In Walks a Woman

If you like your literature with a side of pop culture, you’ll love what’s on the menu for today: Rachel Feder’s clever & informative study, THE DARCY MYTH: JANE AUSTEN, LITERARY HEARTTHROBS, AND THE MONSTERS THEY TAUGHT US TO LOVE (2023).  Let’s face it, whether or not we have read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and whether we love or hate it, Lizzie and Mr. Darcy’s love story has had a m...

Sonja and Vanessa have read a 500 page novel for you (or a measly 400 pages, depending on which edition you read).  You’re welcome!  It’s about a 15 year old girl named Pamela, who is the most beautiful woman on earth (according to everyone in the novel), and she’s a servant girl who is “accomplished” (in Pride and Prejudice fashion…even to the extent that everyone marvels at how well she carves a...

This episode focuses on acts 3-5 of ROMEO & JULIET. Our spotlight is on Juliet because, when you read the original play, it’s hard not to think that Juliet DESERVES more of the spotlight than most directors share with her.  Hear about many moments and lines that often don’t make it into productions of the play or feature films.  What does that do to our perception of Juliet?  Doesn’t it, inevi...

Vanessa and Sonja are taking a break this week, but fear not -- there are more subscribers-only episodes on Patreon! Find us at patreon.com/InWalksAWoman

In this second episode in the series, Sonja and Vanessa travel through the play, keeping a sharp eye on Juliet.  Is Juliet as demure as many stage performances make her seem?  Romeo makes the first move at the party, but by the end of the night, is he the one in charge of the relationship?  And let’s really consider what’s said in the famously “romantic” balcony scene…how much of it really fits th...

To watch the courtly love story in action, ROMEO & JULIET seems like the best place to start. In the first of a 3-part series, Sonja and Vanessa offer helpful historical and literary foundations that help us read/understand the play.  Learn about original source material, Renaissance Italian government, marriage practices, and why, in William Shakespeare’s acting company, Juliet would have bee...

What if romantic love is just a story we made up? Looking back at the origins of courtly love, it looks like we might have.  Sonja takes us back to the Middle Ages and explains how, in an attempt to control a particular problem, society might have created a story that still echoes today.  This is the story that, on one hand, animates beloved romcoms, while on the other hand, forges die-hard Valent...

If you’ve ever felt you should read Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, FRANKENSTEIN, but shortly after starting, found your resolve fading…this is the episode for you!  Sonja commandingly takes the literary wheel and unpacks this intricate novel by illuminating its structure, major themes, and fills in some of the philosophical underpinnings that Shelley explores.  Aside from sharing some childhood Goethe...

Good witches and ever-loyal Kansans, Sonja and Vanessa, consider a fresh reading of the widely acknowledged “American Fairy Tale,” THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ  Written in 1900 by L. Frank Baum, and later made into an internationally-influential and dearly-beloved film in 1939, we ask what message Dorothy’s story sends to female viewers/readers.   Let’s start with this interesting aspect: Dorothy is...

Sonja and Vanessa consider TV moms who inspired American women in the 80’s and 90’s.  Given the warm response to our pop culture episode in our first season (S1E10: “Madonna, Maggie, Diana, Cyndi & Sinead–Gen X Heroines”), we were excited to review some fictional moms from our youth. Clair Huxtable of the Cosby Show, demonstrated how to raise five children, while looking fashionable and gorgeo...

In our second half of Shirley Jackson’s biography,* we pick up in 1939 when Shirley is about to marry Stanley, and for a full portrait of Stanley, you’ll absolutely want to check out S2E7 “The Very Haunted Life of Shirley Jackson.”  Again, as we highlight in the show notes for the previous episode, this episode is only made possible by the scholarship of Jackson biographer, Ruth Franklin. We have...

Shirley Jackson, one of America’s greatest writers, was also a mother of 4 children in the 1950’s, and she worked from home writing, cooking, writing, nursing sick kids, writing, doing laundry, writing, shopping, writing, going to parent-teacher conferences, and also taking care of her husband Stanley, who was a legendary college professor but who was so incapable of adulting that his two daughter...

Mother knows best, the old saying goes. But what if your mother is constantly trying to ship you with strange, rich men?  Believe it or not, if you’re in England, circa 1800, having such a mum might have its upsides.  Sonja and Vanessa offer a lively run-through of PRIDE & PREJUDICE with an eye on the character who, in terms of dialogue, speaks second-only to Miss Elizabeth Bennet herself. (No...

In so many ways, Toni Morrison expanded the reaches of our cultural imagination both in terms of understanding our history and exploring the intricate landscape of the human psyche through language.  BELOVED, Morrison’s 1987 masterpiece, alternates settings between 1850’s Kentucky and 1870’s Ohio, depicting Sethe, protagonist and former slave, isolated and dealing with trying to live on after the...

Sonja and Vanessa explore Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, with a focus on Mrs. Ramsay, one of the great mums of British literature. As a happy coincidence, Sonja’s daughter, Sage McHenry, was in town for the episode recording, and Sage offers her Gen Z-reader thoughts on the classic novel. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, while not strictly autobiographical, has clear links to Woolf’s own life e...

Sonja and Vanessa are thrilled to welcome Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, an international scholar on Federico Garcia Lorca, to explore the theme of motherhood in Lorca’s 1934 play, YERMA, and THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, the masterpiece Lorca finished writing just two months before he was assassinated by Spanish fascists in August 1936. Disappeared by Franco's Falange forces at age 38, Lorca never saw THE HO...

Vanessa and Sonja examine Julie Otuska’s completely original narrative style in her novel, BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC (2011).  Vanessa grabs the historical student-driver wheel along with Sonja’s steady historical expertise to give you the story of Japanese immigration to the United States, the fascinating phenomenon of “Japanese Picture Brides” (OG catfishing?), the journey of women who leave their moth...

Sonja gives a tour de force presentation of Patriarchy's beginnings:  when, why, how, and what it replaced.  Was there Matriarchy before Patriarchy?  Sonja explains.  Why did humans go from one central Mother Goddess to a male god at the center of the pantheon of gods?  Sonja explains.  Is Patriarchy just how it is, or can it evolve into a less male-beneficial system?  Sonja explains!  In this det...

Sonja and Vanessa delve into recent history to ask if it’s even possible to be your own woman in a world that is designed and controlled by men?  Through the lens of five prominent women of the 1980’s and 90’s, IWAW asks if female odysseys are doomed to follow in the footsteps of–or be a reaction to–male expectations.  Sonja and Vanessa dip into stories of women in politics and pop culture to ask...

Sonja humors Vanessa for one last sail around in the odyssey ship as IWAW asks if an orphaned, mistreated, Victorian-Era heroine is really on an odyssey of her own.  Jane Eyre sure does travel, meets “monsters” both female and male (Aunt Reed & St. John are nothing if not terrifying), but IWAW uncovers some VERY surprising parallels that become clear when examining this classic novel through t...

Sonja and Vanessa play around with the odyssey concept and ask if the story 40-something Janie Crawford tells her BFF, Pheoby, in Zora Neale Hurston’s THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD fits the definition of an Odyssey…and if maybe that’s even what Hurston had in mind in her legendary first two paragraphs?  Can following an unfamiliar dirt road be like the winds of the Aegean Sea tossing one into the u...

In the seventh episode of IWAW’s Odyssey series, Sonja and Vanessa circle back to Penelope–home base of The Odyssey in so many ways–by reading and discussing Margaret Atwood’s brief, poetic, witty take on how Penelope really feels about her absent husband.  Plus, Atwood gives voice to “the maidens,” a multiple murder that can’t be left off Odysseus’s hero resume. Spoiler Alert for Margaret Atwood’...

Can Odysseus even HAVE an Odyssey without female characters to help him, terrorize him, and sometimes both? Join Sonja and Vanessa as their guest, classics scholar Amy Meyers, dishes on Scylla, the Sirens, and the intimidating goddess, Athena.  Like an arrow through a dozen axe holes lined up, Homer’s male hero shoots through the decidedly feminine architecture of his labyrinthian odyssey.  Source...

Sonja takes Vanessa down a rabbit hole to the 12th century for a scandalous romance, starring a very learned woman named Heloise.  If you’re tired of the passion ending at the altar, this episode’s for you: spicy letters, secluded country estates, lots of reading, divine and carnal love, and keeping passion lit–even in the face of late-in-life eunuchism.  IWAW celebrates that love can be messy! Le...

Sonja and Vanessa visit Circe’s Island, both in the Odyssey and in Madeline Miller’s brilliant novel. For those keeping score: time with Calypso + Circe = 80% of Odysseus’s 10-year trip home is on Love Islands with gorgeous, immortal women. Vanessa quizzes Sonja on ancient Greek witchcraft and why women keep giving grown men baths, and Sonja, as always, knows a thing or two. Spoiler Alerts for Mad...