Between the Sheets
Nine 20th Century Women Writers and Their Famous Literary Partnerships
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The literary critic examines the love lives and career ambitions of some of the twentieth century's greatest female authors—from Sylvia Plath to Anaïs Nin.
Why did a gifted writer like Sylvia Plath stumble into a marriage that drove her to suicide? Why did Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) want to marry Ezra Pound when she was far more attracted to women? Why did Simone de Beauvoir pimp for Jean-Paul Sartre?
In Between the Sheets, author and feminist scholar Lesley McDowell examines nine famously troubled literary romances to arrive at a provocative insight into the motivations of these and other great female writers. The list of the damages done in each of these sexual relationships is long, but each provokes the same question: would these women have become the writers they became without these relationships?
Delving into their diaries, letters, and journals, McDowell examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners they felt themselves to be.
"McDowell . . . has culled incredibly juicy details. With so many affairs and broken hearts, the most surprising thing may be that anything got written in the last 100 years." —The New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Critic, novelist and literary journalist McDowell (The Picnic) takes a scholarly but fascinating look at the love lives of women writers, revealing how writers like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath were affected by their romantic liaisons. Using their letters, journals and diaries, McDowell explores the ambitions and desires of nine writers, often uncovering tell-tale signs of dependence on their male counterparts. McDowell reviews some famous, oft-covered romances-including Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway (the celebrity couple of their day), Nin and Henry Miller, Plath and Ted Hughes-but also finds the relationships between figures like Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, or Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, also rich in power struggles regarding art and sex. Almost every union explored had devastating consequences for the women involved, but fueled some of their best work, begging some big questions: Would they have become writers without their entanglements with these men? And was success in their art ultimately worth the heartbreak? This stirring account lets their devotees decide.
