One cannot review a book as a single entity which contains entries as widely varied as this one. I will, however, note that Carter's introduction, which seemed to summarize most of the stories in brief mentions, made me leery of enjoying this. There is a certain syntax or formalism in authors of a bygone era which bores me. It's not just that the book was published in the 1980s, but that half the writers had been dead long before. On the plus side, women from a variety of cultures are represented.
I wanted to review each story separately and as I finish them, so their freshness is not lost by swift transit to the next, but am already half way thru. Let's see what I can recall.
5 * Jolley, "The Last Crop" is a daughter's retelling of her poor/working class mother's canniness at getting some of the life of ease that is available at the homes of the people she cleans for. How naturally she shares this with her community. Her worry about the way her son is at loose ends (which the daughter resents). Her percipient observations of people and their motivators. And the way she tricks an old doctor into giving her a long term advantage which also gives her son a purpose.
5 * Carrington, "The Debutante"..Not what you would expect. First off, the idea of a girl making friends with a zoo animal is surreal. But the ending! I overwhelmingly identified with the sensation of her ferocity at being compelled to follow social expectations.
3 * Gamez, "The Gloria Stories". Some people might herald this story as acknowledgement of transgender. I read it as a display of how we delude ourselves: what we desire to be true leads us to ignore reality. It might have been better in its original book, but the excerpt was not persuasive.
4 * Head, "Life" is intriguing exposure to customs from a culture different from mine, and deals with the clash between traditionalism and modernity. I read it from a perspective of anti-colonialsim, but the story itself makes no mention of the white people who historically were the cause of destruction of traditional values.
2 * Bowles, "A Guatemalan Idyll". Too surreal for me. Since no one seems to be in control of their actions, it is hard for me to see this as a tale of possibly real people.Also, the metaphor of the snake the boys played with and the little girl wanted was too obvious. Carter's note on the author said Bowles (and Barnes, whose story is later) "appropriated the alienation of modernism to express some aspects of women's lives." Maybe another reader might appreciate this.
3 * Mansfield, "The Young Girl" started with too much conversation referring to different "she's" so for the most part I was confused about who was who, what was going on. An afternoon is related by a narrator, so we don't really get into the mind of the 17-yr-old woman--unless, perhaps, you yourself have acted like her, pretending to be bored, off in a dream world.
5 * Namjoshi, "Three Feminist Fables" Completely unexpected, yet effective, and made me laught at how spot-on were her summaries of three possible adaptations of some well-known stories (Red Riding Hood, A Room of Her Own, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). The last ends with history getting rewritten to blame the victim.
3 * Colette, "The Rainy Moon". The women are too polite, in that socially expected way of not being too explicit. And while the person in higher social power (a writer, tho poor, compared to her employed typist) ends up being shown to be unaware of some powers women can command, the story was not an engaging read.
3 * Egerton, "Wedlock". OK. Definitely an expose' of the trap marriage was (and is) for women who don't see any other option for survival. But it was mainly told as simple descriptive observations. And the comments of a workman, who just happened to have read some Freud, didn't make more of a story, just told us what we are supposed to feel.
4 * Towers. "Violet". An unmarried spinster, whose role is to keep peace between her parents, recounts the effect on the household of Violet, a newly-hired maid. Violet reminds her that we draw to us what we wish for, and then goes about noticing what her employers really wish for and giving little comments that make them aware of the possibility of making it reality.
5 * Aidoo. "The Plums". A most unusual story, combined narration of a Ghanian woman's experience on a European trip and poetic stanzas which reveal her inner thoughts/African perspective. This could easily be published in the current social milieu of anti-colonialism/resource extraction protest. She is very aware of the interplay of historic and social factors, and doesn't excuse African leaders from the culpability/buying into the Euro-centric culture.
3 * Paley "A Woman Young & Old" Lot of pre-WWII slang/speech patterns. A young teen who acts older than her mother.
4 * Chedid, "The Long Trial" Egyptian peasant women protest the holy man's blessing of many children, half expecting to receive another beating for the temerity. I didn't expect the ending.
2.5* Carter "Loves of Lady Purple". It's a marionette, not a person, & the manipulator is an old man, not a woman, so why is anything this puppet might do a reflection of what women are like? Slightly macabre, but also reminds me of a movie female martial art expert.
2.5 * Barnes, "The Earth" The story is a phlegmatic as it's characters.
2.5 * Lee "Oke of Okehurst". Exactly the kind of writing I was afraid this book of authors from another era would contain. Taking forever to describe this supposedly indescribable woman that I can't care about--too vague. The only thing memorable about her are the 2 times she bursts out of expected behavior. Narrator is a man. On reflection, I think he is the real villain: supposedly present to do portraits but really has found himself a cushy situation, all expense paid living situation, and then messes it up by manipulating the relationship between the couple. When he realizes what he's done, it's too late to stop calamity.
3.5 * Kincaid, "Girl" Interesting, but doesn't really develop into anything (well, only 2 pages long!)
3.5 * Shu, "Aunt Liu" A brief look at Chinese culture, but a fairly passive story. A young girl meets her former nanny who was dismissed due to drinking. Apparently she still does, but enjoys her freedom too much to change her ways. ( )

This is certainly a collection of rather unusual stories, with some excellent authors represented. It was an interesting read but I found too many of the stories hard to follow, which meant it took a relatively long time for me to finish it. I'd hoped to enjoy it more than I did, but it's always good to delve into something that deviates from the norm.
This is a book for when you're in the mood for a bit of a challenge rather than a 'beach read'. ( )

Standouts:
Violet
Life
A Woman Young & Old
Three Feminist Fables
The Rainy Moon ( )

As I have said before, any short story collection usually tends to collect 3 stars from me. This is only logical, as any collection will contain the good, the bad and the average: so the mean is likely to cluster around the centre for most (hence the bell-shaped curve of the normal distribution). The exceptions occur when the editor goes out of his/ her way to choose extremely good (or bad!) stories: or when the stories revolve around a common theme, giving and taking from one another, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - as is the case with the book in question.

Wayward Girls and Wicked Women, edited by Angela Carter, is true to its title. This book is filled with stories about women and girls who are wayward in every way, from society's (read men's) viewpoint: written by authors separated by a century. There are confidence tricksters, prostitutes, lesbians and even murderers-but there are no damsels in distress. Each and every one of these women are their own masters.

Thus we meet the con woman of Elizabeth Jolley's The Last Crop; the lesbians of Rocky Gamez's The Gloria Stories and Ama Ata Aidoos's The Plums; the sexually promiscuous women who revel in their own sexuality of Bessie Head's Life and Jane Bowles's A Guatemalan Idyll; and the witches of Colette's Rainy Moon and Frances Tower's Violet. There are also young girls coming to terms with their sexuality in a socially unacceptable way (The Young Girl by Katherine Mansfield and A Woman Young and Old by Grace Paley) and women who have fallen prey to the familiar devil, drink (Wedlock by George Egerton, Aunt Liu by Lo Shu).

All of these stories are not tragedies: not all have happy endings, either. But they have one thing in common - the indefatigable spirit of their heroines (no, I will not use the word protagonist - each of these wayward girls and wicked women are true heroines in their own right).

In style, the stories range from the romantic (Oke of Okehurst by Vernon Lee) to realist (The Long Trial by Andree Chedid). Some of them are akin to fairy tales (The Earth by Djuna Barnes) while some are outright fables (The Debutante by Leonora Crrington, Three Feminist Fables by Suniti Namjoshi). One cannot be even called a story, rather a vignette (Girl by Jamaica Kicaid).

Angela Carter's own story, The Loves of Lady Purple, is the most powerful story of the collection and the most difficult to categorise. It can be seen either as a fable, dark fantasy, or horror: but whatever be the genre, this dark tale of a puppet come to life, making the dark fantasies of her master a horrifying reality, may be seen to supply the theme for the entire book - a puppet breaking its strings.

A worthwhile collection to read and to keep. ( )

These stories by women and about women, were mostly written in the late 19th century and the first half of 20th century. They are stories about women and girls who definitely know their own minds!

My favourites were "The Young Girl" by Katherine Mansfield, "Three Feminist Fables" by Suniti Namjoshi and "Violet" by Frances Towers. The only two I've read before were "The Loves of Lady Purple" by Angela Carter and "The Debutante" by Leonora Carrington. ( )