In Walks a Woman

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 chicken–now that’s an accomplished...

This episode focuses on acts 3-5 of Romeo and 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, inevitably, distort her?  In Acts 3-5, Jul...

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 the term “romantic”?  The answers to ...

To watch the courtly love story in action, Romeo and 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 been played by a young man.  After ex...

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 Valentine’s Day haters.  As an illust...

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 trauma, Vanessa just puts up her f...

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 on an odyssey (as our discussi...

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 gorgeous, exuding educated elegance, ...

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 drawn primarily on Franklin’s 2016 ...

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 daughters had to come take care of him afte...

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 and Prejudice with an eye on the character who, in terms of dialogue, speaks second-only to Miss Elizabeth Bennet herself. (No, it’s not Mr. Darcy.)  It’s Eliz...

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 scarring trauma of slavery.  She fi...

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 experience, particularly her memories...

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 Bernarda performed. Both plays questi...

Vanessa and Sonja examine Julie Otuska’s completely original narrative style in her novel, The 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 mothers and families in Japan to a ...

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 detailed but very accessible histo...

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 what these real-life heroines gaine...

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 the lens of a Homeric odyssey.  S...