Miss Herbert: (The Suburban Wife)
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Jacket protected by mylar sleeve. Pages clean and bright. Binding tight. Usual aging. Shelf wear.
A sharp and psychologically penetrating work of literary fiction, Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) chronicles the life of Eleanor Herbert, a beautiful English woman who moves through the mid-twentieth century convinced of her own exceptional nature yet perpetually blind to her own mediocrity and self-deception. Christina Stead constructs a devastating portrait of bourgeois femininity, tracing Eleanor's marriages, romantic entanglements, and professional failures with an unflinching, often darkly comic eye. The novel argues, with biting irony, that the social conventions and romantic illusions women are taught to embrace can become the very instruments of their undoing. Stead's prose is relentless and precise, peeling back the layers of Eleanor's self-mythology to reveal the quiet tragedy of a life lived in pursuit of respectability rather than truth. A challenging and rewarding read, it stands as one of Stead's most incisive critiques of gender, class, and the seductive lies of suburban conformity.
Author: Christina Stead
Format: Hardback
Published: 1976, Random House
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Jacket protected by mylar sleeve. Pages clean and bright. Binding tight. Usual aging. Shelf wear.
A sharp and psychologically penetrating work of literary fiction, Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) chronicles the life of Eleanor Herbert, a beautiful English woman who moves through the mid-twentieth century convinced of her own exceptional nature yet perpetually blind to her own mediocrity and self-deception. Christina Stead constructs a devastating portrait of bourgeois femininity, tracing Eleanor's marriages, romantic entanglements, and professional failures with an unflinching, often darkly comic eye. The novel argues, with biting irony, that the social conventions and romantic illusions women are taught to embrace can become the very instruments of their undoing. Stead's prose is relentless and precise, peeling back the layers of Eleanor's self-mythology to reveal the quiet tragedy of a life lived in pursuit of respectability rather than truth. A challenging and rewarding read, it stands as one of Stead's most incisive critiques of gender, class, and the seductive lies of suburban conformity.