The Battle of the Sexes

Instructor: Professor Suzanne Tartamella
               Department of English

Scolds and scullions, vixens and wenches, rakes and rogues, bluestockings and chauvinists. To imagine the most enduring battle in history is to conjure a picture as colorful as it is vast. In this course, we will investigate the literature of writers who helped paint such a picture. Reading a stimulating selection of plays, poems, novels, and stories from ancient Greece to the present day, we will explore the sexual warfare, marriage games, power struggles, and verbal battles of wit that have so often defined the relationship between men and women. A familiar cast of characters will appear on this literary tour - knights and nags, obtuse husbands and shrewish wives, fops and femme fatales.

Studying the genesis of these (often derogatory) gender descriptions, we will evaluate their suitability and debate the liabilities and strengths of art. We will assess literature's dual capacity to enhance and undermine what is written in the history books. In what ways does a work's portrayal of men and women exceed our expectations? In what ways is it deficient in capturing character? How does a work of literature challenge or deepen our perception of ourselves? Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale," Aphra Behn's The Forced Marriage, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband are just a few of the works we will explore this semester.