Thermals: a collection of short stories in an examination of women's experience stories

Date

12/30/1990

Authors

Sappenfield, Mattie Lieu

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

This thesis examines the concept of women's experience stories as an emerging literary paradigm. It is asserted that experience stories are written out of the raw material of women's lives, that they attempt a re-writing of women's scripts, that they challenge literary conventions, that they involve a fall into awakening, and, finally, that experience stories are subversive of the patriarchy in that they allow the foregrounding of women's experience. The author experiments with the concept of experience story by writing five original short stories narrated in the first person by women in various stages of life. The stories--"You Can't Be Too Careful," "Everybody Else," "Thermals," "Namesake," and "Lifting Up"--are examined to determine whether they meet the criteria of experience story.

Description

Keywords

Social sciences, Language, literature, and linguistics

Citation