Read more
Why are so many fictional characters named Anna (or a variant), and what does this signify? The startling prevalence of Hannah/Anna/Anne moves from biblical literature (
Old Testament Hannah and
New Testament St. Anne) to classics (
Anna Karenina and
Anne Elliot) to popular fiction (Anna Dunlop in Sue Miller's
The Good Mother), children's literature (
Anne of Green Gables), films (
Hannah and Her Sisters), and horror (Annie Wilkes in Stephen King's
Misery). Does this represent a conscious or unconscious search for the ultimate or missing mother harking back to mythical and religious traditions?
Here twenty-two essayists--literary scholars, writers, historians, classicists, feminist theorists--rise to the challenge, examining Annas in individual literary works or making intriguing connections. Universals and particulars are sorted out as the related names and themes cross time, culture, gender, and racial borders. In the process, much new and fascinating literary criticism is revealed about dozens of authors, including Anthony Trollope, John Berryman, Sean O'Faolain, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bowen, Anne Sexton, Arnold Bennett, Doris Lessing, Tillie Olsen, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mona Simpson, Mary Lavin, and, yes, Sigmund Freud.
List of contents
Introduction: The Birth of a Book Idea: Or How I Got Involved with, Fixated on, and Obsessed by the Name Anna by Mickey Pearlman
Anna and Demeter: The Myth of
The Good Mother by Barbara McManus
Ann of Ages by C. W. Sullivan III
Maternity as Destiny: The Old Testament Hannahs by Pearl David Laufer
John Berryman's Anne by Roberta White
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: Austen's Anne Elliot and Freud's Anna O. by Diana Postlethwaite
Trollope's
Lady Anna: "Corrupt Relations" or "Erotic Faith" by Deborah D. Morse
Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina: A Palindrome, a Paradox, Beginning as She Ends by Abby H. P. Werlock
Re-visioning Literary Motherhood: Elizabeth Bowen's
The Death of the Heart and Elizabeth Jane Howard's
Odd Girl Out by Phyllis Lassner
Ana, Again and Again: Love, Memory, and the Self in Sean O'Faolain by Mary Rose Sullivan
Mothers and Lovers: Edith Wharton's
The Reef and
The Mother's Recompense by Nancy Walker
The Mother Mirror in Jamaica Kincaid's
Annie John and Gertrude Stein's
The Good Anna by Diane Simmons
Spiritual Maternity and Self-Fulfillment in Arnold Bennett's
Anna of the Five Towns by Helen Pike Bauer
Anna's Daughter: Mazie Holbrook in Tillie Olsen's
Yonnondio by Mary Deforest
Anny Annas in
Finnegan's Wake? Manny! by Dee Goertz
The Mother of Them All: Gwendolyn Brooks's
Annie Allen by Dee Seligman
"For We Swallow Magic and We Deliver Anne": Anne Sexton's Use of Her Name by Karen Alkalay-Gut
"Anna, Anna, I Am Anna": The Annas of Doris Lessing's
The Golden Notebook by Claire Sprague
The Goddess Resurrected in Mary Lavin's Short Fiction by Martha Vertreace
The Quest for the Perfect Mother in Toni Morrison's
Sula by Margaret Schramm
The Autobiographical Anna: Mona Simpson's
Anywhere but Here and Susanna Moore's
My Old Sweetheart by Kim Lacy Rogers
Controlling the Past and the Future: Two-Headed Anna in Ellen Gilchrist's
The Anna Papers by Jane Taylor McDonnell
Stephen King's Dark and Terrible Mother, Annie Wilkes by Katherine K. Gottschalk
Bibliography
Index
About the author
MICKEY PEARLMAN is an independent scholar, writer, and editor. She was editor of American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space and the author of Reinventing Reality: Patterns and Characters in the Novels of Muriel Spark, Tillie Olsen and the coauthor of Inter/View: Talks with America's Writing Women. She writes often about Muriel Spark and is especially interested in the concepts of space and memory in the work of contemporary American women.
