status as significant movers in the world of reading.

About this title

From the Author

A Conversation with Belinda Jack

Q: How did you come to write this book?

A: I became interested in just how different men and women's reading has often been. Men have worried since ancient times about what women read but the reverse has hardly ever been the case.

Q: What were the most striking stories uncovered in the course of your research?

A: It's been fascinating tracing women's responses to misogynist writings that they then re-wrote—across the centuries and different cultures. And I was astonished by so-called medical works in the nineteenth century recommending that unstable women should be prevented from reading novels. One eminent physician recommended books on beekeeping!

Q: Is the story essentially one of slow improvement?

A: In some ways, but not altogether. I was struck by just how similar attitudes to women's reading were in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Europe and in Ancient Rome. In both contexts women were encouraged to read only insofar as it provided them with a moral training, or helped them to be good mother-educators. The other parallel was that literate women reflected their husband's social status.

Q: Were you ever discouraged from reading or denied access to certain books?

A: Both my parents were keen readers but my father didn't think I should read stories in which people died—which ruled out a good deal! They used to call me either a "bookworm" or a "great reader." Even when quite young I saw how very different those descriptions were.

Praise for Belinda Jack’s George Sand:

“[Jack’s] approach is psychological but with a light touch. . . . Thorough without being pedantic. . . . A pleasure to read.”—Library Journal

“Focused and engaging.”—New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Belinda Jack is tutorial Fellow in French, Christ Church, University of Oxford. She is the author of George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large and Beatrice's Spell. She lives in Oxford, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300197209
• ISBN 13: 9780300197204
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 344