Cultural Representation of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen, is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural work that provides insights into the realities of second wives the world over. This book allows the reader a three-dimensional view of the second wife experience. It asks: What does it mean, and what does it feel like, to be a second wife in a polygamous union or in a monogamous partnership? Is there a difference? Together, the writers in this book cleverly create an in-depth study of the subject through the productions referred to in the title, to offer a different approach to the popularly held views of the second wife. The book addresses the intricacies, customs, practices and lifestyles of the various Eastern and Western cultures and demonstrates the abilities of the Humanities to connect and interrelate with other disciplines as well as with the readers own world.
Jo Parnell is Honorary Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Science (HCISS), College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Foreword
Mark Hoffman
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Jo Parnell
Chapter 1. Toxic Patriarchy: Raise the Red Lantern and Chinese Concubinage
Andrew Howe
Chapter 2. The Second Wife According to Assia Djebar, Fawzia Zouari and Their Novels A Sister to Scheherazade, and The Second Wife
Christa Jones
Chapter 3. Polygamy and Socio-political Configurations in the Egyptian Cultural Imaginations
Azza Harras
Chapter 4 Secondary Spouse: Ekwefi as Second Wife in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Harry Olufunwa
Chapter 5. Unmasking the Realities of Polygamy: the Figure of the Second Wife in Changes: A Love Story (1993), Ada: A Victim of Fate and Cultural Circumstances (2014), and Mariah (2002).
Shalini Nadaswaran
Chapter 6. Poppaea Sabina, second wife to the Roman Emperor Nero
Jane Bellemore
Chapter 7. “I am Mrs de Winter now”: Gaslighting, a deadly paradox, and Hitchcock’s second wife.
Kathryn Keeble
About the Contributors
This collection is full of surprises. Whatever you think you know about the second wife will be contradicted as the focus shifts across countries and continents and across decades and millennia. The stories intersect with religion, law, culture, divorce, polygamy, sexuality, and of course patriarchy. No wonder the second wife has proved irresistible for writers and directors. The essays show vividly the variety of these fictional versions and their impact on their audiences. Now any lucky reader of this rich collection can sample vicariously some of this ferment of attitudes and experiences . . . — Hugh Craig, Emeritus Professor, FAHA, University of Newcastle (Aust)
Following Dr. Jo Parnell’s groundbreaking and genuinely international collections on the cultural representations of the mother-in-law and the bride, comes this third volume on yet another underexplored universal female familial role, namely the second wife. Dr. Parnell, who envisaged, actualized, and edited this essential series, her expert contributors, and her publisher, are to be congratulated on creating this stunning collection of scholarly articles from around the globe. Ranging freely across times, places, histories, cultures, and social structures, as well as genres and cultural texts, Cultural Representations of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen is essential reading for anyone interested in the second wife’s experiences across multiple contexts. — Dr. Josephine May, University of Newcastle (Aust)
Jo Parnells carefully curated collection brings attention to a figure often maligned and misunderstood in popular culture. Parnells introduction and the chapters that follow offer readers a multidisciplinary journey across the globe and across time, from the Roman Empire to British colonial Nigeria to Hitchcocks Manderley. Whether she is the product of concubinage, polygamy, or remarriage after the death or divorce of her predecessor, the second wife looms large in film and literature as both a victim of and threat to patriarchy. — Julie Anne Taddeo, University of Maryland
