Hysterical Fictions: The ‘Woman’s Novel’ in the Twentieth Century

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The woman’s novel is a term used to describe fiction which, while immensely popular among educated women readers, sits uneasily between high and low culture. Clare Hanson argues that this hybrid status reflects the ambivalent position of its authors and readers, as educated women caught between identification with the male-gendered intellectual culture and a counter-experience of female embodiment. Through six case studies, the representation of a ‘mind/body problem’ is explored in the fiction of Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Drabble, A.S.Byatt and Anita Brookner.