Jo Parnell's carefully curated collection brings attention to a figure often maligned and misunderstood in popular culture. Parnell's introduction and the chapters that follow offer readers a multidisciplinary journey across the globe and across time, from the Roman Empire to British colonial Nigeria to Hitchcock's Manderley. Whether she is the product of concubinage, polygamy, or remarriage after the death or divorce of her predecessor, the second wife looms large in film and literature as both a victim of and threat to patriarchy.
— Julie Anne Taddeo, University of Maryland
Following Dr. Jo Parnell’s groundbreaking and genuinely international collections on the cultural representations of the mother-in-law and the bride, comes this third volume on yet another underexplored universal female familial role, namely the second wife. Dr. Parnell, who envisaged, actualized, and edited this essential series, her expert contributors, and her publisher, are to be congratulated on creating this stunning collection of scholarly articles from around the globe. Ranging freely across times, places, histories, cultures, and social structures, as well as genres and cultural texts, Cultural Representations of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen is essential reading for anyone interested in the second wife’s experiences across multiple contexts.
— Dr. Josephine May, University of Newcastle