Laura (Riding) Jackson set out to understand "the woman element in human identity". "The Word 'Woman'" belongs in the company of other works of gender study. It collects her most explicit writings on the subject. The title piece, published for the first time, was written in Majorca during 1933-5 when she and Robert Graves were associated in fruitful literary partnership. Left behind when they fled at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the manuscript was later in the possession of Robert Graves, who used Riding's thought as source material for "The White Goddess". By investigating definitions, historical and literary usages, the words of women about themselves, and the physical body of woman, Laura (Riding) Jackson seeks to understand the word "woman". Motherhood, "man-fever" in women, work satisfaction, sexual equality, and the essential relationship between man and woman are all considered. The book also includes three later essays, two stories, and an unpublished personal commentary on the relationship of her thought on woman to Robert Graves's.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Did Robert Graves "steal" the material for The White Goddess from Laura Riding's ( Selected Poems: In Five Sets ) unpublished writings, as Riding claimed? Now that this lost, uncompleted 1930s manuscript has surfaced, readers can judge for themselves. In "The Word Woman " Riding hypothesizes that there are two things man does not know: God and woman. Supporting her theory with quotes from literature and religion, she shows that while man divines God, when it comes to woman he attempts "to identify the different with himself." Having, in the editors' words, "achieved an extraordinary degree of success in a man's world," Riding (1901-1991) hoped to distance herself from autobiographical references, yet unexpected juxtapositions of material make this a very subjective study. Fleshing out this volume are two stories from the 1930s that, after didactic openings, show her ideas in action. As for essays dating from the 1960s and 1970s, her single theme--the place of women in the universe--becomes tiresome by the late 1970s; Riding is best when she tackles contemporary issues head-on, as when she makes a strong case for calling modern feminism "a movement of folly."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
This intense, intriguing work contains prose pieces by the modernist poet (Riding) Jackson (1901-91). Forming most of this volume is the unfinished and previously unpublished work The Word "Woman , " written in the Thirties, in which Jackson developed her understanding of woman's identity, unfolding fascinating revelations from her investigations of langugage and the human understanding of "woman" as found historically in definitions, religion, mythology, and literature. The author made bold, honest, controversial statements about the relations between the sexes and women's self-understanding. This message, among others, is reiterated in her essays as well as in the story "Women as People" (c.1934). An added feature is "Robert Graves's 'The White Goddess' " (1975), in which Jackson takes to task Graves, with whom she had a 13-year association, for appropriating her ideas. This book should be in all gender-studies collections.
- Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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