Plain and Ugly Janes: The Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contemporary American Fiction

Plain and Ugly Janes was the first book to define and explore the ramifications of a new character type in twentieth-century American literature - the ugly woman - whose roots can be traced to the old maid/spinster figure of the nineteenth century. Wright concludes that the ugly woman character enables authors to explore the ironies and inequalities inherent in the beauty system and to create more powerful and heroic females.