Still mad : American women writers and the feminist imagination, 1950-2020

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Title:

Still mad : American women writers and the feminist imagination, 1950-2020

Alternate title:

American women writers and the feminist imagination

Author:

Gilbert, Sandra M., author.

Gubar, Susan, 1944- author.

Summary:

"A brilliant, sweeping history of the contemporary women's movement told through the lives and works of the literary women who shaped it. Forty years after their first groundbreaking work of feminist literary theory, The Madwoman in the Attic, award-winning collaborators Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar map the literary history of feminism's second wave. In Still Mad, they offer lively readings of major works by such writers as Sylvia Plath, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Rich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Toni Morrison. To address shifting social attitudes over seven decades, they discuss polemics by thinkers from Kate Millett and Susan Sontag to Audre Lorde, Andrea Dworkin, and Judith Butler. As Gilbert and Gubar chart feminist gains-including creative new forms of protests and changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality-they show how the legacies of second wave feminists, and the misogynistic culture they fought, extend to the present. In doing so, they celebrate the diversity and urgency of women who have turned passionate rage into powerful writing."-- Provided by publisher.

Edition:

First edition.

Contents:

Introduction. The possible and the impossible -- Midcentury separate spheres -- Race, rebellion, and reaction -- Three angry voices -- The sexual revolution and the Vietnam War -- Protesting patriarchy -- Speculative poetry, speculative fiction -- Bonded and bruised sisters -- Identity politics -- Inside and outside the ivory closet -- Older and younger generations -- Resurgence -- Epilogue. The white suit.

Physical Description:

xiii, 441 pages ; 24 cm

Subject Term:

Feminism.

Feminists.

American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism.

Feminism and literature -- History -- 20th century.

Feminism and literature -- History -- 21st century.

Women and literature -- History -- 20th century.

Women and literature -- History -- 21st century.

American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

American literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism.

Author(s):

Gubar, Susan, 1944-

Publisher:

W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

Publication Date:

2021

ISBN:

9780393651713

Publication Information:

New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2021]

Call Number:

305.42 GILBERT

Holds: Copies:

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Summary

Forty years after their first groundbreaking work of feminist literary theory, The Madwoman in the Attic, award-winning collaborators Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar map the literary history of feminism's second wave.

From its stirrings in the midcentury-when Sylvia Plath, Betty Friedan, and Joan Didion found their voices and Diane di Prima, Lorraine Hansberry, and Audre Lorde discovered community in rebellion-to a resurgence in the new millennium in the writings of Alison Bechdel, Claudia Rankine, and N. K. Jemisin, Gilbert and Gubar trace the evolution of feminist literature. They offer lucid, compassionate, and piercing readings of major works by these writers and others, including Adrienne Rich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Sontag, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Toni Morrison. Activists and theorists like Nina Simone, Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Butler also populate these pages as Gilbert and Gubar examine the overlapping terrain of literature and politics in a comprehensive portrait of an expanding movement.

As Gilbert and Gubar chart feminist gains-including creative new forms of protests and changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality-they show how the legacies of second wave feminists, and the misogynistic culture they fought, extend to the present. In doing so, they celebrate the diversity and urgency of women who have turned passionate rage into powerful writing.

Author Notes

A poet, feminist critic, and professor of English at the University of California at Davis, Gilbert received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1968. Her early work addressed canonical male figures, but in the 1970s she began to focus on women writers from a feminist perspective, teaming up with Susan Gubar in what has proven to be a very influential collaboration. In 1979 they published their first joint efforts, a collection of feminist essays on women poets, Shakespeare's Sisters, and The Madwoman in the Attic, an exploration of major nineteenth-century women writers, which has had a major role in defining feminist scholarship. This massive volume takes its title from Jane Eyre's "mad" and monstrous double, Bertha, hidden away in the attic by Jane's would-be lover, Rochester; Gilbert and Gubar see figures like Bertha as resisting patriarchy, subversive surrogates for the docile heroines who populate nineteenth-century fiction by women.

Although Gilbert and Gubar's ideas have been very influential, many critics, particularly poststructuralists, have taken issue with them. For Gilbert and Gubar, a woman writer is by definition angry, and her text will express that anger, albeit in disguised or distorted form. Reading hinges on knowing the sex of the author, rather than on a careful analysis of the text itself and the multivalency of its language. Gilbert and Gubar's work is part of a debate about essentialist and antiessentialist feminist theories, which has addressed issues like "the signature" (the significance of knowledge about the author and authorial intentions) and gendered expression in general.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Literary critics Gilbert and Gubar analyze the cultural legacy of feminism's second wave in this comprehensive if uneven update to The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). They place major works by Sylvia Plath, Diane DiPrima, and Audre Lorde in the cultural context of the 1950s and '60s, and dive deep into the feminist literature of the '70s, including the antipatriarchal writings of Kate Millett, the poetry of Adrienne Rich, and the speculative fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Reactionary conservatism inspired the emergence of queer theory in the '90s, though the knotty philosophical formulations of scholars including Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick reflected a "growing divide between feminists inside the academy and those outside it." Casting contemporary feminism as a resurgence of the second wave filtered through a broader set of concerns, Gilbert and Gubar discuss Rebecca Solnit's response to mansplaining, Claudia Rankine's emotional connections to the Black Lives Matter movement, and N.K. Jemisin's environmentally centered feminist fantasies. The authors' astute selections and skilled close readings are rewarding, but their devaluing of ideas that have emerged since the '70s will frustrate younger feminists. Still, this is a well-informed and accessible survey of the literature of modern feminism. (Aug.)

Library Journal Review

Gilbert and Gubar, renowned for their 1979 work of feminist literary theory The Madwoman in the Attic, here examine 70 years of work (1950--2020) by American women writers and theorists of feminism's second wave. They write that, despite social and political advancements, women remain "mad" at the enduring barriers that stymie their progress in many areas. Their book explores this "madness" and provides in-depth analysis of a wide range of literature and theory. The thoroughly researched chapters examine Margaret Atwood, Alison Bechdel, Judith Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Kate Millett, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich, among others. Gilbert and Gubar weave the political and social attributes of each decade into their literary analysis to illustrate how feminist thought and the nation changed under the societal transformations wrought by the civil rights movement, sexual revolution, Vietnam War, emergence of the New Right, Me Too movement, and other momentous events. Against these settings, writers challenged patriarchal norms and authority, the book argues. Later chapters discuss theories of intersectionality, poststructuralism, and trans identity that are reshaping feminist concepts along racial, ethnic, and linguistic lines. Despite challenges and social/political oscillations, this excellent book demonstrates the ways that feminism has persisted. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone interested in American literature or women's studies.--Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

Introduction: The Possible and the Impossible	p. 1
Glass Ceilings and Broken Glass	p. 3
How the Seventies Changed Our Lives	p. 7
The Schooling of Hillary Rodham and Her Generation	p. 12
The Cultural Chaos We Face	p. 19
Keeping Things Going	p. 23
Section 1 Stirrings in the Fifties
1 Midcentury Separate Spheres	p. 29
Sylvia Plath's Paper Dolls	p. 31
HIS AND HER Time	p. 36
Anatomy and Destiny	p. 41
2 Race, Rebellion, and Reaction	p. 48
Diane di Prima as a Feminist Beatnik	p. 49
Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville	p. 51
The Stages of Lorraine Hansberry's Militancy	p. 54
Audre Lorde's Lesbian Biomythography	p. 62
Joan Didion's Vogue versus Betty Friedan's Problem That Has No Name	p. 66
Section II Eruptions in the Sixties
3 Three Angry Voices	p. 73
Plath Despairs While Ariel Takes Wing	p. 76
Adrienne Rich as a Cultural Daughter-in-Law	p. 85
Nina Simone, Diva	p. 92
4 The Sexual Revolution and the Vietnam War	p. 102
Sex in New York City: Gloria Steinem versus Helen Gurley Brown	p. 103
Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and San Francisco	p. 110
Women Strike for Peace	p. 119
Valerie Solanas and the Rise of the Second Wave	p. 125
Section III Awakenings in the Seventies
5 Protesting Patriarchy	p. 135
Kate Millett's Touchstone Book	p. 139
Susan Sontag as Feminist Philosopher	p. 146
Best Sellers in the Womanhouse: From Toni Morrison to Marilyn French	p. 152
Plath's Electric Take on the Fifties	p. 164
6 Speculative Poetry, Speculative Fiction	p. 173
The Metamorphoses of Adrienne Rich	p. 175
Dystopias and Utopias	p. 187
Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr.	p. 188
Joanna Russ's Misandry	p. 197
Ursula Le Guin's Androgyny	p. 199
7 Bonded and Bruised Sisters	p. 204
Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker at Ms.	p. 205
Audre Lorde Dismantles the Master's House	p. 215
Maxine Hong Kingston's Ghosts and Warriors	p. 220
The Dinner Party	p. 227
Section IV Revisions in the Eighties and Nineties
8 Identity Politics	p. 235
Andrea Dworkin and the Sex Wars	p. 238
Gloria Anzaldúa's Mestiza Consciousness	p. 244
Adrienne Rich's Judaism	p. 249
The Intersectionality of Toni Morrison	p. 256
9 Inside and Outside the Ivory Closet	p. 265
The Culture Wars	p. 267
The Queer Theories of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler	p. 269
Anne Carson's Poetics of Love and Loss	p. 276
Postmodernism/Transsexualism	p. 281
Who Owns Feminism?	p. 285
Section V Recessions/Revivals in the Twenty-First Century
10 Older and Younger Generations	p. 293
The New Millennium	p. 293
Alison Bechdel's Literary Genealogy	p. 298
Are You My Mother?	p. 304
Eve Ensler's V-Days	p. 308
Transgender Visibility: From Susan Stryker to Maggie Nelson	p. 311
11 Resurgence	p. 318
Claudia Rankine Makes Black Lives Matter	p. 320
The Broken Earth of N. K. Jemisin	p. 326
Patricia Lockwood Sends Up the Church and the Family Romance	p. 329
Headlining Feminism: From Rebecca Solnit to Beyoncé	p. 332
Keeping Things Stirring	p. 335
Epilogue: White Suits, Shattered Glass	p. 345
Acknowledgments	p. 355
Notes	p. 359
Credits	p. 413
Index	p. 417

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents