Reimagining Women: Representations of Women in Culture

Patricia Morley is professor emeritus of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University and the author of Margaret Laurence: The Long
Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

As the punning title suggests, these 18 essays are concerned with areas
of feminist criticism and theory that involve representation and
perception. Images and patterns in literature and the visual arts have
been examined by Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Ellmann, Kate Millet, and
others. This book extends the discussion by addressing, for example,
perceived referential accuracy, the nature of audiences, and the social
relationships involved.

The essays were originally presented at a 1990 Royal Society
international conference held in Edmonton. Topics include new writing by
Australian women, images of racism in South-Asian Canadian women
writers, and “Women and Madness in a Nineteenth-Century Parisian
Asylum.” The latter essay (by Patricia Prestwick) draws on the history
of French medicine as well as on asylum records, and shows the intimate
relationship between these and the public perception of women and their
roles.

Reimagining Women makes a significant contribution to feminist theory
and women’s studies.