Feminist Literary Theory

Mary Eagleton is Professor of Contemporary Women’s Writing at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. She has published extensively in the field of feminist literary theory and contemporary women’s writing, including Feminist Literary Criticism (1991), Working With Feminist Criticism (Wiley-Blackwell, 1996), A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) and Figuring the Woman Author in Contemporary Fiction (2005). She is founding Co-editor of the journal, Contemporary Women’s Writing.

Preface xii

Acknowledgments xvi

1 Finding a Female Tradition

Introduction 1

Extracts from:

A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf 9

A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing
Elaine Showalter 11

‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’
Adrienne Rich 15

Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory
Chris Weedon 19

‘The Rise of Black Feminist Literary Studies’
Ann Ducille 21

‘Race and Gender in the Shaping of the American Literary Canon: A Case Study from the Twenties’
Paul Lauter 26

‘Telling Feminist Stories’
Clare Hemmings 33

Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodernist Culture
Rita Felski 37

‘Happy Families? Feminist Reproduction and Matrilineal Thought’
Linda R. Williams 41

Literary Relations: Kinship and the Canon
Jane Spencer 45

‘Parables and Politics: Feminist Criticism in 1986’
Nancy K. Miller 47

‘What Women’s Eyes See’
Viviane Forrester 50

‘Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy’
Shoshana Felman 51

Writing Women’s Literary History
Margaret J. M. Ezell 52

The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Betty A. Schellenberg 56

2 Women and Literary Production

Introduction 61

Extracts from:

A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf 70

‘Professions for Women’
Virginia Woolf 75

Silences
Tillie Olsen 77

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar 82

‘Writing Like a Woman: A Question of Politics’
Terry Lovell 90

The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen
Jane Spencer 93

‘Emily Brontë in the Hands of Male Critics’
Carol Ohmann 95

‘Toward a Black Feminist Criticism’
Barbara Smith 98

‘Christina Rossetti: Diary of a Feminist Reading’
Isobel Armstrong 103

‘Conversations’
Hélène Cixous Et Al. 106

‘Mapping Contemporary Women’s Fiction after Bourdieu’
Mary Eagleton 110

Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain
Claire Squires 115

The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins
Graham Huggan 119

The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730
Paula Mcdowell 123

‘Black Woman Talk’
Black Woman Talk Collective 126

‘Introduction’, Let It be Told: Essays by Black Women in Britain
 Lauretta Ngcobo 127

Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics
Simone Murray 129

‘Pushed to the Margins: The Slow Death and Possible Rebirth of the Feminist Bookstore’
Kathryn Mcgrath 131

3 Gender and Genre

Introduction 135

A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf 143

Literary Women
Ellen Moers 145

‘Femininity, Narrative and Psychoanalysis’
Juliet Mitchell 147

Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel
Nancy Armstrong 151

‘Towards a Feminist Narratology’
Susan S. Lanser 154

Heterosexual Plots and Lesbian Narratives
Marilyn R. Farwell 158

Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms
Robyn R. Warhol 161

‘Introduction’, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems
Cora Kaplan 163

‘Small Island People: Black British Women Playwrights’
Meenakshi Ponnuswami 166

‘Varieties of Women’s Writing’
Clare Brant 167

Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion
Rosemary Jackson 172

Female Desire: Women’s Sexuality Today
Rosalind Coward 173

Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars
Alison Light 177

The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism
Nicola Humble 182

‘Afterword: The New Woman’s Fiction’
Shari Benstock 186

Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Susan Sellers 187

4 Towards Definitions of Feminist Writing

Introduction 191

‘“This Novel Changes Lives”: Are Women’s Novels Feminist Novels? A Response to Rebecca O’Rourke’s Article “Summer Reading”’
Rosalind Coward 199

‘Feminism and the Definition of Cultural Politics’
Michèle Barrett 203

‘What is Lesbian Literature? Forming a Historical Canon’
Lillian Faderman 207

‘American Feminist Literary Criticism: A Bibliographical Introduction’
Cheri Register 210

‘Introduction’, Feminism Meets Queer Theory
Elizabeth Weed 216

‘Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism’
Annette Kolodny 219

‘Towards a Feminist Poetics’
Elaine Showalter 222

Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory
Toril Moi 225

Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity
Alice A. Jardine 228

‘Flight Reservations: The Anglo-American/French Divide in Feminist Criticism’
Rachel Bowlby 230

‘Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism’
Nancy Fraser And Linda J. Nicholson 234

‘Mapping the Lesbian Postmodern’
Robyn Wiegman 235

Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
Bell Hooks 238

Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism
Madhu Dubey 241

Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter
Susan Stanford Friedman 244

The Radical Aesthetic
Isobel Armstrong 248

What is a Woman? And Other Essays
Toril Moi 251

Undoing Gender
Judith Butler 254

‘The Race for Theory’
Barbara Christian 257

‘Woman Can Never Be Defined’
Julia Kristeva 261

‘Discursive Desire: Catherine Belsey’s Feminism’
Marysa Demoor And Jürgen Pieters 262

5 Writing, Reading and Difference

Introduction 266

Literary Women
Ellen Moers 275

Thinking about Women
Mary Ellmann 277

‘Writing Like a Woman’
Peggy Kamuf 280

Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism
Mary Jacobus 282

‘Talking about Polylogue’
Julia Kristeva 284

Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing
Nancy K. Miller 286

The Resisting Reader
Judith Fetterley 288

‘Reading as a Woman’
Jonathan Culler 291

‘Reading Like a Man’
Robert Scholes 294

‘How to Read a “Culturally Different” Book’
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 296

The Woman Reader, 1837–1914
Kate Flint 300

Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England
Jan Fergus 303

Reading Groups
Jenny Hartley 306

‘The Powers of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine’
Luce Irigaray 308

‘The Laugh of the Medusa’
 Hélène Cixous 311

‘Castration or Decapitation?’
Hélène Cixous 314

‘Language and Revolution: The Franco–American Dis-connection’
Domna C. Stanton 316

‘Made in America: “French Feminism” in Academia’
Claire Goldberg Moses 318

Hélène Cixous Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing
Hélène Cixous And Mireille Calle-Gruber 321

6 Locating the Subject

Introduction 325

‘A Question of Subjectivity: An Interview’
Julia Kristeva 333

‘Femininity and Its Discontents’
Jacqueline Rose 335

Critical Practice
Catherine Belsey 340

What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference
Shoshana Felman 343

A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire
Janice A. Radway 347

‘Sexual Difference and Collective Identities: The New Global Constellation’
Seyla Benhabib 349

‘Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory’
 Linda Alcoff 352

‘Upping the Anti (Sic) in Feminist Theory’
Teresa De Lauretis 355

Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference
Diana Fuss 358

‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’
Donna Haraway 361

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Gloria Anzaldúa 366

Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject
Carole Boyce Davies 369

‘The Straight Mind’
Monique Wittig 372

Epistemology of the Closet
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 375

‘Of OncoMice and FemaleMen: Donna Haraway on Cyborg Ontology’
Kate Soper 378

7 Writing ‘Glocal’

Introduction 381

En-gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives
Sangeeta Ray 389

Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities
Avtar Brah 391

Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem
Reina Lewis 393

‘French Feminism in an International Frame’
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 396

‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’
Chandra Talpade Mohanty 399

Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism
Trinh T. Minh-Ha 402

‘Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition’
Sara Suleri 405

Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies
Rey Chow 407

Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
Mary Louise Pratt 411

Victorian Travel Writing and Imperial Violence: British Writing on Africa 1855–1902
Laura E. Franey 415

‘Introduction’, Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers
Amal Amireh And Lisa Suhair Majaj 417

Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique
Benita Parry 420

Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985
Adrienne Rich 423

Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement
Caren Kaplan 425

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context
Anne Mcclintock 428

Transnational Women’s Fiction: Unsettling Home and Homeland
Susan Strehle 432

Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation
Elleke Boehmer 434

Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory
Rosi Braidotti 437

Bibliography of Extracts 439

Index 447