Resisting Bodies

Book excerpt: Helga Druxes' study of the female protagonists in novels by German writer Monika Maron, British writers Margaret Drabble and Jean Rhys, and French writer Marguerite Duras brings together the work of four prominent contemporary women authors. In discussing the position of women in urban spaces from the point of view of feminist and cultural theory, Druxes combines anthropology and recent literary theory within the framework of cultural studies. She addresses such concerns as the objectification/commodification of women in late capitalist society, the possibilities for resistant or subversive female agency under these conditions, and the role of specifically urban arrangements of space in both effecting this objectification and creating the sites where it might be resisted or disrupted by women. Resisting Bodies is an important contribution to literary criticism and feminist theory.