Wayward Women in Literature

Blood is thicker than water — something Korede is all too familiar with. Once is a mistake, twice is an unfortunate coincidence, but three times is a serial offense. Behind every boyfriend that her sister Ayoola swiftly dates and murders, Korede is right there to — literally — clean up the mess. While Korede is forced to watch her sister become a serial killer, she also has her own love life to deal with when she develops feelings for a doctor at the hospital where she works. Without realizing that he’s choosing life or death, he falls for the wrong sister and asks Ayoola out on a date. Korede soon discovers what she’ll sacrifice and the lengths she’ll go to protect her sister.

Eileen may appear to be a stable young woman — she has a job, and looks after her father — but once we delve inside her mind, we see that’s far from true. While this novel begins the week before Christmas, Eileen’s activities are anything but festive. Taking place in 1960s New England, Eileen works as a secretary at a boy’s prison by day and steals, stalks, and sneaks around by night — all while taking care of her abusive, alcoholic father. Despite her poor choices, Eileen is on a personal quest to discover normalcy within herself, desperate to shed her own label of “wayward.”

In her exclusive MFA program at New England’s Warren University, Samantha keeps to herself, though that isn’t difficult when the majority of her small writing cohort has an even smaller clique of their own — the Bunnies. Despite her disdain towards them, Samantha finds herself accepting an unexpected invitation from them to one of their parties. It’s here that Samantha realizes that the Bunnies are actually a cult. The moment she steps into their world, Samantha alienates her one and only friend, participates in their horrific and unconventional extracurriculars, and becomes the one person she hates most in the world — a Bunny. Talk about a hare-raising tail (puns very much intended).

Weike Wang paints her narrator as one who is seemingly inches away from achieving it all. She’s in her fifth year of her chemistry Ph.D. program and has the dream boyfriend. Despite the illusion that she is on track to having a perfect life, the pressure of school and her love life finally gives way when she is proposed to. She explodes and blows up everything in her path. No longer sure of who she is — scholarly or otherwise — the narrator must deconstruct what led up to her breaking point, and understand how her parents’ expectations have shaped her, rather than her own.

Despite spending nine years writing her dissertation on Sappho, Lucy can’t seem to bring her findings to an end, and on top of it all, she is newly single (much to her chagrin). Venice Beach becomes Lucy’s home for the summer where she begins group therapy for love addicts. Like Sappho who jumped from a cliff and fell to her death amongst the rocky shore, a despondent Lucy lounges on her own rocky beach, where she meets a different kind of fate — Theo, a merman. Desperate to be loved and desired again, Lucy begins a relationship with Theo, a man — literally — like no other.

When twenty-one-year-olds Isa and Gala move to New York City ready to embark on a summer adventure, funding this trip is the least of their worries. While they spend their hot summer nights among the glamorous and elite, their mornings are spent making back the money they spent on their extravagant outings. They stop short of nothing to make ends meet and keep the party going, leading tensions to rise between the two women. Will the summer of luxury be worth it, or will they dig themselves into a hole so deep that even their social climbing ladders won’t help them out of it?

Who is the Woman in the Purple Skirt, but more importantly — who is watching her? What begins as a seemingly innocent observation from one woman of another, quickly reveals itself to be a deep obsession. Through the eyes of the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, we closely watch the Woman in the Purple Skirt and learn her personal details without ever even speaking to her. We see her in the park, on the train, and in her home, but she never sees us. As the situation escalates when the two women finally interact, the Woman in the Purple Skirt continues to not only be tracked by her stalker but manipulated too.

Set in a small Ohio town known as The Bottom, Nel and Sula have grown up as best friends in the 1920s. When an accident drives a wedge between their friendship, Nel and Sula separate. In the meantime, Nel’s choices make her renowned in their Black community while Sula’s reputation paints her as a social outcast. Once Nel is a married mother, Sula returns, reigniting their friendship and bond that remained strong despite their years apart. However, it is only too shortly after their reunion that Sula betrays Nel and her trust, bringing them to an end once again.

From the moment they are born, women are conditioned to take up as little space as possible, so when demure Roberta meets lively Stevie, her role in the world as she knows it is turned on its head. So begins the Supper Club in which Roberta and Stevie meet up at night with other starving women to break into buildings and feast until they’re full. While they physically grow and allow themselves to take up space with their bodies, the community that the women have created and nurtured during their nighttime endeavors is one which reignites a passion for art and life that had been lost long before.