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Edited and introduced by
MARY EAGLETON
EAGLETON
Feminist
literary
criticism
26/42263
£9.99 GRE
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B4 675 25 0
Feminist
Literary Criticism
Edited and Introduced by
Mary Eagleton
US 7b
ROTHERHAM
PUBLIC LIBRARIES
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Longman Group UK Limited
Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow,
Essex CM20 2JE, England
and Associated Companies throughout the world.
Published in the United States of America
by Longman Inc., New York
© Longman Group UK Limited 1991
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be
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London, WCIE 7DP.
First published 1991
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Feminist literary criticism. - (Longman critical reader).
1. Literature. - Critical studies
I. Eagleton, Mary
809
ISBN D-SflB-DS014-b CSD
ISBN 0-5A5-D5D15-4 PPR
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feminist literary criticism /[edited by] Mary Eagleton.
p. cm. -- (Longman critical readers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-05014-6. - ISBN 0-582-05015-4 (pbk.)
1. Feminist literary criticism. 2. Women in literature. 3. Women
and literature. I. Eagleton, Mary. II. Series.
PN98.W64F43 1991
809’.89287—dc20 90-41654
CIP
Set in 9/11.5 Palatino
Produced by Longman Singapore Publishers (Pte) Ltd.
Printed in Singapore
Contents
General Editors' Preface iv
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction \
Feminism and critical theory 5
Woolf/Sho waiter/Moi 7
Anglo-American feminism/French feminism 8
The personal and the political 12
Politics and the poetic 14
Men in feminism 16
1 ELAINE SHOWALTER A Literature of Their Own 24
toril moi Sexual/Textual Politics 37
2 peggy kamuf 'Replacing Feminist Criticism' 53
nancy K. miller 'The Text's Heroine: A Feminist
(
Critic and Her Fictions' 61
3 JULIA kristeva About Chinese Women 70
gayatri chakravorty SPIVAK 'French Feminism in an
International Frame' 83
4 HELENE CIXOUS AND CATHERINE CLEMENT The Newly
Born Woman 110
5 rate millett Sexual Politics 135
CORA kaplan 'Radical Feminism and Literature:
Rethinking Millett's Sexual Politics' 157_
6 mary jacobus 'Is There a Woman in This Text?' 171
STEPHEN HEATH Male Feminism' 193
Glossary of Terms 226
Notes on Authors 230
Further Reading 232
Index 236
iii
General Editors' Preface
The outlines of contemporary critical theory are now often taught as a
standard feature of a degree in literary studies. The development of
particular theories has seen a thorough transformation of literary criticism.
For example, Marxist and Foucauldian theories have revolutionized
Shakespeare studies, and 'deconstruction' has led to a complete reassess¬
ment of Romantic poetry. Feminist criticism has left scarcely any period of
literature unaffected by its searching critiques. Teachers of literary studies
can no longer fall back on a standardized, received, methodology.
Lecturers and teachers are now urgently looking for guidance in a
rapidly changing critical environment. They need help in understanding
the latest revisions in literary theory, and especially in grasping the prac¬
tical effects of the new theories in the form of theoretically sensitized new
readings. A number of volumes in the series anthologize important essays
on particular theories. However, in order to grasp the full implications and
possible uses of particular theories it is essential to see them put to work.
This series provides substantial volumes of new readings, presented in an
accessible form and with a significant amount of editorial guidance.
Each volume includes a substantial introduction which explores the
theoretical issues and conflicts embodied in the essays selected and locates
areas of disagreement between positions. The pluralism of theories has to
be put on the agenda of literary studies. We can no longer pretend that we
all tacitly accept the same practices in literary studies. Neither is a laissez-
faire attitude any longer tenable. Literature departments need to go
beyond the mere toleration of theoretical differences: it is not enough
merely to agree to differ; they need actually to 'stage' the differences
openly. The volumes in this series all attempt to dramatize the differences,
not necessarily with a view to resolving them but in order to foreground
the choices presented by different theories or to argue for a particular
route through the impasses the differences present.
The theory 'revolution' has had real effects. It has loosened the grip of
traditional empiricist and romantic assumptions about language and
literature. It is not always clear what is being proposed as the new agenda
for literary studies, and indeed the very notion of 'literature' is questioned
by the post-structuralist strain in theory. However, the uncertainties and
obscurities of contemporary theories appear much less worrying when we
see what the best critics have been able to do with them in practice. This
IV
series aims to disseminate the best of recent criticism, and to show that it
is possible to re-read the canonical texts of literature in new and
challenging ways.
Raman Selden and Stan Smith
v
Acknowledgements
I should like to acknowledge the helpfulness of my publishers, Longman,
and of Stan Smith and Ray Selden, the General Editors for the Longman
Critical Readers Series. I am grateful to Bruni de la Motte and Judy Giles
for careful and perceptive readings of the Introduction. The Library staff at
the College of Ripon and York St John, particularly Sandra Huxley and
Tony Chalcraft, have given ample proof of their efficiency and
professionalism. My major debt, as ever, is to David Pierce for daily
encouragement, advice and humour.
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright
material:
Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd for extracts from About Chinese Women by
Julia Kristeva (Marion Boyars, London, New York, 1977); The Johns
Hopkins University Press for the article 'Is There a Woman in This Text?'
by Mary Jacobus from New Literary History, Autumn 1982, Vol 14 (1), & the
articles 'Replacing Feminist Criticism' by Peggy Kamuf & 'The Text's
Heroine: A Feminist Critic & Her Fictions' by Nancy K Miller from
Diacritics, Vol 12,1982; Methuen & Co, a division of Routledge, Chapman
& Hall Ltd, for an extract from Sexual/Textual Politics by Toril Moi
(Methuen, 1985); the author's agent for an extract from Sexual Politics by
Kate Millett, copyright © 1969,1970 by Kate Millett; Princeton University
Press for extracts from A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter,
copyright © 1977 by Princeton University Press; Routledge, Chapman &
Hall, Inc for the essay 'Male Feminism' by Stephen Heath & the article
'French Feminism in an International Frame' by Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak from In Other Worlds (1987); University of Minnesota Press for
extracts from The Newly Born Woman by Helene Cixous & Catherine
Clement, English translation & Introduction copyright © 1986 by the
University of Minnesota; Verso Ltd for an extract from Sea Changes by
Cora Kaplan (1986).
Note, a Glossary has been provided to explain any specialist terms.
vi
Introduction
This selection of essays on feminist literary theory begins with a
consideration of Virginia Woolf, the founding mother of the contemporary
debate. In a second-hand bookshop I once saw a notice which stated that
all fiction was shelved alphabetically with the sole exception of Woolf who
was to be found under 'Women's Studies'; though the arrangement was
unorthodox, the bookshop owner had evidently recognized Woolf's
significance for feminists. In some ways it is difficult for feminist criticism
to get beyond Woolf. So acutely did she foreshadow future developments
that feminists from a variety of critical positions - Marxist,
psychoanalytical, post-structuralist - turn to her as their starting-point. In
this volume Elaine Showalter develops Woolf's interest in a tradition of
women authors and explores Woolf's own status within that tradition,
while Toril Moi relates Woolf's avant-garde textual practice to recent
French critical theory. From the writing of literary history to a more
abstract theoretical debate, Woolf's work has relevance for feminists.
Kate Millett proves to be a less dutiful daughter. Her passing and
dismissive reference to Woolf in Sexual Politics (1970) reads: 'Virginia
Woolf glorified two housewives, Mrs Dalloway and Mrs Ramsay, recorded
the suicidal misery of Rhoda in The Waves without ever explaining its
causes, and was argumentative yet somehow unsuccessful, perhaps
because unconvinced, in conveying the frustrations of the woman artist in
Lily Briscoe. Only in A Room of One's Own, essay rather than fiction, could
she describe what she knew'.11 suppose we have to be grateful for the
final sentence. Yet in its own way Millett's book is as historically
important to feminism as Woolf's oeuvre and these two critics - Woolf and
Millett - are determining voices in the development of feminist literary
studies. Published seven years after Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
(1963), five years after Tillie Olsen's essay 'Silences' first appeared in
Harper's Magazine (1965), two years after Mary Ellmann's Thinking About
Women (1968), and concurrent with Eva Figes's Patriarchal Attitudes (1970)
and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970), Sexual Politics marks,
with these other texts, that moment when the present women's
1
Feminist Literary Criticism
movement established itself as a widespread, self-aware, activist
organization. The audacity and elan of Millett's writing testifies to the
excitement of that juncture, and in somewhat greyer, less militant times
we could all feed from her energy and sense of urgency. The measure of
her achievement is indicated in the very term 'sexual politics' - a concept
strange and contentious twenty years ago but one which we now find
both self-evident and indispensable to critical analysis.
Two facets of Sexual Politics remain characteristic of feminist thinking:
firstly, its comprehensiveness. Though her Introduction admits to some
hesitancy about the task in hand, once into her thesis Millett moves with
confidence - later critics have suggested, a rather too easy confidence -
across literature, history, sociology, psychoanalysis and several other
disciplines. She exemplifies a revolutionary scope intrinsic to feminism:
the whole world needs changing and all established canons must be
challenged. Secondly, within this comprehensive critique. Sexual Politics
evinces a particular attention to cultural matters, an aspect about which
Cora Kaplan asks searching questions in her comments on Millett. The
frequency with which books and courses in the early 1970s took as their
subject 'images of women' indicates how crucial for feminism have been
debates on visual and verbal representation. In many feminist circles
protests against pornography or the imaginative feminist graffiti on
advertising hoardings have been given the same priority as campaigns
for reproductive rights or equal pay. From the start feminists felt that
writing, literature, criticism were places for them to be. Now, twenty
years after Millett, we can see how the proliferation of writing by and
about women has had a decisive effect on the publishing industry, academic
institutions, the nature of critical theory, the practices of teaching and
literary criticism. Of course this is not necessarily a sign of the end of
patriarchy. It may instead be a sign of the ability of publishers to recognise
the marketable, or criticism's capacity for absorbing the radical. Yet it is,
equally, an indication of feminism's pervasive and - to date - sustained
impact.
This book is designed to capture something of the variety of critical
positions that have developed since 1970. Feminist theory is a broad church
with a number of co-operating and competing approaches; it is probably
more appropriate to talk of feminist theories rather than feminist theory.
For those who are looking for a consolidated political position, or a
uniform feminist practice, or even simply for clarity, such diversity is
distressing. For others, pluralism is an indication of feminism's creativity
and flexibility. Annette Kolodny's influential essay, 'Dancing Through the
Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a
Feminist Literary Criticism' (1980), poses the dilemma. Does diversity
render feminist literary criticism 'woefully deficient in system, and
painfully lacking in program', or does it lead us to our true political and
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