Courting Failure: Women and the Law in Twentieth-century LiteratureFor the past twenty years, the law and literature movement has been gaining ground. More recently, a feminist perspective has enriched the field. With Courting Failure: Women and the Law in Twentieth-Century Literature, Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson adds a compelling voice to the discussion. Courting Failure critically explores the representation of women, fictional and historical, in conflict with the law. Macpherson focuses on the judicial system and the staging of women's guilt, examining both the female suspect and the female victim in a wide variety of media, including novels like Toni Morrison's Beloved and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, theatrical plays, movies such as I Want to Live! and Legally Blonde, and the television series Ally McBeal. In these texts and others, canonical or popular, Macpherson exposes the court as an arena in which women often fail, or succeed only by subverting the system. Combining feminist literary theory with the discourse of the law and literature movement, Courting Failure is a highly readable and analytically rigorous study of justice and gender on the page and screen. |
From inside the book
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Page 63
... comes to feel almost mater- nal affection for Rufus , even as he grows to be a man of his time , a man who sees her as a " nigger " and who supports and upholds the slavery even of his own children and the enslavement of a woman he ...
... comes to feel almost mater- nal affection for Rufus , even as he grows to be a man of his time , a man who sees her as a " nigger " and who supports and upholds the slavery even of his own children and the enslavement of a woman he ...
Page 135
... comes at the end of a chapter . Throughout the novel , Miller utilizes a tech- nique of narrative suspension to highlight particular events , to force her readers into acknowledging aspects of the text that are challeng- ing of societal ...
... comes at the end of a chapter . Throughout the novel , Miller utilizes a tech- nique of narrative suspension to highlight particular events , to force her readers into acknowledging aspects of the text that are challeng- ing of societal ...
Page 222
... comes to women defendants , they look closely at the spectacles they make — or are made into . But also on the other ... come , a process also undertaken by the wives of the law in Trifles , dis- cussed in the previous chapter . These ...
... comes to women defendants , they look closely at the spectacles they make — or are made into . But also on the other ... come , a process also undertaken by the wives of the law in Trifles , dis- cussed in the previous chapter . These ...
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Courting Failure: Women and the Law in Twentieth-century Literature Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
abuse Adam African American Alias Grace Alice Ally McBeal Amanda Andrea Pia Yates Anna Anne Annette Bennington appears argues Aristodemou Atwood chapter child constructed context court courtroom crime criminal critics Culture death Dessa Rose Dessa's Doris edited episode example explore fact female femininity Feminism feminist fictional film focuses Foucault gaze gender Grace Marks Graham guilty Hays Code historical husband Ibid innocence Isla italics in original Jacqueline St judge Judith Resnik jury Justice killed Kingston Penitentiary law and literature Law Review lawyer Legally Blonde lesbian literary Lizzie Borden London male Manon Margaret mother motherhood murder novel offers Oxford panopticon play position Press Gang prison punishment rape relation Resnik Robin West Roddy role Rufel Sarah scene Sethe Sethe's sexual Sibyl slave Slave Narratives slavery social stance story suggests Susan texts tion trial University Press violence voice Weisberg woman women Wuornos Yates York