Women and Romance: A Reader

. New York University Press, $25 (492pp) ISBN 978-0-8147-9355-8

""Does romance weaken or empower women? Is it a debilitating illusion, a form of false consciousness, or the understandable expression of a universal human need?"" asks Susan Ostrov Weisser (A ""Craving Vacancy"": Women and Sexual Love in the British Novel, 1740-1880), editor of Women and Romance: A Reader. Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emily Dickinson, Simone de Beauvoir, Rita Mae Brown, Audre Lorde, Lillian Faderman, bell hooks and Mary Gaitskill are just a few of the eminent thinkers Weisser recruits here. ""The Reconstruction of Teen Romance"" (Sharon Thompson), ""Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"" (George Eliot) and ""Women's Masochism and Ideal Love"" (Jessica Benjamin) are among the topics addressed in this thoughtfully assembled and far-reaching anthology. ( Sept. 1)

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