Hamlet's Mother and Other Women [Paperback]

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0345372085 | ISBN-13: 978-0345372086 | Publication Date: April 16, 1991

In the three decades since her revolutionary and seminal article "The Character of Hamlet's Mother," Carolyn Heilbrun has been a prophet in the field of women and literature, gender and culture. This collection of graceful and uncompromising essays charts her development as a feminist writer and critic, which has culminated in such groundbreaking works as REINVENTING WOMANHOOD and WRITING A WOMAN'S LIFE.

Shakespeare's Gertrude was first among many literary figures illuminated by Heilbrun's feminist sensibility. Others include Homer's Penelope -- an archetypal single parent, weaving herself a new life for which she was given no script; Jo in LITTLE WOMEN, a model of autonomy for generations of female readers; Elizabeth Bennet, remarkable for the promise of friendship in her marriage with Darcy; and Harrriet Vane, outrageously unique on many counts. The consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision in matched only by its heterogeneity, as she discusses Margaret Mead and Freud's daughters, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, resistance to feminist studies in academia, mothers and daughters, fiction and myth, tomboys and surrogate sons, and the detective story, of which Heibrun herself (as Amanda Cross) is one of the ablest practitioners. HAMLET'S MOTHER AND OTHER WOMEN will spark recognition, again and again, in readers on their own quest for female redefinition.

"[A] witty, learned collection of essays . . . filled with delicate, sometimes startling gems of perception . . . . Provocative." -- New York Newsday

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this collection of essays and speeches advocating the application of feminist criticism to the canon of English literature, Heilbrun ( Writing a Woman's Life ), humanities professor at Columbia University, also offers an acute view of the politics of academia. Leading off with a reprint of her first published article, "The Character of Hamlet's Mother" ( Shakespeare Quarterly , 1957), in which she argues ably against the then-prevailing interpretation of Gertrude as frail and passive, Heilbrun organizes pieces written in the '70s and '80s according to such topics as "Exemplary Women" and "Feminism and the Profession of Literature." During these years she declared herself more fully a feminist--one who "questions the gender arrangements in society and culture . . . and works to change them." Calling upon such related fields as psychology and semiotics, she focuses on the lives and writings of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, E. M. Forster, Vera Brittain, May Sarton and others. As an academic, she is forthright and courageous; as a feminist, eloquent and persuasive; as critic, erudite, graceful and revolutionary: "Tender buttons as well as phalluses can organize a vision.' '
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

[Heilbrun's] arguments for the centrality of feminist criticism are advanced with passion and enlivened with wit.

(The New York Times Book Review )

A book to delight the heart... filled with delicate, sometimes startling gems of perception.

(New York Newsday )

A wonderful, living book for those who love to read and to think. It is engaged, fervent, good-humored; it is wise and intellectually substantive and a real pleasure to read.

(Andrea Dworkin ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 16, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345372085
• ISBN-13: 978-0345372086
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,480,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reinventing academia, October 26, 2004

By 

Villia (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (Paperback)

I read this book many years ago. Every few months I find myself thinking about a point that she raised, whether about literature or about the lives of academic women or about strong women in the 20th century. Heilbrun is a woman of complex insights written in a clear and accessible style! A wonderful read for lovers of literature and for feminists, male and female, young and old.

5.0 out of 5 stars "Women must make new fictions of their lives.", January 22, 2012

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (Paperback)

In one of the several introductory notes to the sections of this collection, Carolyn Heilbrun recounts that when she delivered one speech at a convention in 1985, "I could not see the Southern gentleman on the platform behind me, but I was later told that if looks could kill I would have dropped dead on the spot." (Having been present at another of her speeches during the same decade, I can vouch that she doesn't embellish the reaction.) The essay, "What Was Penelope Unweaving?," uses the story of Odysseus's wife to enlarge on the idea that "women must make new fictions of their lives." By today's standards, Heilbrun's speech is so innocuous--not to mention perceptive and textually grounded--that the reaction of the "Southern gentleman" is itself a comment on how far literary criticism and social attitudes have progressed in the intervening quarter century.

One can be thankful that even many members of the Old Guard--those still living, anyway--now understand that resurrecting and discussing writing by and about women is not a threat to but an enhancement of literature. And Heilbrun was one of those teachers largely responsible for the change in mindset, more effective than most because she scorned the tempting quagmires of jargon and was famous for her plain speaking. Even when you might disagree with her conclusions, her arguments make you think of literature and culture in new ways. This collection, first published in 1990, gathers twenty-one selections, including several well-regarded and groundbreaking essays and a few obscure pieces that deserve to be more widely read.

Among the highlights are the title essay (published in 1957!) and the explorations of the works of various authors. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorites, someone I've read and reread, but the two essays here have made me rethink her oeuvre entirely. (The essay on Woolf and Joyce, written in 1982 for a never-published anthology, is a must-read.) Heilbrun also examines, in two pairs of essays, Vera Brittain and May Sarton, two authors I haven't yet read but now realize I must. Her essays on detective fiction (Heilbrun wrote several novels under the pseudonym Amanda Cross) didn't necessarily make me want to read more whodunits but were entertaining and witty nonetheless.

Heilbrun compares some of her traditionalist opponents to creationists who treat "texts" as "isolated and reified" scripture. What these essays show, and what Heilbrun's critics miss, was that she and her colleagues were helping to make literature not just a matter for academic turgidity but also an exciting venture for new readers. "The excitement," she concludes in a speech given to chairs of English departments, "lies in making that new generation familiar with our discoveries; in realizing that we have a chance both to read masterpieces . . . and yet bring to the classroom the sense of wanting to call up the author." Through examination of their texts, Heilbrun argues, the authors themselves are never more than a metaphorical phone call away.