Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies on Brontë, Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood, by Barbara Hill Rigney. The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 1978 (Book Review)

Authors

Nancy Topping Bazin, Old Dominion UniversityFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1979

Publication Title

Doris Lessing Newsletter

Volume

3

Issue

2

Pages

6

Abstract

[First Paragraph] Barbara Hill Rigney's aim in Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel is "to reconcile feminism and psychology in the areas of literary criticism" and "to find examples in the major works of four representative feminist writers of the relationship between madness and the female condition." (p. 3). Rigney analyzes four novels, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Doris Lessing's The Four-Gated City, and Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, and finds that "all depict insanity in relation to sexual politics and state that madness, to a greater or lesser degree, is connected to the female social condition " (p. 7).

Comments

Posted Open Access with the permission of the publisher.

Original Publication Citation

Bazin, N.T. (1979). Madness and sexual politics in the feminist novel: Studies on Brontë, Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood, by Barbara Hill Rigney. The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 1978 (Book Review). Doris Lessing Newsletter, 3(2), 6.

Repository Citation

Topping Bazin, Nancy, "Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies on Brontë, Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood, by Barbara Hill Rigney. The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 1978 (Book Review)" (1979). English Faculty Publications. 68.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/68