Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today

Author: Vorona Cote, Rachel

Number Of Pages: 352

Details:

Lacing cultural criticism, Victorian literature, and storytelling together, "TOO MUCH spills over: with intellect, with sparkling prose, and with the brainy arguments of Vorona Cote, who posits that women are all, in some way or another, still susceptible to being called too much." (Esmé Weijun Wang)A weeping woman is a monster. So too is a fat woman, a horny woman, a woman shrieking with laughter. Women who are one or more of these things have heard, or perhaps simply intuited, that we are repugnantly excessive, that we have taken illicit liberties to feel or fuck or eat with abandon. After bellowing like a barn animal in orgasm, hoovering a plate of mashed potatoes, or spraying out spit in the heat of expostulation, we've flinched-ugh, that was so gross. I am so gross. On rare occasions, we might revel in our excess--belting out anthems with our friends over karaoke, perhaps--but in the company of less sympathetic souls, our uncertainty always returns. A woman who is Too Much is a woman who reacts to the world with ardent intensity is a woman familiar to lashes of shame and disapproval, from within as well as without. Written in the tradition of Shrill, Dead Girls, Sex Object and other frank books about the female gaze, TOO MUCH encourages women to reconsider the beauty of their excesses-emotional, physical, and spiritual. Rachel Vorona Cote braids cultural criticism, theory, and storytelling together in her exploration of how culture grinds away our bodies, souls, and sexualities, forcing us into smaller lives than we desire. An erstwhile Victorian scholar, she sees many parallels between that era's fixation on women's "hysterical" behavior and our modern policing of the same; in the space of her writing, you're as likely to encounter Jane Eyre and Lizzie Bennet as you are Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey. This book will tell the story of how women, from then and now, have learned to draw power from their reservoirs of feeling, all that makes us "Too Much."

Reviews:

" Too Much defies easy categorization. It is as much a memoir as a work of impressive scholarship; it is as comfortable parsing the cultural meaning surrounding Britney Spears' public disintegration as it is analyzing the feminine mores conveyed in obscure 18th-century texts aimed at improving girls and women."

― Washington Independent Review of Books

"In a writing style that's part academic, part personal essay, Cote exposes her own struggles with 'too muchness,' from her bisexuality to self-harm to body image, while synthesizing a woman's place within the cultural context of femininity. Consider it required reading for feminists of all genders."

― Baltimore Magazine

"Calling all women and people who love them: This comprehensive book perfectly interweaves academic scholarship, engaging storytelling, and extremely convincing arguments that will convert even those who think suffrage solved all of our problems. Anyone who has ever been told to sit down, shush, and that little girls should be seen and not heard, this one's for you."

― Good Housekeeping

"[ Too Much is] written with passion for the subject and sustained attention, full of compelling prose and observations that will surely resonate with any woman familiar with straining against the edges of the shape she's expected to fit in."

― Washington City Paper

"Cote, a former Victorian scholar, laces together cultural criticism, history, memoir, and theory in her debut work of nonfiction."

― The Millions

"Vorona Cote weaves historical representation, theories and storytelling into a well-researched and timely novel."

― Shereads.com

" Too Much is for all women who've been haunted, taunted and shamed for their emotions, joy, anger, laughter, sexuality or any other sort of excessive be-ing."

― Ms. Magazine

"Readers whose tastes run from George Eliot to Lorde will embrace the book's feminist message."

― Publishers Weekly

"[Vorona Cote] knows better than most how Victorian...

EAN: 9781538729700

Release Date: 25-02-2020

Languages: English

Item Condition: New

Binding: Paperback