In this Book
- Biting the Moon: A Memoir of Feminism and Motherhood
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Syracuse University Press
- Series: Writing American Women
A second-year doctoral student from a Midwestern family, Frye is twenty-three when she marries a German professor ten years her senior. Previously sheltered, Frye seeks new vistas but instead finds herself confined by the demands of her life: wife to a volatile and domineering husband, mother of two young daughters, and aspiring academic. With her dissertation completed, she finally realizes that the only way to wrest her identity and freedom from her husband’s grip is by leaving him; she boards a bus with her two young children to embark on a new life.
In Biting the Moon, Frye powerfully recounts her struggle for independence and a successful career while remaining devoted to her daughters. Despite the many promises of the women’s movement—liberation from domestic work and the ability to influence social policy—she wrestles with the complex, often ambivalent, relationship between feminism and motherhood. Interwoven with literary references from Charlotte Brontë to Virginia Woolf to Tillie Olsen, Biting the Moon invites the reader along on Frye’s quest for self-expression and a life beyond the shadows of others. This deeply felt, courageous portrait of a woman’s life will be intimately familiar to an older generation of mothers and an inspiration to a younger generation.
Table of Contents
- Prologue: Icy Bridges
- pp. 1-7
- 1. Nascent Self
- pp. 11-26
- 2. On the Farm
- pp. 27-36
- 3. Dealing with Bodies
- pp. 37-45
- 4. Reading Redbook, Needing Feminism
- pp. 46-51
- 5. Making Lists
- pp. 52-61
- 6. Placentas and Other Hungers
- pp. 62-73
- 7. The Presence of the Father
- pp. 74-83
- 9. Mythic Self
- pp. 89-95
- 10. Outlaws and Conspirators
- pp. 96-104
- 11. No Longer a Daughter-in-Law
- pp. 105-110
- 12. Celebrations
- pp. 111-117
- Sorting It Out: Reprise, 1994
- pp. 119-134
- Part II: A New Life 1976–1989
- 13. Entering Kauke Hall
- pp. 137-142
- 14. Mommies and Monsters
- pp. 143-155
- 15. Why Are You Doing That?
- pp. 156-163
- 16. Shards of Freedom
- pp. 164-175
- 17. Not Demeter
- pp. 176-190
- 18. That Crazy Carousel
- pp. 191-203
- 19. Professor-Mother
- pp. 204-217
- 20. Chang and the Girls
- pp. 218-227
- 21. Rumors of Crickets
- pp. 228-237
- 22. Vertigo
- pp. 238-250
- 23. Finding the Blue Door
- pp. 251-267
- 24. Out from Cricklewood
- pp. 268-277
- 25. Bertha in the Attic
- pp. 278-291
- Epilogue: December 24, 2005
- pp. 293-294
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 295-296