Book Description
In a pioneering study of the three best-known French women writers of the 20th century, Bethany Ladimer examines the ways in which the aging process shaped their creativity and their lives. Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, and Marguerite Duras all lived long lives and were prolific writers until the end. Bethany Ladimer's developmental approach to their creativity takes into account literary analysis but also discusses their work and lives from the standpoint of history and the social sciences, a three-way conjunction that considers age, gender, and a culture that depends on the ideas of sexual difference for its national identity. She incorporates the work of Betty Friedan, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Margaret Gulette, among others, into her study.Asking how a French woman's heritage affects the way she writes when she has gone beyond the age when women are usually considered sexually desirable, Ladimer examines the problems and resolutions that face aging women in France. The light she sheds on the question illuminates the relationship between femininity and aging in all Western societies.
Card catalog description
"In a pioneering study of the three best-known French women writers of the twentieth century, Bethany Ladimer examines the ways in which the aging process shaped their creativity and their lives. Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, and Marguerite Duras all lived long lives and were prolific writers until the end. Ladimer's developmental approach to their creativity takes into account literary analysis and also discusses their work and lives from the standpoint of history and the social sciences, a conjunction that considers age, gender, and a culture that depends on the ideas of sexual difference for its national identity. She incorporates the work of Betty Friedan, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Margaret Gulette, among others, into her study."--BOOK JACKET.
About the Author
Bethany Ladimer is professor of French language and literature at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, and the author of articles on 20th-century French writers in Yale French Studies, Critical Quarterly, Feminist Studies, and Romance Quarterly.
Colette, Beauvoir and Duras: Age and Women Writers FROM THE PUBLISHER
A pioneering study of Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, & Marguerite Duras and the ways in which the aging process shaped their creativity, their work, and their lives. Examines each woman's identity--as a French woman, as an aging woman, & as a woman writer.
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