Contribute or Undermine

Professor Dupree told me that she was contemplating the support women exchange with other women and the strategies they use to undermine other women when she first chose books for this curriculum (Dupree, personal communication, November 24, 2009).

She seems to have settled, in the syllabus (January 19, 2010), to the more abstract and academic topic - women contributions to genre. The books continue to include her initial exploration and open discussion about woman's dependency on other women as we are all dependent on vast networks with alternative priorities.

But we may loose a bit of time digging for these relationships; the statement "we'll discuss the discourses about gender" generalizes and risks creating an archetypal discussion about men and women (Dupree, 2010, Course Description). As a class, we should overcome the barrier to explore person to person networks in the novels. As individuals, we rely on support and mitigate efforts to undermine our goals. These women authors provide narrative among give and take. We can analyze the structure of the novel's relationships to give more to one another than the syllabus alone demands.