Wit's End

Sean Zwagerman, Wit's End: Women's Humor as Rhetorical and Performative Strategy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010).

from the publisher:

Wit's End is an original perspective on women's use of humor as a performative strategy, seen in works of twentieth-century American literature. Zwagerman argues that women, whose direct, explicit performative speech has been traditionally denied, or not taken seriously, have often turned to humor as a means of communicating with men.