| Gerald Gray's Wife and Lily: A Novel Contributor(s): King, Susan Petigru (Author), Pease, William H. (Editor), Pease, Jane H. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0822314118 ISBN-13: 9780822314110 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $29.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 1993 Annotation: "What makes King's writing so striking . . . is that she wrote from the inside, but from the perspective of an outsider. . . . Where so many women's authors struggled to close the gap between morals and manners, and thus discover their femininity, King speaks from the gap--often angry, always knowingly. . . . She articulates many of the key social and moral struggles that marked the experience of upper class southern women."--Steven. M. Stowe, Indiana University "King's characterization of women's roles and plantation life is arresting, interesting. Even more compelling is her response to the literary trends and writers of the day."--Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, Louisiana State University |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 93015632 |
| Physical Information: 1.21" H x 5.85" W x 9.03" (1.36 lbs) 400 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Susan Petigru King wrote and published virtually all of her novels and short stories just before and during the American civil war, although her fiction deals neither with slavery nor sectional politics. Set in her native Charleston and its surrounding plantations, King's novels explore the social life and sexual politics of South Carolina's privileged antebellum elite. In the tradition of nineteenth-century domestic novels, King's writings chronicle courtships and marriages, love and jealousy. The republication of these long-neglected novels will introduce contemporary readers to the imaginative power of an important southern American woman writer. Lily, King's best known novel, was originally published by Harper and Brothers in 1855. In this work, King skewers the rituals of courtship that propel its wealthy young heroine toward marriage and a melodramatic death. Gerald Gray's Wife, King's last novel, plays out the ironies of a plain woman who survives--but barely--the revelations that destroy her seemingly perfect marriage and acquired beauty. In both novels, women's jealousies and men's deceptions are the forces that propel King's often satirical pen. Largely lacking the moral instruction so common among nineteenth-century domestic novelists, King's novels are differentiated by their critical perspective on women's position, their exploration of themes of failure and frustration, and their focus on the drawing room and ballroom rather than the kitchen and nursery. |