Wayward Girls and Wicked Women

In Elizabeth Jolley's "The Last Crop," a seemingly guileless woman cons a man out of his land. In Leonora Carrinton's "The Debutante," a young girl sends a hyena to her coming-out ball, with disastrous results. The title character in Frances Towers's "Violet" uses her talent for witchcraft with wicked intention. Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" faces a litany of her mother's strictures and admonishments, and Suniti Namjoshi's bittersweet fables suggest that nothing a woman does will ever be really right. But whether these women are bad or good, evil or benign, guilty or innocent, calculating or naive, they are not victims. None of them suffers passively at the hands of men. Each manages to confront her circumstances and sometimes, though not always, triumph over them.Wayward Girls and Wicked WomenAcknowledgments
Introduction
ELIZABETH JOLLEY: The Last Crop
LEONORA CARRINGTON: The Débutante
ROCKY GÁMEZ: from The Gloria Stories
BESSIE HEAD: Life
JANE BOWLES: A Guatemalan Idyll
KATHERINE MANSFIELD: The Young Girl
SUNITI NAMJOSHI: Three Feminist Fables
COLETTE: The Rainy Moon
GEORGE EGERTON: Wedlock
FRANCES TOWERS: Violet
AMA ATA AIDOO: The Plums
GRACE PALEY: A Woman Young and Old
ANDRÉE CHEDID: The Long Trial
ANGELA CARTER: The Loves of Lady Purple
DJUNA BARNES: The Earth
VERNON LEE: Oke of Okehurst
JAMAICA KINCAID: Girl
LUO SHU: Aunt Liu
Notes on the AuthorsAngela Carter (1940 -1992) wrote nine novels and numerous short stories, as well as nonfiction, radio plays, and the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, based on her story. She won numerous literary awards, traveled and taught widely in the United States, and lived in London.