Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

“On an Elizabeth Hardwick kick and ripping through her 1974 collection of essays Seduction and Betrayal, which explores the lives and literary roles of women, examining themes of love, marriage, and writing through portraits of figures like the Brontë sisters, Woolf, Zelda Fitzgerald, Plath, and heroines from fiction. No one writes with such savage clarity about the relationships between men and women, and women and their creativity (although that Zadie Smith essay on post-partum comes close!).”

“Hardwick is such a genius brilliant precise writer that it makes me suspicious. I think she might be an alien who was sent to Earth to write about Charlotte Bronte and Sylvia Plath (and me, and you, by extension)”