**Showalter's "A Jury of Her Peers"- comments & discussion
CharlasClub Read 2009
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1avaland
Here's a place for those of us reading Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx to gather and comment on their reading or a thread to encourage those who have the book to dive in. Some of us may be reading this from beginning to end, while others may be dipping into random chapters, and we may be reading at different rates but here's a place to talk about it!
For those who are watching or reading, a little background and/or additional material:
The publisher's page for the book:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400041237&view=quo...
An interesting Salon.com review of it:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/02/24/elaine_showalter/
A site which features an interview between Erica Jong and Elaine Showalter (scroll to the bottom of the page)
http://www.progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/viewBook.pbc?id=1212
eta a piece by Showalter in the Guardian as posted on the 'articles' thread by kidsdoc:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/09/female-novelists-usa
For those who are watching or reading, a little background and/or additional material:
The publisher's page for the book:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400041237&view=quo...
An interesting Salon.com review of it:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/02/24/elaine_showalter/
A site which features an interview between Erica Jong and Elaine Showalter (scroll to the bottom of the page)
http://www.progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/viewBook.pbc?id=1212
eta a piece by Showalter in the Guardian as posted on the 'articles' thread by kidsdoc:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/09/female-novelists-usa
2fannyprice
Ok, one thing Showalter says early in her book: "nothing prevents men from understanding women's stories when they are taught how to read them."
This irked me, but maybe there is a gem of truth to it. I think Showalter is arguing against the historic tendency of (mostly male) literary taste-makers to assert that women's literature - because it often deals with the small, the domestic, the personal, rather than large, grand themes like war or whatever - is less "important" and less lasting than men's literature. Women readers grow up reading male-authored novels in school and being told things like "Hemingway is a great writer because his work deals with big issues" or whatever (I have never read him, he was just the first thing that popped into my head). Therefore, female readers are already socialized to "understand" and value men's writing. But since women's fiction is much less commonly taught and is considered less important, male writers have to be explicitly socialized to understand how it works and why it is good.
But is this true? Are men really incapable of understanding why Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte is interesting without explicitly being "educated" as to their importance? I'd like to say no, but let's face it, so many men dismiss these authors as "chick lit."
And I'd like to be able to say that there is really no difference between women's literature and men's literature, but if I really feel that way, why do I specifically attempt to read fiction by women? Certainly not out of any sense of obligation or feeling that I need to help women writers out of their marginalization. Why do I love "domestic fiction" but most men I know think its worthless?
Why do I tag fiction authored by women as "women writers" when I don't bother to tag all my male authored fiction as "men writers"? Because "male" is normative and female is exceptional and denotes a separate kind of literature?
This irked me, but maybe there is a gem of truth to it. I think Showalter is arguing against the historic tendency of (mostly male) literary taste-makers to assert that women's literature - because it often deals with the small, the domestic, the personal, rather than large, grand themes like war or whatever - is less "important" and less lasting than men's literature. Women readers grow up reading male-authored novels in school and being told things like "Hemingway is a great writer because his work deals with big issues" or whatever (I have never read him, he was just the first thing that popped into my head). Therefore, female readers are already socialized to "understand" and value men's writing. But since women's fiction is much less commonly taught and is considered less important, male writers have to be explicitly socialized to understand how it works and why it is good.
But is this true? Are men really incapable of understanding why Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte is interesting without explicitly being "educated" as to their importance? I'd like to say no, but let's face it, so many men dismiss these authors as "chick lit."
And I'd like to be able to say that there is really no difference between women's literature and men's literature, but if I really feel that way, why do I specifically attempt to read fiction by women? Certainly not out of any sense of obligation or feeling that I need to help women writers out of their marginalization. Why do I love "domestic fiction" but most men I know think its worthless?
Why do I tag fiction authored by women as "women writers" when I don't bother to tag all my male authored fiction as "men writers"? Because "male" is normative and female is exceptional and denotes a separate kind of literature?
3fannyprice
I'm migrating, in a slightly modified form, some comments I wrote in response to a Showalter interview about this book that murr directed me to.
Here's the interview: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=yq3wny99v1lhxh68w9y811tljpqq9pt8
I do agree with Showalter's comment - at least in other contexts (since I am less familiar with American women writers than women writers from other cultures) - that there is a real unwillingness to judge quality and a focus instead on social significance. Both are important, but women writers will never be taken seriously if the only justification for reading them is that they are important because they are women. Certainly women writers operated (still operate?) under a set of disadvantages that men did (do?) not, but at some point the actual quality of the prose has to come into play, or reading women writers just seems patronizing. I hope I'm being clear, I don't want to offend.
I'm really enjoying A Jury of Her Peers so far - I thought the chapter on Mary Rowlandson, who writes of being held captive by Narragansett Indians, was especially fascinating. It seems that the Indian captive narrative was fairly common and that women used it to explore questions about identity and culture - Showalter talks about a couple of women who wrote about women who were captured and became completely assimilated and then refused to rejoin white society. That's an interesting story, I think.
I confess, however, that much of American literature has never interested me, which I know is a horrible, horrible attitude. I have read and LOVED some works of American literature, mostly in high school. I enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath and went around thinking in accented English for weeks afterwards; Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were particular favorites when I was younger & I actually think one can glean a lot of historical and social detail from these "children's books", although I confess I didn't notice the racial attitudes until re-reading the Little House books in grad school for a break from critical literary studies of Lebanese women's novels (shows you how well THAT worked, that I just couldn't stop analyzing everything to death). So much of it just strikes me as pioneers and more pioneers. I am hoping that this book will open me up to reading more American literature, both by men and women.
Here's the interview: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=yq3wny99v1lhxh68w9y811tljpqq9pt8
I do agree with Showalter's comment - at least in other contexts (since I am less familiar with American women writers than women writers from other cultures) - that there is a real unwillingness to judge quality and a focus instead on social significance. Both are important, but women writers will never be taken seriously if the only justification for reading them is that they are important because they are women. Certainly women writers operated (still operate?) under a set of disadvantages that men did (do?) not, but at some point the actual quality of the prose has to come into play, or reading women writers just seems patronizing. I hope I'm being clear, I don't want to offend.
I'm really enjoying A Jury of Her Peers so far - I thought the chapter on Mary Rowlandson, who writes of being held captive by Narragansett Indians, was especially fascinating. It seems that the Indian captive narrative was fairly common and that women used it to explore questions about identity and culture - Showalter talks about a couple of women who wrote about women who were captured and became completely assimilated and then refused to rejoin white society. That's an interesting story, I think.
I confess, however, that much of American literature has never interested me, which I know is a horrible, horrible attitude. I have read and LOVED some works of American literature, mostly in high school. I enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath and went around thinking in accented English for weeks afterwards; Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were particular favorites when I was younger & I actually think one can glean a lot of historical and social detail from these "children's books", although I confess I didn't notice the racial attitudes until re-reading the Little House books in grad school for a break from critical literary studies of Lebanese women's novels (shows you how well THAT worked, that I just couldn't stop analyzing everything to death). So much of it just strikes me as pioneers and more pioneers. I am hoping that this book will open me up to reading more American literature, both by men and women.
4fannyprice
I am burning up this thread today....
In the previous post, I mentioned Mary Rowlandson, whose memoir of her abduction, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (not surprisingly, no touchstone) (1682), "was the first of the many Indian captivity narratives that fascinated American readers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries," according to Showalter.
Showalter says that "The historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was among those scholars in the 1970s and 1980s who charged that Rowlandson's narrative 'is deeply and pervasively racist,' because she viewed the Indians as barbarous savages and 'was seemingly unaware of the suffering in the Indian camp.'"
Showalter goes on to say "I take a more moderate and less political view today. Rowlandson had seen twelve people close to her, including her sister and brother-in-law, murdered by the Indians, and her house burned to the ground; she had carried her wounded six-year-old daughter Sarah for nine days without food, had held the child when she died, and had been forced to leave her body behind. Not even an Anne Frank centuries later could have been so saintly as to have sympathized with the humanity and suffering of her captors, and Rowlandson had been steeped in a Puritan theology that made her see them as damned and diabolical heathens. Yet despite her fear of her captors, who drove her mercilessly on their trek, denied her food and shelter, laughed at her stumbling, and terrified her with their war whoops and constant threats of violence and death, Rowlandson did distinguish among them, describing their occasional acts of kindness and pity toward her, and her preservation from rape or sexual abuse; and noting their endurance, stoicism, and determination to survive the English rule."
I think this is very interesting and raises the question, at least for me, about how we judge writers from different eras based on their broad political views. It seems silly to condemn people for being a product of their time/environment and for not being better than their peers (even though Showalter's description of Rowlandson makes it seem that she actually might have been better than her peers). Do we demand that the writers we recover from obscurity - especially women writers - conform to unacceptable moral standards in order to be included in our contemporary cannon?
In the previous post, I mentioned Mary Rowlandson, whose memoir of her abduction, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (not surprisingly, no touchstone) (1682), "was the first of the many Indian captivity narratives that fascinated American readers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries," according to Showalter.
Showalter says that "The historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was among those scholars in the 1970s and 1980s who charged that Rowlandson's narrative 'is deeply and pervasively racist,' because she viewed the Indians as barbarous savages and 'was seemingly unaware of the suffering in the Indian camp.'"
Showalter goes on to say "I take a more moderate and less political view today. Rowlandson had seen twelve people close to her, including her sister and brother-in-law, murdered by the Indians, and her house burned to the ground; she had carried her wounded six-year-old daughter Sarah for nine days without food, had held the child when she died, and had been forced to leave her body behind. Not even an Anne Frank centuries later could have been so saintly as to have sympathized with the humanity and suffering of her captors, and Rowlandson had been steeped in a Puritan theology that made her see them as damned and diabolical heathens. Yet despite her fear of her captors, who drove her mercilessly on their trek, denied her food and shelter, laughed at her stumbling, and terrified her with their war whoops and constant threats of violence and death, Rowlandson did distinguish among them, describing their occasional acts of kindness and pity toward her, and her preservation from rape or sexual abuse; and noting their endurance, stoicism, and determination to survive the English rule."
I think this is very interesting and raises the question, at least for me, about how we judge writers from different eras based on their broad political views. It seems silly to condemn people for being a product of their time/environment and for not being better than their peers (even though Showalter's description of Rowlandson makes it seem that she actually might have been better than her peers). Do we demand that the writers we recover from obscurity - especially women writers - conform to unacceptable moral standards in order to be included in our contemporary cannon?
5avaland
fanny, you are on a roll! I just got back from 4 days away and will post more thoughtfully when I reacquire my sealegs.
Wait until you get to the chapter on the 1850s, there's some really interesting stuff in there:-)
Wait until you get to the chapter on the 1850s, there's some really interesting stuff in there:-)
6avaland
>2 fannyprice: I think men and women would both generally benefit from a short course in the women's literary tradition. It's not just for English majors or Women's studies majors! Some readers, imo, are astute, intelligent and savvy enough to know that one is NOT well-read if they are ignoring the literature of over half the population of the world (other might know this and could care less, but those readers are on both sides of the gender aisles). But, yes, generally-speaking there is a long history of both genders being encultured with the understanding that male-authored literature is somehow more important or better. This is still reflected in the gender parity of such things which come from the literary establishments of our respective countries (i.e NY Times book reviews/recommendations, prize list nominations, the books assigned in our classrooms...etc.)
My opinion is that there is as much drek on both sides of the aisle.
For me, somewhere in middle age I decided I needed to swing the balance of my reading in the other direction. And I'm please to say that according to my statistics here on LT, my library finally reflects this. We women have a huge amount of consumer power and what better way to encourage women authors to write literary fiction than to buy their books when they do?
My opinion is that there is as much drek on both sides of the aisle.
For me, somewhere in middle age I decided I needed to swing the balance of my reading in the other direction. And I'm please to say that according to my statistics here on LT, my library finally reflects this. We women have a huge amount of consumer power and what better way to encourage women authors to write literary fiction than to buy their books when they do?
7avaland
>4 fannyprice: very well said. Certainly works should be read with historical context in mind, don't you think?
I have just spent the last year reading quite a bit of early American women-authored literature so some of the first few chapters are a bit redundant for me. I remember when I read Hope Leslie, I wondered why this book should have been relegated to obscurity while Cooper's adventure stories became 'classics.' Hope Leslie is a fairly complex read and addresses issues like interracial marriage.
I have just spent the last year reading quite a bit of early American women-authored literature so some of the first few chapters are a bit redundant for me. I remember when I read Hope Leslie, I wondered why this book should have been relegated to obscurity while Cooper's adventure stories became 'classics.' Hope Leslie is a fairly complex read and addresses issues like interracial marriage.
8marise
>4 fannyprice: I can't imagine not reading with historical context in mind! (Or watching an old film, another place one confronts many racial and gender stereotypes.)
>6 avaland: My opinion is that there is as much drek on both sides of the aisle.
Absolutely!
>6 avaland: My opinion is that there is as much drek on both sides of the aisle.
Absolutely!
9Jargoneer
>7 avaland: - I think you answered your question - why did Cooper's work become classics? (Are they all classics? It seems that only one is really well-known, and read). It is the mythic simplicity of Cooper that has lasted.
American (most national?) fiction in the 19th century is dominated by two ideas - identity and voice (separate from the 'English' voice). What Cooper does is help create one of the cornerstones of American identity? The mythic rugged self-reliant individual. Hawkeye (Bumppo) stands at the beginning of the western myth; a proto-western hero. (You could easily draw a line from Hawkeye through to the film identities of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood). This is still a strong central thread in American culture although perhaps in abeyance at present - Obama highlighting more the idea of community (another aspect of the western myth), in contrast to Bush playing up the idea of the cowboy.
When I studied film a few years ago I wrote an essay on the decline of the western (I love westerns) in which I posited the theory that since the western itself was a fiction it struggled to integrate the complexity of truth within it's framework. (I'm not saying this is true, I just thought it was an interesting idea).
American (most national?) fiction in the 19th century is dominated by two ideas - identity and voice (separate from the 'English' voice). What Cooper does is help create one of the cornerstones of American identity? The mythic rugged self-reliant individual. Hawkeye (Bumppo) stands at the beginning of the western myth; a proto-western hero. (You could easily draw a line from Hawkeye through to the film identities of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood). This is still a strong central thread in American culture although perhaps in abeyance at present - Obama highlighting more the idea of community (another aspect of the western myth), in contrast to Bush playing up the idea of the cowboy.
When I studied film a few years ago I wrote an essay on the decline of the western (I love westerns) in which I posited the theory that since the western itself was a fiction it struggled to integrate the complexity of truth within it's framework. (I'm not saying this is true, I just thought it was an interesting idea).
10avaland
I enjoyed the discussion of Catherine Maria Sedgewick's character Crazy Bet, which as Showalter says is an "American variant of the standard Romantic madwoman." (p. 36, 37). It is a character type which shows up in some of her other work and "a subversive emblem of the anger, emotion, and outrage that the genteel heroine must repress." It's a bit of a different idea than that espoused in Gubar & Gilbert's The Madwoman in the Attic (wikipedia has a nice summary if one hasn't read the 700 page tome).
I was dismayed at the repression of the artistry of Julia Ward Howe by her husband. I had not known much about Howe before this.
I found the story of Walt Whitman's borrowing money from his then friends Fanny Fern & her husband and not paying it back. And when she turned the debt over to the bill-collectors, he retaliated by writing an op-ed against education for women and mentioned her by name. I thought it also interesting that he wrote reviews for his own book and used them to sell it. I know, we're talking about women writers here, but that little side story is interesting.
I also thought interesting the reactions of other women to the passion in the stories of Harriet Prescott Spofford published in the Atlantic Monthly (the magazine began in 1857 and attempted to define the difference between high literary art and popular culture. Passion of any kind from a woman was not considered seemly.
I was dismayed at the repression of the artistry of Julia Ward Howe by her husband. I had not known much about Howe before this.
I found the story of Walt Whitman's borrowing money from his then friends Fanny Fern & her husband and not paying it back. And when she turned the debt over to the bill-collectors, he retaliated by writing an op-ed against education for women and mentioned her by name. I thought it also interesting that he wrote reviews for his own book and used them to sell it. I know, we're talking about women writers here, but that little side story is interesting.
I also thought interesting the reactions of other women to the passion in the stories of Harriet Prescott Spofford published in the Atlantic Monthly (the magazine began in 1857 and attempted to define the difference between high literary art and popular culture. Passion of any kind from a woman was not considered seemly.
11marise
I found Julia Ward Howe's story very interesting as well, Lois. Her description of writing in the dark so as not to wake the baby (and it seems there was always a baby) was priceless: "...and I feared to have recourse to a light lest I should wake the baby..."
The early books of Rebecca Harding Davis sound interesting, too.
And I love this from Hawthorne on women writers, after saying most "write like emasculated men...but when they throw off the restraints of decency and come before the public stark naked...then their books are sure to possess character and value."
The early books of Rebecca Harding Davis sound interesting, too.
And I love this from Hawthorne on women writers, after saying most "write like emasculated men...but when they throw off the restraints of decency and come before the public stark naked...then their books are sure to possess character and value."
12avaland
I've not made a study of early American women writers exclusively, although I did read quite a lot of them in the last couple years. I suppose, in my own way, I have trying to do a similar thing that Showalter has done, create a literary history. I think it was Virginia Woolf who said something like "for if we are women we look back through our mothers." This literary history is really quite fascinating when presented as Showalter has done.
The mid-19th century is really an interesting time in American literature and in American women's literary history. According to Showalter, the novel was not only considered the dominant genre in America but also the most effective vehicle for "persuasion and the influence of public opinion." (p. 82, 83). As women writers began to dominate the marketplace, there was, imo, a bit of backlash. Hawthorne was the most vocal and angriest of its critics (can't a guy get leg up here?)
more later...
13Jargoneer
>12 avaland: - I'm surprised to hear that about Hawthorne. When I studied The Marble Faun I read an essay about Hawthorne as a feminist - that his female characters offered fulfilling lives to the men, who being neurotic only offered punishment or death instead, resulting in empty wasted lives.
14aluvalibri
Ok, ok! I have been trying to resist buying this book, but I don't know if I can make it any longer.
**Off to see if a used copy is available**
**Off to see if a used copy is available**
16avaland
>13 Jargoneer: I did know he had made some comments but I don't think I realized how angry he was.
p. 83 Hawthorne was the angriest and most resentful of these competitors. From his consular post in Liverpool in January 1855, he complained to his publisher William Ticknor that he was thinking about giving up fiction in the light of Cummin's fortune (Maria Cummin's The Lamplightersold 70,000 copies its first year): "America is now wholly given over to a d--d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of The Lamplighter and other books neither better nor worse?" Hawthorne's panic about female market dominance was probably influenced by similar complaints of male critics in England at the same time. In reality, however, men were still the majority of American novelists, and Hawthorne was also outsold by a mob of scribbling men, including "Ik Marvel" and George Lippard. But he was more frustrated by female competitors, and by women editors like Grace Greenwood of The Little Pilgrim magazine. "I am getting sick of Grace," he told Ticknor in January 1854. "Her 'Little Pilgrim' us a humbug and she herself is--but there is no need of telling you. I wish her well, and mean to write an article for her by and by. But ink-stained women are, without a single exception, detestable."
Sounds a bit like sour grapes to me;-)
p. 83 Hawthorne was the angriest and most resentful of these competitors. From his consular post in Liverpool in January 1855, he complained to his publisher William Ticknor that he was thinking about giving up fiction in the light of Cummin's fortune (Maria Cummin's The Lamplightersold 70,000 copies its first year): "America is now wholly given over to a d--d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of The Lamplighter and other books neither better nor worse?" Hawthorne's panic about female market dominance was probably influenced by similar complaints of male critics in England at the same time. In reality, however, men were still the majority of American novelists, and Hawthorne was also outsold by a mob of scribbling men, including "Ik Marvel" and George Lippard. But he was more frustrated by female competitors, and by women editors like Grace Greenwood of The Little Pilgrim magazine. "I am getting sick of Grace," he told Ticknor in January 1854. "Her 'Little Pilgrim' us a humbug and she herself is--but there is no need of telling you. I wish her well, and mean to write an article for her by and by. But ink-stained women are, without a single exception, detestable."
Sounds a bit like sour grapes to me;-)
17avaland
Continuing from message 12:
After I read this about the novel being the most effective vehicle for persuasion and influence, I started to look at the fiction I've read this year. Did any of them seem like they had an agenda? Hm. Maybe Ma Jian's stories about Tibet (Stick Out Your Tongue) were met to influence. But really, the novel seems a much more passive vehicle these days. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a more subtle (rather than passive) vehicle for education and persuasion?
After I read this about the novel being the most effective vehicle for persuasion and influence, I started to look at the fiction I've read this year. Did any of them seem like they had an agenda? Hm. Maybe Ma Jian's stories about Tibet (Stick Out Your Tongue) were met to influence. But really, the novel seems a much more passive vehicle these days. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a more subtle (rather than passive) vehicle for education and persuasion?
18fannyprice
>12 avaland: and 17, Lois, regarding the novel being a vehicle for persuasion and influence and that perhaps no longer being so much the case.... I think it is interesting how we now tend to respond negatively to fiction that seems agenda-based, even when it is well-written. I haven't made any sort of systematic study of opinion on this, but I think we have moved towards a way of looking at literature that sees it mostly on the basis of its artistic value and doesn't expect or even necessarily want fiction to have any kind of message. Except for books from certain countries - I think many Americans have an expectation when reading books from the Middle East, Africa, maybe Latin America, that there will be some kind of political or moral undertone - which is why we see so many "serious" works of translated literature, I think. Most Americans would see little value in reading a light, humourous book from the West Bank, for instance, although I'm certain such books exist and are read by West Bankers.
19HeathMochaFrost
Just an FYI -- the author will be discussing this book TODAY on BookTV (C-SPAN 2) at noon Eastern Time. It's an After Words program, where the writer is sort of "interviewed" by another author or journalist. Sara Nelson, author of So Many Books, So Little Time (touchstone not working) is the "interviewer" for this one. I haven't even seen Showalter's book, but the title caught my eye a while back, so I'm planning to watch the program and hear more about it.
20avaland
>19 HeathMochaFrost: Sorry, I didn't get to see this in time, HeathMochaFrost, but I think there are sometimes repeats. Sara Nelson is notable to me as an editor of Publishers Weekly.
>18 fannyprice: In the Guardian podcast, Showalter talks about how Harriet Beecher Stowe deserves an audience today. She feels Stowe's reputation suffered in the years after Uncle Tom's Cabin because it was such a political book.
>18 fannyprice: In the Guardian podcast, Showalter talks about how Harriet Beecher Stowe deserves an audience today. She feels Stowe's reputation suffered in the years after Uncle Tom's Cabin because it was such a political book.
21marise
Has anyone else noticed that she did not include Elizabeth Spencer or Dawn Powell? Surely just an oversight!
22janemarieprice
If anyone is in the NY area, the 92nd St Y is hosting a discussions between Joyce Carol Oates and Elaine Showalter on A Jury of Her Peers on Sun, Jan 17, 2010, 11:00am (a little advanced notice). More info on their website. Tickets are $34 ($10 for those under 35).
24aluvalibri
Perhaps, if I manage to remember......
25avaland
Oy, in the middle of winter. I am soooo tempted (I'd have to get there Saturday to be there for an 11 am discussion...)
26fannyprice
How is everyone doing on this book? Am I the only one who still hasn't finished? It's been a long time since I contributed but I have been enjoying reading the posts here.
I feel as though I'm finally possibly coming out of a "long dark tea time" of women's literature with this book. The early chapters were fascinating, as Showalter examined the attempts of the first American women writers to create distinctively American forms and stories. But then we seem to have gone into a horrid slump & even Showalter doesn't seem to know why she is writing about some of these writers, except perhaps to fill the historical record. I feel like most of the chapters on the 18th and 19th centuries repeat the refrain that so-and-so's work was derivative of either Jane Eyre or Middlemarch and that so-and-so tried to transcend imitation but just couldn't.
This is intriguing to me in light of what I posted in Message #3 from Showalter's interview on the book - her comment that she wants to judge quality and not forgive poor writing/weak characters/etc. simply because an author is a woman. If Showalter reads a particular author's works and finds them lacking, why include them in a literary history of American women writers? I confess I've not really read many literary histories of male authors - do mediocre male authors get studied (by anyone other than PhD English lit candidates)? Or do we focus our history of literature on the few that are judged to be standouts and ignore their unsuccessful contemporaries?
I feel - at least so far - that I have discovered very few "hidden gems" whose works I desperately must read; instead Showalter seems to be confirming that the women writers from the past whom I've actually heard of are - for the most part - the ones worth reading: Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather (I know I've omitted some names here, I can't quite recall all of the highlights right now).
I am now moving into what will - I hope - be a more exciting time in women's literary production & am looking forward to reading the chapters on Wharton and Cather.
I feel as though I'm finally possibly coming out of a "long dark tea time" of women's literature with this book. The early chapters were fascinating, as Showalter examined the attempts of the first American women writers to create distinctively American forms and stories. But then we seem to have gone into a horrid slump & even Showalter doesn't seem to know why she is writing about some of these writers, except perhaps to fill the historical record. I feel like most of the chapters on the 18th and 19th centuries repeat the refrain that so-and-so's work was derivative of either Jane Eyre or Middlemarch and that so-and-so tried to transcend imitation but just couldn't.
This is intriguing to me in light of what I posted in Message #3 from Showalter's interview on the book - her comment that she wants to judge quality and not forgive poor writing/weak characters/etc. simply because an author is a woman. If Showalter reads a particular author's works and finds them lacking, why include them in a literary history of American women writers? I confess I've not really read many literary histories of male authors - do mediocre male authors get studied (by anyone other than PhD English lit candidates)? Or do we focus our history of literature on the few that are judged to be standouts and ignore their unsuccessful contemporaries?
I feel - at least so far - that I have discovered very few "hidden gems" whose works I desperately must read; instead Showalter seems to be confirming that the women writers from the past whom I've actually heard of are - for the most part - the ones worth reading: Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather (I know I've omitted some names here, I can't quite recall all of the highlights right now).
I am now moving into what will - I hope - be a more exciting time in women's literary production & am looking forward to reading the chapters on Wharton and Cather.