The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition of Female Satire in the Novels of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Muriel Spark

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate the problems they have with society more through presentation than judgment in their satire, which places them on the fringes of a society they wish to educate, distinguishing their satire from that written by male satirists who are judging from a privileged height above the society they are attempting to correct. All three women create heroines and secondary female characters who find ways to survive, and occasionally thrive, within the confines of a polite society that has a streak of savagery running just beneath its polished surface.

A Return to Little Things: Stories on Motherhood and Mistakes

A Return to Little Things includes three nonfiction pieces that revolve around the mistakes made by mothers and daughters. The collection investigates the idea that our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made. The essays directly address three specific situations that touch on the themes of motherhood, choices, and the human inclination to recall them with bitterness, and offer proof that time often allows us to move forward to forgiveness. Using humor and acceptance, the narrator is led through a labyrinth of emotions to come to peace with these choices. The stories serve as reminders that there are no mistakes, only lessons, and we must seek to understand them to live happy lives. This manuscript is a work in progress.