Women's Storied Lives
~ Gita May
Welcome to the virtual exhibition: Women’s Storied Lives!
This exhibition explores various stages in women’s lives from “Girlhood” to “Women of a Certain Age” through the books and periodicals they have written, annotated, and read.
Printed materials provide an avenue for agency and self-expression not often afforded to women throughout history, especially as conveyed through more personal works such as zines, self-published texts, speculative fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. In this way, books offer a unique representation of women’s lived experiences. The variety of the following materials reflects the range, complexity, and contradictions of these experiences.
Some of the following works prescribe the ways in which women should behave and contextualize their experiences, while others describe the ways in which women actually live, behave, and claim their own agency. A few works provide both perspectives in one volume, and there is often a clear progression in ideals from the 19th century to the present and from one life stage to the next.
It is our hope that through this exhibition you will learn more about the power of the written word in shaping lives and opinions, and in affecting the agency of both communities and individuals. You may even be inspired to declare your own independence through new works suited for our current moment.
We encourage you to explore the exhibit cases in the sequence in which they are presented; however, they are designed in a way that allows the viewer to experience each case separately, as well as together, so that you may choose to view the exhibit out of sequence without feeling lost. You may also click on images to zoom in.
Please enjoy!