Comic Visions, Female Voices · Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor

Since the 1970s, a time when perceptions about women began to change radically, a growing number of women writers have expressed many of their most deeply felt ideas through humor. In Comic Visions, Female Voices, Barbara Bennett maintains that humor tests boundaries and pushes limits, doubly so for women, and that writing combined with laughter is virtually a revolutionary act for women.This innovative, comprehensive study identifies and discusses the intricate role humor plays in contemporary southern novels by such writers as Anne Tyler, Lee Smith, Alice Walker, Doris Betts, Gail Godwin, Ellen Gilchrist, and Kaye Gibbons. Bennett theorizes that humor helps define voice, communicate theme, and, in essence, establish a new kind of southern literature with a tone that is often more optimistic and less guilt-ridden than that found in fiction written by men or by earlier women writers. Most southern female humor has a distinct voice and vision -- iconoclastic yet ultimately unifying, challenging traditional relationships yet finally affirming both self and family.

In Comic Visions, Female Voices, Bennett identifies the ways humor is used to redefine southern women in today's world, satirically questioning the stereotypes of southern women, human relationships, southern religion, and southern culture in the postmodern world.