Archetypal Patterns in Women's FictionArchetypal patterns endure because they give expression to perennial dilemmas submerged in the collective unconscious. Having examined more than 300 novels by both major and minor women writers over three centuries, Annis Pratt perceives in women's fiction distinctive elements of plot, characterization, image, and tone. She argues that women's fiction should be read as a mutually illuminative or interrelated field of texts reflecting feminine archetypes that are signals of a repressed tradition in conflict with patriarchal culture. Pratt suggests that the archetypal patterns in women's fiction provide a ritual expression containing the potential for the reader's personal transformation and that women's novels constitute literary variations on preliterary folk practices that are available in the realm of imagination even when they have long been absent from day-to-day life. |
Contents
The Novel of Development | 13 |
ENCLOSURE IN THE PATRIARCHY | 39 |
The Novel of Social Protest | 59 |
Copyright | |
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A. A. Knopf achieve adolescent alienated androgynous archetypal archetypal patterns authenticity becomes bildungsroman Brontë century characterizes Charlotte Charlotte Brontë consciousness culture daughter death denouement depicts described Doris Lessing Drabble Elizabeth Ellen enclosure Eros erotic eroticism experience father feel female feminine Feminism feminist figure Four-Gated City gender norms genre girl goddess grail green-world lover hero's heterosexual human husband images inner Jane Jean Rhys Joanna Joyce Carol Oates Jung Jung's lesbian Lessing's Lighthouse live London madness male Margaret Margaret Atwood Margaret Drabble marital marriage married Martha Mary masculine Middlemarch mind modern mother narrative nature novel of development novel of marriage novelists passion patriarchal plot portrait punishment quest Ramsay Ramsay's rape rebirth journey relationship remarks roles romantic love Rosamond Lehmann Sarton selfhood sexual politics single woman social society solitude stereotype stories tion transcend unconscious vision wife witch women authors women heroes women's fiction women's novels Woolf writes York young