Gender In Norman Page's Muriel Spark

The Cambridge Guide to Women 's Writing in English (1999), provides an account of this critical trend rather than of Spark 's art, remarks on the opposition to "her quirky, lapidary technique", which has been sometimes interpreted negatively as frivolous, superficial, or trivial; and her "Olympian attitude" (Moseley 592), which has been deemed cold and harsh. This quite recent Guide also tells us that "in her books the issue is the freedom of her characters within the world of a godlike novelist” (Moseley 592).

Norman Page’s Muriel Spark (Modern Novelists), published in 1990, deals with the themes and techniques in eighteen novels, from The Comforters (1957) to A Far Cry from Kensington (1988). This critical work examines the development of

It lays particular emphasis on gender, psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, and deconstructive reading strategies. The book opens with the introduction by Macquillan entitled “‘I Don’t Know Anything about Freud’: Muriel Spark Meets Contemporary Criticism”. After the introduction the book is divided into three sections. First section deals with the theory of Gender in Sparks’s The Public Image and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Second section is the study of Spark’s conversion, her experience in Africa and her novel Symposium in the shadow of Race. The last section concerns with theory of Deconstruction in Memento Mori, Not to Disturb and The Public Image and the book concludes with a new interview with Muriel Spark.

Photeine Apostolou and Fotini E. Apostolou’s critical study Seduction and Death in Muriel Spark’s Fiction: (Contributions to the study of World Literature) (2001) examines the seductive and deconstructive power of social structures, such as religion and education. They point out that these structures lure Spark’s characters with their promise of power. But after entering the structure’s domain to exploit the mastery it offers, the characters are imprisoned by rules and codes, until they finally come

With the study of above five novels Bruno uncovered how Muriel Spark customizes the time-structure of novels to communicate the themes of her novels. Muriel Spark 's real concern is realistic delineation of life in her fiction. The better to convey the idea of life as a series of moments, Spark adapts the structure in her novels to embody moments representing the uncertainties of life. Sometimes Time in Spark’s fiction follows an uninterrupted flow and nothing happens to alter its course.

Hidden Possibilities: Essays in Honor of Muriel Spark (2014) edited by Robert E. Hosmer Jr., presents a well informed perspective and critical responses on Spark’s oeuvre. This volume also consist interviews with Muriel Spark, which authenticates her passion for witty writing and also highlight her distinctive personality. Critics and readers of Spark often read her in a somewhat narrow context – as a Catholic, a woman, or a Scottish writer. The essays in this volume, in the process of making connections between the above contexts, cumulatively situate Spark in a broader European