Books by Janet Beer

A wide range of short fiction by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the focus for this study, examining both genre and theme. Chopin's short stories, Wharton's novellas, Chopin's frankly erotic writing and the homilies in which Gilman warns of the dangers of the sexually transmitted disease are compared.

Wharton's late and critically-neglected novels are reclaimed as experimental in form and radical in content in this book, which also suggests that her portrayal of older female characters in her last six novels anticipates contemporary unease about the cultural marginalization of the older woman in Western society.