Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture Paperback – January 1, 1998
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHenry Holt & Co
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1998
- Dimensions6 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100805055495
- ISBN-13978-0805055498
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Product details
- Publisher : Henry Holt & Co; Reprint edition (January 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0805055495
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805055498
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,292,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #31,908 in Women's Studies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Also, the dust jacket and promotional blurbs made it seem like the author would be carrying his argument further into the modern day than the book does. The author accuses the modern vampire story of still carrying out these prejudices, but it would actually be very interesting to use the arguments made in this book to look at how the vampire changed sometime in the 80s and 90s to a more sympathetic figure who is often painted as more intellectual, artistic, etc. than those around him or her, and then the change in the aughts to a vampire as an elite who is forced to do violent things to maintain their power, and who is often given the traditional trappings of American old money aristocracy rather than assumed to have come from someplace else. The argument in the book stops with Hitler and his contemporaries.
I think this book is best read at the same time as Idols of Perversity, which has more examples and sources even though they don't stretch into films, pulp magazines, etc. It explains a lot of the terms the author uses in this book. If I had to pick one book to make the argument, though, I'd pick this one, because it's less dense so it's easier to get an overview of the author's ideas about this topic. This book also makes more of a case for these ideas still being relevant to the modern day reader, even though it lacks examples from the later half of the 20th century or anything from the 21st.
I think a lot of people will read either book and just say "This book accuses my favorite writers and artists of being racist misogynists!" and be offended and leave, but the author makes it clear that he's arguing that the ideas he's discussing were held by the majority at that time, and that he is not accusing these artists of being bad people, just arguing that NOT examining these ideas as the product of a racist misogynistic culture gives them more power.
This book is especially relevant right now to people who have been nervous about the resurgence of white supremacy and anti feminist groups on the internet. I've heard some of these terms and ideas thrown around by people on reddit or imageboards but not known where they came from.
Even though I still felt that way at the end, I felt that he paled in comparison to the people he studied. All those people made women seem to evil to the point they should've been gawked at. That said, they could've been indoctrinated and I imagine it's hard to resist that kind of teaching. Of course, I can't overlook the women. All they seemed to do was parrot their male cohorts while adding their own little twist. However, I assumed that was to gain an audience. Also, I gave a pass to Theodosia Goodman. She played by their double standard just to have a short career.
On another note, I found that the book became repetitive and immature when to sex and death. Of course, this just occurred at times. In fact, it was such a hard read that I almost quit! What stopped me is the fact that I had less than 100 pages to read. So I soldiered on. In addition, I thought page 144 was kind of powerful. There are still millions of people who operate by this kind of backwards logic. Also, there's a lot of people who glorify abusive relationships.


