72. Go Ask Alice James
Alice James
Bedridden from a young age and diagnosed with the catchall term “hysteria,” Henry and William James’s sister, Alice, kept an account of her slow decline toward death in a diary that has made her something of a feminist icon. In this week’s mini, find out how she felt about the Jack the Ripper murders and why her writing wasn’t published until half a century after her death.
Discussed in this episode:
Henry James's The Wings of the Dove
Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Constance Fenimore Woolson with Anne Boyd Rioux
Lost Lady of Lit episode on Jane and Mary Findlater
The Complete Letters of Henry James
What Alice Knew by Paula Marantz Cohen
Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth In a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn
Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote
Lost Ladies of Lit episode with Rachel Vorona Cote
Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Homemaker
“Alice James: Sister of Genius” by Katherine Winton Evans (Washington Post)