Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature

Extract

With the publication of her first novel, Mary Gordon emerged as a serious, confident, outspoken voice in contemporary American fiction. An impeccable stylist, she explores the twisted coils of familial and domestic experience. Although she shuns the attention, she is one of the most incisive writers of Catholic life in America, as well as being an important feminist voice. Mary Gordon was born on December 8, 1949 on Long Island, New York. The only child of David and Anna Gordon, she grew up in a devout Catholic family and attended Barnard College and Syracuse University. She married anthropologist James Brian and, after that marriage ended, married Arthur Cash, with whom she has had two children. She held a number of temporary teaching positions before being named the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard. Final Payments (1979), her first novel, presents Isabel Moore, a 30-year-old woman who has devoted her life to an ailing father who dies and leaves his daughter adrift in the world. Isabel enters two ill-fated relationships, and out of a sense of penance for the failure of those liaisons, she once again relinquishes her freedom to an older person who cannot appreciate her. The Company of Women (1980) examines some of the same issues and reveals the quintessential Gordon themes of self-sacrifice, devotion, and claustrophobia. Developing a more complex narrative ... log in or subscribe to read full text