Most critics of southern novelist Eudora Welty have analyzed her work with a primary focus on her southern background. In Serious Daring from Within, Franziska Gygax instead uses a gender-specific approach to analyze Welty's novels, illustrating how Welty's narrative techniques establish female authority and frequently undermine patriarchal values. From this unique perspective, Gygax examines Delta Wedding, The Golden Apples, Losing Battles and The Optimist's Daughter, and argues that Eudora Welty indirectly and subtly created a radical vision of a female world. The study applies feminist literary theory when considering the various narrative structures of each novel. Scholars of literary criticism, southern literary studies and/or women's studies will find Serious Daring from Within enlightening and rewarding.

Gertrude Stein's works encompass a variety of genres. She explicitly called many of her works plays, operas, or novels intending her works to be read with certain generic expectations in mind, be it only to have them undermined. Although many writers depart from generic norms, Stein's generic transgressions are radical and are related to gender-specific traits of her writing. This work examines Stein's questions about gender hierarchies, classifications, and categories, and brings to light the direct relationship between gender and genre in her works. Gygax looks at a number of Stein's texts, including "Ida A Novel, A Circular Play, Everybody's Autobiography, The Geographical History of America, " and "Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, " which Stein called a detective story.

Readers bring to a text a set of expectations often relating to its genre. A novel, for example, is expected to share certain features with other novels, which is why it is not considered a play. But these distinctions are difficult to make, and writers often depart from generic conventions for the sake of being innovative. Generic expectations also closely relate to gender. For example, an autobiography may be read in light of the gender of the author. Like various genres, gender brings with it certain expectations, which are largely determined by social values. Some individuals transgress the conventional bounds of gender roles, just as some works of literature go beyond traditional generic frames.

The works of Gertrude Stein typically challenge the expectations of both gender and genre. As a lesbian writer, Stein was acutely aware of society's expectations with respect to gender. And in her writings, she is clearly concerned with genre. She explicitly calls many of her works plays, operas, or novels intending them to be read with certain generic expectations in mind only to transgress traditional generic expectations. Gygax explores why Stein was inevitably confronted with questions about gender and generic categories. Including a number of Stein's theoretical statements about writing, this insightful book illuminates the relationship between gender and genre in her works.