A collection of essays about women in literature, whether they are writing the novels (Plath, Woolf, the Brontes, Zelda Fitzgerald), women characters of male writers (Ibsen's plays), or they were women in the shadow of great writers (Jane Carlyle, Dorothy Wordsworth, also Zelda...). Hardwick is able to capture almost mini-biographies of these people and characters, and their relation to history and men and readers. Whenever I find myself reading classics, I often have a thought in the back of my mind about how women were written in that point in time... and Hardwick wrote these essays in the '70s, and even so much has changed since then. There are moments that I didn't agree with, but perhaps that's because I'm a woman reading this in 2018.

I was most taken by the essays on the Brontes, Zelda Fitzgerald, and surprisingly, the essay on Hedda Gabler. I remember just absolutely loving the play when I read it in college, and dissected it, too. And now I feel like I need to re-read... because it may seem different now.

Will definitely be reading more Hardwick...