Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Reading Nafisi at the YMCA

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 1-8

3. I Have a Dream: Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 9-42

4. We Need to Talk: Conversation in Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women and Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 43-70

5. Design for Living: Women’s Communities in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 71-100

6. Paradise Lost: Men in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and Doris Lessing’s The Cleft

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 101-128

7. Hell Hath No Fury: Rage in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paternal Tyranny and Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 129-160

8. Madwomen in the Attic: Madness and Suicide in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen”

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 161-186

9. Brave New Worlds: Sexual Slavery in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Slavenka Drakuliċ’s S. A Novel about the Balkans

   • Sharon L. Jansen

   Pages 187-212

10. Still Crazy after All These Years: Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran

    • Sharon L. Jansen

    Pages 213-222

11. Back Matter

    Pages 223-243

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In this work, Jansen explores a recurring theme in writing by women:  the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men.  These imagined "women's worlds" may be very small, a single room, for example, but many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities, even entire countries, created for and inhabited exclusively by women.

• novel
• Virginia Woolf
• women
• British and Irish Literature

"Jansen reveals hidden works (and 'worlds') of de Pizan, Moderata Fonte, Mary Astell, Arcangela Tarabotti, Margaret Cavendish, and Valerie Solanas. The revelations are excellent, but the real pleasure is the unexpected colloquy of women discussing the condition of women, and delighted (or alarmed) to find themselves in the same metaphorical room." - CHOICE

'Jansen does what she does best, that is pull us into the story and help us understand her interpretation. Reading this new work, I felt as though I was becoming re-acquainted with an old friend sharing her new knowledge. Jansen has brought her informative conversational style that was so well done in her earlier works to this new discussion of women and their texts.' - Shawndra Holderby, Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, USA

"Jansen has identified a crucial theme which has not been explored in the scholarly literature, skillfully balancing her discovery of a unifying element with an extremely diverse group of women - worlds apart. Jansen's achievement is that she offers a cogent argument that respects and celebrates the different historical moments and cultural spaces that her authors occupy . . . This is refreshing to read, and her audience will be well-served . . . Her writing is engaging, instructive, and inspiring." - Victoria L. Mondelli, Director, Teaching Learning Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, USA

Sharon Jansen is the author of Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughter, The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe, and Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms to Henry VIII.

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