I happened to be reading The Handmaid’s Tale when the story about the UCSB shooting spree hit the news. By now, most likely you’ve read that the shooter hated women because he couldn’t get a date and that he left behind a “manifesto” and many videos in which he presented his misogynistic ideas. In response, and as an empowerment for women, the hashtag #YesAllWomen has gone viral, with women and men speaking up and speaking out against the culture that creates men like the shooter. […]
Women Can Be Scary Part 3: Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, is a classic that has been characterized as a romance and some sort of gothic chick lit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rebecca is a dark and suspenseful novel, reminiscent of Jane Eyre, with an ending that involves violence and is far from happy. Like Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the reader might find him/herself rooting for a murderer and feeling distinctly uncomfortable about that. Rebecca is set in the 1930s mostly at a seaside […]
Women Can be Scary Part 2: Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was an American writer known for novels such as The Haunting of Hill House and short stories such “The Lottery,” which has horrified readers since 1948. To this day I am haunted by the short film version of “The Lottery” (with Ed Begley, Jr.!) which Sr. Mary Cabrini showed in my American Studies course in high school. The 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is not exactly scary like Jackson’s other works, but it is disturbing and feels like […]
Women Can Be Scary Part I: Agatha Christie
At some point in my young reading life, I think when I was in junior high, I read quite a few Agatha Christie mysteries. I still fondly remember the plots of Murder on the Orient Express and The Mirror Crack’d, but I’m pretty sure I never read And Then There Were None, considered Christie’s masterpiece. Unlike most of Christie’s novels, this mystery does not feature a detective like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple sleuthing a path to the final revelation of the murderer’s identity. Instead, […]