Showing results for "Icons" in Women's Fiction

Cathy Kotsikas is as unsettled as anyone in postwar Britain. A hasty marriage has become an exhausting clash of personalities. Leon, her Greek husband, as charming as he is ruthless and self-centred, understands neither her mildly eccentric character nor her need for freedom. Cathy’s sanctuary is Sandlings, a remote cottage on the barren Suffolk coast left to her by her grandfather. For Leon, however, his business in London and the restoration of his family home in Greece are of paramount importance.

Emma is Jane Austen’s most subtle and deceptively brilliant portrait of privilege, misunderstanding, and the unpredictable pathways of the human heart. At the center stands Emma Woodhouse, clever, charming, wealthy, and absolutely certain she knows what is best for everyone around her.

Middlemarch is a novel by the English author Mary Anne Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. It first appeared in eight installments in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midland town, from 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events.

Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest.

Taken from the poverty of her parent's home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawfords arrive in the neighborhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work, with its quiet subtle examination of social position and moral integrity.

Emma is a novel about youthful hubris and romantic misunderstandings. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. The novel was first published in December 1815, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian—Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners, and depicts issues of marriage, sex, age, and social status.

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City.

Love and Freindship [sic] is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790, when Austen was 14 years old. Love and Freindship (the misspelling is one of many in the story) is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. This is clear even from the subtitle, "Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love," which neatly undercuts the title. Written in epistolary form, it resembles a fairy tale as much as anything else, featuring wild coincidences and turns of fortune, but Austen is determined to lampoon the conventions of romantic stories.