Clever Girls and the Literature of Women's Upward Mobility

• Main Author: Eagleton, Mary (Author, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2018.
• Subjects: Literature, Modern-20th century.; Literature, Modern-21st century.; Social history.; Social structure.; Social inequality.; Culture.; Gender.; Sociology.; Contemporary Literature.; Twentieth-Century Literature.; Social History.; Social Structure, Social Inequality.; Culture and Gender.; Gender Studies.

This book follows the figure of 'the clever girl' from the post-war to the present and focuses on the fiction, plays and memoirs of contemporary British women writers. Spurred on by an ethic of meritocracy, the clever girl is now facing austerity and declining social mobility. Though sugge...

Table of Contents:

• 1. Introduction: The Language of Upward Mobility
• 2. Escaping Origins
• 3.Relative Values: Career, Marriage, Maternity
• 4. Troublesome Bodies
• 5. New Forms, New Selves
• 6. 'Top Girls' and Other Epithets
• 7. 'The Haves' and 'the Have-Nots'
• 8. Coda: Phantom Feminism.