A Study Guide for Rita Mae Brown's "Ruby Fruit Jungle"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Rita Mae Brown's "Ruby Fruit Jungle," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535832397

Book preview

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Rubyfruit Jungle

Rita Mae Brown

1973

Introduction

When a small feminist press published Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle in 1973, the novel sold 70,000 copies despite being almost completely ignored by reviewers at major magazines and periodicals. In 1977 the book was reissued by Bantam Books and went on to sell over one million copies.

Rubyfruit Jungle chronicles the life of a young woman named Molly Bolt. Starting with her childhood in Pennsylvania, the book follows her adolescence in Florida and her later adventures in New York. Her relationships with other women are also a major source of focus and conflict in the novel. Many of the events and characters in the book draw from Brown's own early years.

Rubyfruit Jungle fits into the tradition of the picaresque novel, which typically follows the adventures of a socially or financially marginalized protagonist, such as Huck Finn in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The book is unique within the picaresque tradition in that both the protagonist and the author are female.

Author Biography

Rita Mae Brown was born in Pennsylvania in 1944 and moved to Florida during her adolescence. She attended the University of Florida, but was expelled for her participation in a civil rights rally.

She later moved to New York and attended New York University, where she received a degree in Classics and English. Later she received another degree in Cinematography from the New York School of Visual Arts. She also holds a doctorate in Political Science from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

In the late 1960s, Brown turned her attention to politics. She became interested in several feminist and lesbian rights groups. In 1971 she was instrumental in forming the Furies, a lesbian and feminist group. Also she founded and edited the feminist research journal