Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres (1991) won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent novel is Private Life (2010).
All essays by Jane Smiley
The most important question
The most important question was posed by Marguerite of Navarre, in the 1540s. She posed it, perhaps, at her favorite thermal spa, Cauterets, in the Pyrenees south of Lourdes. It was, ‘Can a woman know true love and retain her virtue?’ Marguerite was a the sister of François I of France, and the wife of the King of Navarre, a much younger man. She was a poet, a reformist and an intellectual.
Aug. 2013 •
Gender and sexuality