Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. What Did Women Want?: Post-War Masculinity in the Woman's Novel of the 1950s 3. 'Mothers Without Partners': the Single Mother Narrative of the 1960s 4. She's Leaving Home: the 'College Girl' Narrative of the 1970s 5. Shopping as Work: the Sex and Shopping Novel of the 1980s 6. Keeping the Home Fires Burning: the Aga Saga of the 1990s 7. Shopping for Men: the Single Woman Narrative 8. Resentful Daughters: the Post-Feminist Novel? 9. Shopping for Meaning: The Spiritual Quest 10. Having It All: Work and Motherhood Afterword Bibliography Index
With new chapters on spiritual writing and the 'yummy mummy' novel, this guide surveys popular women's fiction in America and Britain from 1945 to today.
Deborah Philips is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the University of Brighton, UK. Her books include Fairground Attractions (2012), The Trojan Horse (2013) with Garry Whannel and Brave New Causes (1999) with Ian Haywood.
Her study will be welcomed by many women who have also read and
enjoyed 'middlebrow' novels alongside 'highbrow' counterparts. It
reveals the cultural currency of feminine popular fictions, and
elucidates the pleasures they offer, without denying their
occasionally serious limitations. * Times Literary Supplement *
Deborah Phillips has produced a most welcome addition to the
existing critical work on the "woman's novel", which is to say the
novel written by women that constructs its readers as
feminine...Women's Fiction 1945-2005 uses many of the approaches
that we have come to associate with Cultural Studies and offers an
enjoyable sense of time travel for those who are old enough to
remember the decades in the second half of the twentieth century...
* Maroula Joannou, Contemporary Women's Writing *
"Deborah Philips' study...is an invaluable text, deftly weaving
literary history with cultural critique, social commentary,
feminist analysis. Philips has achieved something truly remarkable
in this intelligent, savvy, and provocative work of literary and
cultural inspiration." - Dr. Suzette Henke, Thruston B. Morton, Sr.
Professor of English, University of Louisville, USA
"Deborah Philips' study of what she terms women's "domestic
romance" from 1945 to 2005 is both entertaining and perceptive, at
once engaging and nicely judged. She looks at the shifting
sub-genres through the decades, amongst others, single mother
novels in the sixties, sex and shopping fiction in the eighties,
aga sagas in the nineties, and chick-lit up to the present day.
This is a welcome addition to feminist engagement in the field.
Astute, full of sharp political insights and alert to recent
cultural theory, it is a sparkling and persuasive account of the
changing concerns and tropes of women's popular fiction." -
Professor Helen Carr, Goldsmiths College, University of London,
UK.
Women writers of "middlebrow" fiction have often been disregarded
in terms of both the literary canon and feminists who otherwise
support and promote the writings of women. The truths these popular
writers wrote about were dismissed because the books were written
in the "correct" way, the way that appealed to literary circles.
Philips sought to change this perception with the first edition of
this book, in which she discussed, decade by decade, the important
and emerging themes of women's popular fiction alongside the themes
of the literary works of the day ... This updated edition carries
the reader to 2014, covering the current popular novels that depict
women "having it all" and the "spiritual quest" story. Philips's
opinion of the popular novel takes a more negative turn with these
mass market-produced books, obviously written to capitalize on one
success in the field, and she raises new questions about how
writing for women is marketed today. The book contains an expanded
bibliography and interesting new content. Summing Up: Recommended.
Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students;
professionals; general readers. -- R. Stone, Mt. St. Joseph
University * CHOICE *
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