Reading women's worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing

the long version

Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing 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 even, or may be more ambitious, such as the dream of an entire country created for and inhabited exclusively by women. Sharon L. Jansen places these texts in conversation with one another, pairing them in ways that reveal the writers' distinctive voices even while they speak of the dream they share.