This title was first published in 2001. This work focuses upon women who have not merely produced comic texts, but used their comedies to examine laughter itself as a problematic issue. Whether to embrace laughter wholeheartedly, whether to do so in a cautious and limited manner, or whether to forswear it entirely - women's opinions have seldom been in accord on one answer. For women writers of the 20th century laughter has been something to be weighed carefully in terms of its ethical, political and pragmatic relationship to feminist values, as well as its ability or inability to help women survive. Rather than offering an exhaustive survey of all comic fiction produced by women over the 20th century, the book examines a few texts in depth. It argues for the importance of reading little-known works and for seeing these so-called "minor" texts as shedding light on major questions, including how female writers have found ways to reshape genres traditionally reserved for or defined by men.