Women Talk Back to Shakespeare: Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations

201 Pages·2021·6.256 MB·English

by  Jo Eldridge Carney

WOMEN TALK BACK TO SHAKESPEARE
This study explores more recent adaptations published in the last decade whereby
women—either authors or their characters—talk back to Shakespeare in a variety of new
ways.
“Talking back to Shakespeare”, a term common in intertextual discourse, is not a
new phenomenon, particularly in literature. For centuries, women writers—novelists,
playwrights, and poets—have responded to Shakespeare with inventive and often
transgressive retellings of his work. Thus far, feminist scholarship has examined creative
responses to Shakespeare by women writers through the late twentieth century. This
book brings together the “then” of Shakespeare with the “now” of contemporary
literature by examining how many of his plays have cultural currency in the present
day. Adoption and surrogate childrearing; gender fluidity; global pandemics; impri­
sonment and criminal justice; the intersection of misogyny and racism—these are all
pressing social and political concerns, but they are also issues that are central to Sha­
kespeare’s plays and the early modern period.
By approaching material with a fresh interdisciplinary perspective, Women Talk Back
to Shakespeare is an excellent tool for both scholars and students concerned with adap­
tation, women and gender, and intertextuality of Shakespeare’splays.
Jo Eldridge Carney is a Professor of English at The College of New Jersey where she
teaches courses in early modern studies, folk and fairy tales, and contemporary literature.
NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO EARLY
MODERN CULTURE : CONFLUENCES AND CONTEXTS
Series Editors:
Carole Levin, [email protected]
Marguerite Tassi, [email protected]
This interdisciplinary series publishes manuscripts from a wide range of fields, including
but not limited to literature, history, art history, musicology, philosophy, religion and
political science, in order to cultivate a truly multifaceted understanding of the early
modern period. This series offers innovative scholarship that models interdisciplinary
methodologies to emerging scholars and students and publishes books that show how
paradigm shifts in knowledge happen when disciplines cross-fertilize and share the fruits
of their labor.
Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage
Mad World, Mad Kings
Edited by Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy
Women Talk Back to Shakespeare
Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations
Jo Eldridge Carney
WOMEN TALK BACK TO
SHAKESPEARE
Contemporary Adaptations and
Appropriations
Jo Eldridge Carney
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Jo Eldridge Carney
The right of Jo Eldridge Carney to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003166580
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carney, Jo Eldridge, 1954-author.

Title: Women talk back to Shakespeare : contemporary adaptations and

appropriations / Jo Eldridge Carney.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. |

Series: New interdisciplinary approaches to early modern culture: confluences and

contexts | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021020109 (print) | LCCN 2021020110 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780367763527 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367763510 (hardback) |

ISBN 9781003166580 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Adaptations--History and

criticism. | English literature--Women authors--History and criticism. |

Feminism and literature--English-speaking countries. | Women and

literature--English-speaking countries. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR2880.A1 C37 2022 (print) | LCC PR2880.A1 (ebook) |

DDC 822.3/3--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020109

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020110

ISBN: 978-0-367-76351-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-76352-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-16658-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003166580

Typeset in Bembo

by Taylor & Francis Books
For Ruby, who talks back in all the best ways

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré’s Desdemona and William
Shakespeare’s Othello 9
2 Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter and William Shakespeare’s
The Tempest 34
3 Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed and William Shakespeare’s The
Tempest 57
4 Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time and William
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale 80
5 Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise and William Shakespeare’s Pericles 106
6 Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and William
Shakespeare’s King Lear 134
7 Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and Shakespeare’s family in fact and
fiction 158
Afterword 180
Index 182
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of
Shakespeare and Appropriation 9.1 (2014).
Librarians are essential to any academic project, but when much of a book is written
during a pandemic the work they do is even more valuable. I am enormously grateful
to Dean Taras Pavlovsky and the entire staff of The College of New Jersey Library,
and especially Dina Carmy, Bethany Sewall, and David Murray for their efforts in
ensuring we all had the resources we needed for our scholarship and our teaching in
this challenging year. Thank you also to the accommodating and cheerful staff at the
Hopewell branch of the Mercer County Library.
Thank you to the wonderful TCNJ students who were willing to “talk back” and
help me work through many of these ideas in our seminars: Paige Barmakian, Nicole
Beagin, Shannon Cassaro, Jaime Corrigan, Daniel Hitchen, Rachel Howanich, Britta
Koep, Angela Lengner, Cassidy Mansmann, Ally McHugh, Lauren Muccilli, Erin
Murray, Catie Nadler, Carlie Pressler, Sarah Reynolds, Amanda Riccitelli, Angelica
Rocco, Princy Shah, Courtney Shein, Destiny Valerio, Kattlyn Vasquez, and Made­
leine Zurcher. I hope you will recognize traces of our vigorous discussions and healthy
disagreements in these pages.
Michelle Ordini’s incredible management of the English Department makes it
possible for all of us to do our work better and thanks can never be enough for all that
she does. Thank you to Eleanor Mackay Carney, Silas Jones, and Carter Wells for
their research assistance and support, to Mindi McMann for her expert and thoughtful
advice on sections of the book, and to David Blake for his steady encouragement.
Thank you to Dean Jane Wong and TCNJ for research support, and to Isabel Voice
and Laura Pilsworth at Routledge for making this such a pleasant process.
My deepest debt is to Carole Levin, my dear friend of many decades, who has
encouraged this book from the beginning and gave useful feedback throughout. Car­
ole’s reputation as a scholar who cares deeply about advancing the work of others is
Acknowledgements ix
well-deserved, and I have been so fortunate to be on the receiving end of her extra­
ordinarily generous mentorship and friendship. To both Carole and Marguerite Tassi,
co-editors of this new series, New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern
Culture: Confluences and Contexts, thank you for your support on this project and
for initiating a series that will allow more innovative and interesting work to join the
scholarly conversation.