Seduction and Betrayal

This was a really good collection of essays. Some I enjoyed more than others. I struggled through the Ibsen essays as I'm not familiar with his works, but the Brontes, Zelda, and Woolf were very good. The last chapter, the titular essay, was really interesting too. (So many seduced young women who, of course get pregnant from the seduction.) I've struggled reading other Hardwick before, but now I feel like I should give her fiction another chance.

Hardwick writes with great eloquence and clarity and a feminist spirit. Those essays are nearly faultless and filled with awesome quotables that kept my highlighter engaged.

I wish I'd discovered Hardwick's literary criticism while close-reading Ibsen at uni. I really, really hated Ibsen then. Perhaps with Hardwick's sympathetic analysis at hand I would've had an easier time seeing through my distaste for the standards of the era which he wrote about, and seen his female characters with a bit more compassion.

Also, a reminder: this guy had 18 year old girls throwing themselves at him throughout his writing career: