GILBERT, Paula Ruth, Violence and the Female Imagination. Quebec's Women Writers Re-frame Gender in North American Cultures, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal-Kingston, 2006, 440 p.
ISBN : 0773530312
In the past twenty years Quebec women writers, including Aline Chamberland, Claire Dé, Suzanne Jacob, and Hélène Rioux, have created female characters who are fascinated with bold sexual actions and language, cruelty, and violence, at times culminating in infanticide and serial killing. Paula Ruth Gilbert argues that these Quebec feminist writers are "re-framing" gender.
Violence and the Female Imagination explores whether these imagined women are striking out at an external other or harming themselves through acts of self-destruction and depression. Gilbert examines the degree to which women are imitating men in the outward direction of their anger and hostility and suggests that such "tough" women may be mocking men in their "macho" exploits of sexuality and violence. She illustrates the ways in which Quebec female authors are "feminizing" violence or re-envisioning gender in North American culture.
Gilbert bridges methodological gaps and integrates history, sociology, literary theory, feminist theory, and other disciplinary approaches to provide a framework for the discussion of important ethical and aesthetic questions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS :
Acknowledgments
Introduction Regendering Violence and Appropriating Power:
Beyond the Binary
1 Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Violence and Gender: From “Real Life” to Theory to Literary Representation
2 Living Together in North America:
Canada, Quebec, and the United States
3 Who's the Subject Now?
The Female Imagination and Representations of Sex and Violence
4 Public and Private Violence:
The Novels of Infanticide/Filicide of Aline Chamberland and Suzanne Jacob
5 Regendering and Female Serial Killing in the Fiction of
Hélène Rioux, Anne Dandurand, and Claire Dé
Conclusion Women Imitating Men or the Feminization of Violence?
Re-Framing Gender in North American Cultures
Notes
Works Cited and Consulted
Index
Paula Ruth Gilbert is professor of French, Canadian, and women's studies, George Mason University.