Mad Women in North Carolina

A series of discussions begins today, January 13, in Beaufort, North Carolina:

"Let's Talk About It!" Discussion Series
Carteret County Public Library Program Room
1702 Live Oak Street, Beaufort

The Carteret County Public Library proudly presents the latest in this popular book discussion series. Your insights are the focus of the sessions. Our guest humanities scholars act as guides, leading discussion about how the books inform and enrich our lives. The library has limited copies of the books to loan at no charge.

Mad Women in the Attic

    As In the Western Literary tradition, the mad woman in the attic has proven to be a convenient symbol for unconventional women who attempted to resist the patriarchal system. The mad woman was contained indoors—often in the attic—as treatment for her “disease” or madness. In reality, women oftentimes were driven mad by these oppressive conditions.
     However, alternative readings of the books in this series offer possible revisions of the mad woman in the attic with positive implications for readers. The poet Adrienne Rich writes, “Revision—the act of looking back, or seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.”
     Several books in this series which includes Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Yellow Wallpaper, and Sula, are themselves “re-visions” of the traditional idea of the mad woman in the attic.

Book List & Discussion Schedule

1. Monday, January 13, 7 p.m.
Speaker: Nan Miller, MA, Meredith College
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
 
2. Monday, January 27, 7 p.m.
Speaker: Anne Baker, PhD, North Carolina State University
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
 
3. Monday, February 10, 7 p.m.
Speaker: Lucinda MacKethan, PhD, North Carolina State University
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
 
 4. Monday, February 24, 7 p.m.
Speaker: Bill DiNome, MFA, UNC-Wilmington
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
 
5. Monday, March 10, 7 p.m.
Speaker: Rebecca Godwin, PhD, Barton College
Sula by Toni Morrison