Although the ""bitch"" has always commanded a prominent spot in popular culture - television, movies, art - she virtually disappeared from the work of the second wave of feminist writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Now, announces Sarah Appleton Aguiar, the bitch is back, returned once more to cultural centre stage in the world of serious literature. Feminist writers such as Mary Gordon and Alice Walker, to name only two, felt obligated to subvert literary misrepresentations of females as dimensionless, to refute preconceptions of objectified characters, and, of paramount importance, to create memorable women full of complexity and character. They wanted to create a subjective reality for their protagonists. And, argues Aguiar, they suceeded admirably. But along the road to subjectivity, that vital woman, empowered with anger, with ruthless survival instincts - the bitch - was banished from the pages of feminist fiction. The village gossips, calculating gold-diggers, merciless backstabbers, sinful sirens, evil stepmothers, deadly daughters, twisted sisters, hags, bags and crones - all had vanished from the fiction written by women. Ubiquitous in other forms of media, the bitch was noticeably absent from the feminist literary canon. Aguiar, however, points to indications in contemporary culture that the season of the bitch is fast approaching. Contemporary feminist writers and theorists are making substantial re-evaluations of the archetypal bitch. Focusing on the traits and the types of guises usually associated with this vital character, Aguiar discusses such characters as Zenia in Margaret Atwood's ""The Robber Bride"", Ruth Patchett in Fay Weldon's ""The Life and Loves of a She-Devil"", Sula in Toni Morrison's ""Sula"" and Ginny in Jane Smiley's ""A Thousand Acres"".

About the Author
Sarah Appleton Aguiar is an assistant professor of English at Murray State University, where she teaches women's literature and contemporary literature.

Reviews
Aguiar accurately perceives that contemporary women writers are reclaiming and celebrating a figure that both literary history and conventional literary criticism have regarded as negative: the woman who is willfully and unapologetically 'bad' by societal standards and who, in her opposition to conventional approved female behavior, manifests an individual strength which she can share with others. - Nancy A. Walker, author of The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition



Book Information
ISBN 9780809323623
Author Sarah Appleton Aguiar
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 284g