LIT 3383.001 Fall 2024 - Rafferty

This class is concerned with conceptions of women’s agency and empowerment and how they evolve in literature over the course of the 20th Century via women writers from the United States, Britain, and Ireland. The 19th century saw the emergence of romantic love as a powerful metaphor for idealized happiness and an avenue toward women’s identity, agency, and empowerment. Women writers in the 20th Century, however, challenge this ‘happily ever after’ metaphor and ask questions like, How do women’s friendships, families, and participation in motherhood interact with their agency? And what does it look like when women seize power for themselves? How are -isms embedded throughout these questions as these novels explore the dominant systems of power that structure women’s lives under threat of violence? Some of these novels, poems, and short stories are authored by Edith Wharton, Audre Lourde, Virginia Woolf, Ayn Rand, Dorothy Parker, Zadie Smith, and Toni Morrison.