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In this work, Sharon L. Jansen explores a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. Insightful and accessible, this book places six centuries of texts in conversation with one another, pairing them in ways that reveal the realities of women´s choice and agency.

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In this work, Jansen explores a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. These imagined "women´s worlds" may be very small, a single room, for example, but many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities, even entire countries, created for and inhabited exclusively by women.

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Reading Nafisi at the YMCA I Have a Dream: Christine de Pizan´s The Book of the City of Ladies and Virginia Woolf´s A Room of One´s Own Let´s Talk: Conversation in Moderata Fonte´s The Worth of Women and Marjane Satrapi´s Embroideries Design for Living: Women´s Communities in Margaret Cavendish´s The Convent of Pleasure and Mary Astell´s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Trouble in Paradise: Men in Charlotte Perkins Gilman´s Herland and Doris Lessing´s The Cleft Buried Alive: Arcangela Tarabotti´s Paternal Tyranny and Charlotte Perkins Gilman´s "The Yellow Wallpaper" Brave New Worlds: Margaret Atwood´s A Handmaid´s Tale and Slavenka Drakulic´s S. A Novel about the Balkans Still Crazy after All These Years: Doris Lessing´s "To Room Nineteen" and Azar Nafisi´s Reading Lolita in Tehran

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"Jansen reveals hidden works (and ´worlds´) of de Pizan, Moderata Fonte, Mary Astell, Arcangela Tarabotti, Margaret Cavendish, and Valerie Solanas. The revelations are excellent, but the real pleasure is the unexpected colloquy of women discussing the condition of women, and delighted (or alarmed) to find themselves in the same metaphorical room." - CHOICE ´Jansen does what she does best, that is pull us into the story and help us understand her interpretation. Reading this new work, I felt as though I was becoming re-acquainted with an old friend sharing her new knowledge. Jansen has brought her informative conversational style that was so well done in her earlier works to this new discussion of women and their texts.´ - Shawndra Holderby, Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, USA "Jansen has identified a crucial theme which has not been explored in the scholarly literature, skillfully balancing her discovery of a unifying element with an extremely diverse group of women - worlds apart. Jansen´s achievement is that she offers a cogent argument that respects and celebrates the different historical moments and cultural spaces that her authors occupy . . . This is refreshing to read, and her audience will be well-served . . . Her writing is engaging, instructive, and inspiring." - Victoria L. Mondelli, Director, Teaching Learning Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, USA

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