Product Description

This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19450 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Review
This book asks the question: If the pen is a metaphorical penis, where does that leave women writers? Answer: Not out in the cold, but boxed in the architectural shapes of patriarchal society (from the parlor to the glass coffin) and of paternal literary forms. When a woman picks up the pen, argue English professors Gilbert and Gubar (Univ. of Calif., Davis, and Indiana Univ., respectively), she is transformed from the angel of papa's house to slimy monster and falls victim to understandable anxiety. Consequently, they say, the work of 19th-century women writers is haunted by complementary images of confinement and agoraphobia; the heroine often is trapped in her mirror like Snow White or, like Jane Eyre, twin to the madwoman in the attic. Aware of their fall from Lilith's primordial power, the women writers spin images of disease and more subtle fantasies of subversion. The authors advance this picture of the female literary imagination in three relentlessly metaphoric chapters moving "toward a feminist poetics," then illustrate and amplify their theory by close (sometimes microscopic) readings of Austen, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickinson, and a score of other writers. At times their analysis strikes brilliant sparks, but at others it is merely convoluted. On a poem by Christina Rossetti, they write: "Plainly, the very act of poetic assertion, with its challenge to attempt self-definition or at least self-confrontation, elicits evasions, anxieties, hostilities, in brief painful preoccupations,' from all competitors, so that the jolly poetry game paradoxically contains the germ of just that gloom it seems designed to dispel." But on the whole it's an ambitious and provocative attempt to reevaluate some of the best and least of 19th-century writers in terms of an aesthetic of their own. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Dated in Places but still required reading
This book by Gilbert and Gubar was groundbreaking literary criticism when it was first published, and paved the way for an explosion in feminist literary criticism that allowed much existing work to be re-evaluated and enriched by what women had to say
I recently re-read this work, and have to say that some of it is now dated, and the enormous preface to the recent edition does not really add anything to the main body of text, although it does go some way to setting the scene for the research. It seems dated because what Gilbert and Gubar once fought for is now taken for granted by so many, which just shows the success of their achievements.
The majority of the work on the 19th Century novels themselves, particularly the work of Charlotte Bronte is invaluable and always enriching and interesting. Nobody should be able to read these novels without reading these essays because they just make so much sense. The central tenet about the writer and their ability to express the unexpressible aspects of themselves through their literary creations and in particular the character of Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, is still breathtaking and brilliant. A must read for any serious students of nineteenth century literature.

Feminist lit-crit of the highest order
This is the sort of criticism that expands your impression of literature. The authors cast a fresh light on classic women's writing - Austen, the Brontes, etc - by examining how a woman writer's self-perception is shaped by patriarchy and a mysoginistic tradition, and that the anxiety caused by being 'unfeminine' can be found within the writing. It's also well written enough to be read for fun.

A great insight into Victorian feminism
A must for anyone interested in the feminist aspects of Victorian writing. Gilbert and Gubar explore the writings of canonical Victorian women such as Austen, Eliot and the Bronte sisters with an insight sure to fascinate the academic or just the interested everyday reader.