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. |
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Page 25
... human beings . Thus , it necessarily engages with constructions of family , and especially the role of motherhood , in a system that denied blood relations and treated human beings as chattel . As one of the characters in Toni ...
... human beings . Thus , it necessarily engages with constructions of family , and especially the role of motherhood , in a system that denied blood relations and treated human beings as chattel . As one of the characters in Toni ...
Page 71
... human law gets muddled . This passage also jumbles up a variety of wants , from owning a doll to receiving education ; however , the very nature of the jumble is instructive . A slave cannot own even her own labor , much less a product ...
... human law gets muddled . This passage also jumbles up a variety of wants , from owning a doll to receiving education ; however , the very nature of the jumble is instructive . A slave cannot own even her own labor , much less a product ...
Page 200
... human being , whatever the circumstances . In the final scenes of the film , the Bonners are reunited , both per- haps a little wiser about the ways of the opposite sex ( Adam has play- acted tears to get his way , and Amanda has ...
... human being , whatever the circumstances . In the final scenes of the film , the Bonners are reunited , both per- haps a little wiser about the ways of the opposite sex ( Adam has play- acted tears to get his way , and Amanda has ...
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Courting Failure: Women and the Law in Twentieth-century Literature Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson No preview available - 2007 |
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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