An exhilarating journey through the life, times and inner thoughts of some of the most creative women of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by a leading feminist writer
Jacqueline Rose is internationally acclaimed as a public intellectual for her writing on feminism, literature and psychoanalysis.She is Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London. In the Autumn term of 2014 she takes up the Diane Middlebrook/Carl Djerassi Chair in Gender Studies at Cambridge. From January 2015, she will be Professor of the Humanities at the Institute of the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London. Her many books include The Haunting of Sylvia Plath and On Not Being Able to Sleep, and a novel, Albertine. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. She lives in London.
This is the book we have been waiting for – a clarion call for us
all, men and women, to be bolder and brasher in our advocacy for
change but also more willing to embrace our own contradictions
*Helena Kennedy, QC*
A surfeit of elegance and intelligence
*Ali Smith, Observer Summer Reading*
Jacqueline Rose's book Women in Dark Times is pretty amazing
*Irvine Welsh*
A rigorously argued and at times breathtaking book … Many
paragraphs contain a controlled explosion; her analysis of men’s
fear of and fascination with female sexuality, born from the boy’s
early proximity to the mother’s body, is one of them … The book
closes with a clarion cry: “Women have been reasonable for far too
long” … Her reasoning, ironically, is as tight and sinuous as a
constrictor knot. It is a time to be afraid of the dark
*Frances Wilson, Daily Telegraph*
Rose confronts dark times with dark and moving stories from the
last century inspiring a new feminism for this one. By so doing she
keeps alive the dreams of so many women from Rosa Luxemburg and
Marilyn Monroe to young girls killed in the name of some perverted
sense of “honour”. Most likely a classic
*Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty*
This is not an easy book but a lucid, deeply absorbing and
strangely soothing one, in the way that a friend with boundless
curiosity, unflinching in the face of difficult truths, always
proves more comforting and interesting than the falsely cheerful,
draw-up-a-list sort. Rose offers erudite, multiple readings of the
lives and work of three very different sets of three women … I am
persuaded by Rose’s argument that women remain best placed to tune
in to the chronic insecurity and darkness of modern life
*Melissa Benn, New Statesman*
The portrait of Luxemburg is insightful, exhilarating and inspiring
… Her writing about Monroe is a deeply moving defence of a woman on
whom the postwar United States projected its dreams and fears … The
chapter on honour killings is superb, both Rose’s dissection of
misogynistic attitudes to female sexuality and her exploration of
how western society views the crime … A book that constantly
challenges the reader and forces her to engage with it. Rose’s
arguments are impossible to ignore
*Irish Times*
Formidable … It is impossible not to listen carefully to what
Professor Rose has to say in her thought-provoking, rigorously
argued writing on feminism, literature and psychoanalysis. In
Europe she is hailed as a public intellectual – she is also
acknowledged internationally … Rose is indubitably an intellectual
of clout … It is a breathtaking book and a challenging read –
ambitious, scholarly and innovative, shedding dazzling light on
Freud’s “dark continent” of women
*Herald*
Rose's thesis is a measured and decisive stroke in contemporary
feminist theory
*Financial Times*
Brings necessary depth and context to the debate ... The book
provides a valuable record of the ideologies and achievements of
women whom society would rather have kept silent, and there are
some devastatingly sad passages
*Independent*
Women in Dark Times follows a long-established trajectory within
her work, questioning assumptions and reframing debates from an
explicitly feminist perspective … Rose’s text is intersectional in
the best sense of the word, combining many approaches – including,
but not limited to, concerns over gender, race, Jewish identity and
politics. Linking all of these together is psychoanalysis, whose
revelations allow for the demystifying and revisionist readings at
the core of the book … Demonstrates the value of scholarly
reappraisals of cultural figureheads
*Jewish Quarterly*
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