Silences (58 page)

p [and pb] = paperback

h = hardcover

op = out of print

d = drama

f = fiction

b = biography or autobiography

Four 100-Year-Old Women (read, preferably, as a cluster, and with 1), 2), 3) above in mind.)

Grandmother Brown: Her First Hundred Years (1827–1927)
, ed. Harriet Conner Brown. b/op

Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian
, ed. Nancy O. Lurie. b/p

Autobiography of Mother Jones
, ed. Mary Field Parton. b/p

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman
, by Ernest Gaines. f/p

Fiction

Alcott, Louisa May. “Transcendental Wild Oats,” in Bronson Alcott,
Fruitlands
, comp. by Clara Endicott Sears. b/op

Cather,
Willa.
My Antonia
. f/p

Childress, Alice.
Wedding Band
. d/p

Dinesen, Isak. “Sorrow-acres,” in
Winter’s Tales
. f/p

Ellis, Katherine.
Life of an Ordinary Woman
. b/op

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield. “Ann Story,” in
A Harvest of Stories
. f/h

Glasgow, Ellen.
Barren Ground; Vein of Iron
. f/p

Greenberg, Joanne.
In This Sign
. f/p

Hansberry, Lorraine.
Raisin in the Sun
. d/p

Hughes, Mary Gray. “The Thousand
Springs,” in
The Thousand Springs
. f/p

Le Sueur, Meridel. “The Annunciation,” in
The Annunciation
. f/op

Lewis, Janet.
The Wife of Martin Guerre
. b/p

Mansfield, Katherine. “The Woman at the Store,” in
The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
. f/p

Marriott, Alice.
Ten Grandmothers
. b/h

Murray, Pauli.
Proud Shoes
. f/h

Petry, Ann.
The Street
. f/p

Porter, Katherine Anne. “The Jilting of Granny
Weatherall,” in
The Old Order
. f/p

Walker, Alice.
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
. f/p

Walker, Margaret.
Jubilee
. f/p

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Children’s series, including
By the Shores of Silver Lake—These Happy Golden Years
. f/p

Woolf, Virginia. “Memories of a Working Women’s Guild,” in
The Captain’s Death Bed
. b/h

Wright, Sarah E.
This Child’s Gonna Live
. f/p

Slaveys, Servants, Servers

Anderson, Barbara.
Southbound
. f/h

Chekhov, Anton. “A Sleepyhead,” in
The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov
. f/h

Childress, Alice.
Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life
. b/h

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Mary Moody Emerson,” in
Lectures and Biographical Sketches
, will have to represent the lives of countless unmarried girls and women spent in the hardest kind of service, whenever
and wherever needed by any family branches. b/h

Hellman, Lillian. “Sophronia” in
An Unfinished Woman
. b/p

Hurst, Fannie.
Lummox
. f/op

Mansfield, Katherine. “The Child Who Was Tired,” “Life of Ma Parker,” and “The Tiredness of Rosabel,” in
The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
. f/p

Parker, Dorothy. “Clothe the Naked,” in
Collected Stories
. f/h

Porter, Katherine Anne, Hatsy in “Holiday,”
Collected Stories
. f/p

Powell, Margaret.
Below Stairs
. b/p

Myth Dispellers

Peretz, Isaac Leib. “She Women,” in
Stories and Pictures
. f/op

Reyher, Rebecca H.
Zulu Woman
. b/p

Some Women in Works by Men

Agee, James.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
. b/p

Chekhov, Anton. “In the Ravine” and “Peasants,” in
Seven Short Novels
. f/p

Clarke, Adam.
Memoires of the Wesley Family
. (Susannah Wesley, mother
of John and eleven other children—a marvelous example of 3) above.) b/op

DuBois, W. E. B. Josie in “On the Meaning of Progress,”
The Souls of Black Folk
. b/p

Gorky, Maxim. Gorky’s grandmother in
Childhood
. f/p

——.
Mother
. f/p

Hardy, Thomas.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. f/p

Lawrence, D. H.
Sons and Lovers
, especially Part I. f/p

O’Casey, Sean.
Collected Plays
; “Mrs. Cassidy Takes a Holiday,”
in
Inishfallen Fare Thee Well
. d/p b/p

Rolvaag, O. E.
Giants in the Earth
. f/p

Sinclair, Upton.
The Jungle
. f/p

Wright, Richard. “Bright and Morning Star,” in
Uncle Tom’s Children
. f/p

Zola, Emile.
L’Assommoir
;
Germinal
, (Section I, part 2). f/p

Tillie Olsen’s Reading List III (
Women’s Studies Newsletter,
Summer 1973)

Women: A List out of Which to Read

Most Women’s Lives (continued)

MOTHERING
AND WIFEHOOD: Mothering (as distinguished from Motherhood) and Wifehood are rarely major or even minor parts of literature, although women have always been defined by them, and they are the major parts of most women’s lives. Women’s courses do not know, or do not understand, the necessity of including the relatively few works that tell something of what mothering and/or wifehood mean.

I. These
titles repeated from the two previous listings are essential reading, preferably as a cluster.

Arnow, Harriet.
The Dollmaker
(pb).

Brown, Harriet.
Grandmother Brown, Her First Hundred Years
(biog., op).

Richardson, H. H.
Ultima Thule
(op).

Stead, Christina.
The Man Who Loved Children
(pb).

Woolf, Virginia.
To the Lighthouse
(pb).

Wright, Sarah E.
This Child’s Gonna Live
(pb).

Stories:

Cather, Willa. “A Wagner Matinee,” in
Troll Garden
.

Gaines, Ernest. “The Sky Is Gray,” in
Bloodline
(pb).

Mansfield, Katherine. “Six Years After,” in
The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
.

II.

Colette.
My Mother’s House
(pb) and other glimpses of Sido in
Earthly Paradise
(pb).

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield.
Fables for Parents
, especially “The Forgotten Mother” (op).

Lessing, Doris. The section
“Free Women II,” in
The Golden Notebook
(pb).

Paley, Grace.
The Little Disturbances of Man
(op but soon to be reprinted in pb).

Schreiner, Olive.
From Man to Man
(op).

Struther, Jan. “Three Stockings,” in
Mrs. Miniver
(op).

III. Add to the Agee, Gorky, Lawrence, O’Casey (
Juno and the Paycock, Plough and the Stars
), Wright, titles in “Some Women in Works by Men” in Reading List II, Henry Roth’s
Call It Sleep
(pb); that Jewish mother should be contrasted with Phillip Roth’s Sophie in
Portnoy’s Complaint
(Pb).

IV. The conflict mother/writer is written of in Storm Jameson’s autobiography,
Journey to the North
, and in letters in
Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe
, Annie Fields, ed. (op).

Tillie Olsen’s Reading List IV (
Women’s Studies Newsletter,
Winter 1974)

A List Out of Which
to Read, Extend Range, Comprehension

* = a classic of its kind and essential reading

# = only part of the book is concerned with these years

j = merits adult attention, although usually classified as children’s book

t = written by young women (thirty or under)

Forms and Formings: The Younger Years

These books are listed in their own kind of order, arranged in a spectrum by the period of
time they cover, or in clusters for special reasons.

The Younger Years: A Spectrum of Girlhoods

*
 
Charlotte Brönte.
Jane Eyre
. pb/f/t

*
 
George Eliot.
The Mill on the Floss
. pb/f

*
 
Louisa May Alcott.
Little Women
. pb/f/j/t

*
 
Benjamin A. Botkin. “Jenny Proctor’s Story” in
Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery
. pb/b

*
 
Olive Schreiner.
Story of an African Farm
. pb/f/t

*
 
Sarah Grand.
The Beth Book
. op/f

*
 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Eighty Years and More
. #/pb/b

*
 
Nancy Lurie, ed.
Mountain Wolf Woman
. #/pb/b

*
 
Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Little House in the Big Woods
to
These Happy Golden Years
(Pioneer Series). pb/b/j

*
 
Mary Johnston.
Hagar
. op/f

*
 
Agnes Smedley.
Daughter of Earth
. pb/f/t

*
 
Vera Brittain.
Testament of Youth
. op/b

*
 
Catherine Cookson.
Our Kate
. #/b/pb

*
 
Olivia.
Olivia
. op/b

*
 
Elizabeth Maddox Roberts.
Time of Man
. op/f

*
 
Katherine Anne Porter. “The Grave,” and Miranda in “Old Order” in
Leaning Tower and Other Stories
. pb/f

*
 
Dawn Powell.
My Home Is Far Away
. op/f

*
 
James Agee. Young Emma and Ivy in
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
. pb/b

*
 
Christina Stead.
The Man Who Loved Children
(patriarchy). pb/f

*
 
Lore Segal.
Other People’s Houses
. op/f

*
 
Paule
Marshall.
Brown Girl, Brownstones
. pb/f

*
 
Toni Morrison.
The Bluest Eye
. pb/f

*
 
Alix Kates Schulman.
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen
. #/pb/f

*
 
A trilogy of the 1950s, preferably read as a cluster
:

            
Sylvia Plath.
The Bell Jar
. pb/f/t

  
*
   
Hannah Green (Joanna Greenberg).
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
. pb/f/t

            
Barbara Probst Solomon.
The Beat of Life
. op/f/t

H. C.
Brown.
Grandmother Brown: Her First Hundred Years
. #/op/b Zdena Berger.
Tell Me Another Morning
(girlhood in Auschwitz). op/f Jeanette Everly.
Bonnie Jo, Go Home
(a pregnant teenager). pb/f/j

Girlhood Labor (in addition to unpaid, necessary household labor)

Dorothy Sterling.
Freedom Train: The Life of Harriet Tubman
. b/pb/j

Herman Melville. “Paradise of Bachelors and Tartarus of Maids,” in
Complete Stories
. h/f

Rebecca Harding Davis.
Margret Howth
. op/f

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
The Silent Partner
. f/op

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. “28th of January,” in
Sixteen for One
. f/op

Ida Pruitt.
Daughter of Han
. pb/b

Lucy Larcom.
New England Girlhood
. h/b;
An Idyl of Work
. h/p

Emile Zola. Seventeen-year old Catherine in
Germinal
. pb/f

W. E. B. DuBois. Josie in “On the Meaning of Progress,”
in
The Souls of Black Folk
. pb/essay

Katherine Mansfield. “The Child Who Was Tired,” in
Short Stories
. h/f

Anton Chekhov. “Sleepyhead,” in
Best Known Works
. pb/f

L. B. Honwana. “Dina,” in
We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories of Mozambique
. op/f

Also see Cookson, Powell, Yezierska, Holland, Wilde, Smedley, Brönte, Moody and Varney. Begin counting the numberless and nameless “little maids”
and slaves or slaveys who populate fiction of the past.

Childhoods

*
 
Dorothy Canfield.
Understood Betsy
. pb/f/j