This project was funded in part by a CSWS grant.

"The twenty novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett comprise a tightly constructed, radically renovated house of fiction. This study finds that her work is grounded on a rational feminism that defies the Christianized moral ethic which restricts traditional novels by and about women. Compton-Burnett condenses the abuses of patriarchy, and its attendant hierarchy, into the closed arena of the Victorian/Edwardian family. Through this fictional technique of condensation, her 'insular' English novels paradoxically expose contradictions and illegitimate foundations of masculinized Western civilization."

Red Globe Press London, 146 pages