Maney Publishing

Modern Humanities Research Association

Review
Author(s): Siv Jansson
Review by: Siv Jansson
Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Jul., 1992), pp. 732-733
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3732979
Accessed: 17-10-2015 07:59 UTC

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732 Reviews

mundane most acceptable to a New Critical aesthetic. The paradox of a single

movement dedicated variously to artistic autonomy and to cultural subversion leads
to a discussion of those theories which consider the relationship between Modernism
and social modernization in either positive or negative terms: the partial perceptions
of a process whereby texts must invoke before they can break down a vision of social
harmony as the ultimate reward of progress. Eysteinsson then turns to the question
of how such partial definitions of Modernism participate in the wider context of
literary history. Here, he demonstrates how selected aspects of Modernism are
represented as forming the dominant aesthetic practice of the early twentieth
century, and he suggests some of the interests that have been served by this
particular narrative of modern literary history. This hidden agenda is most fully
exposed by the debate over relations between Modernism and Postmodernism.
Eysteinsson skilfully reveals how the same formal, thematic, and philosophical
characteristics have been attributed to texts central to both movements, underlining
by his insistence upon the inseparability of Postmodernism, the ahistorical concept
of the avant garde, and Modernism, his professed conviction that Modernism
should be reinstated as a non-traditional and indeed oppositional discourse.
The marginalization of realism as a theoretical and practical critical aid to the
description of twentieth-century aesthetic practice is represented in both books
under review as having produced a dangerously myopic view of modern art. The
erudition and eloquence with which the case for realism is presented does, however,
augur well for the future.
UNIVERSITYOF LEICESTER DEBORAHL. MADSEN

Feminist Readings: Feminists Reading. By SARA MILLS, LYNNEPEARCE,SUE SPAULL,

and ELAINEMILLARD. New York, London, and Toronto: Harvester
Wheatsheaf. 1989. x + 268 pp. ?25 (paperbound ?8.95).
This is an intriguing textbook which offers some reinterpretations of important
novels alongside reassessments of some key texts in feminist literary criticism. It is
divided into six chapters, each one beginning with a fresh appraisal of one of these
key texts, followed by readings of two novels in the light of that reappraisal. The
chapters cover topics as diverse as gynocritics, French feminist theory, Marxist-
femninism,sexual politics, authentic realism, and the 'anxiety of authorship'; texts
under discussion include Kate Millett's SexualPolitics,Sandra Gilbert's and Susan
Gubar's TheMadwomanin theAttic,and Luce Irigaray's Speculum of theOtherWoman.
Novels given fresh readings include WutheringHeights, The Magic Toyshop,and
Surfacing.
The authors state in their introduction that part of the book's purpose was to
'demonstrate the range of possibilities available in feminist critical practice' (p. 2),
and also, perhaps, to provide a general feminist literary textbook which, whilst both
acknowledging and being rooted in the trailblazing work of the I96os and I970S,
takes feminist criticism one step further.
Each author takes one or two critical texts, analyses their method, purpose, and
level of success, and then offers a rereading of two novels within the context of that
analysis. It begins, appropriately, with Kate Millett's 'manifesto for revolution'
(p. 16), and tackles both the strengths and potential problems of Millett's critical
standpoint. Lynne Pearce balances her critique of Millett's occasional 'unsureness'
(p. 21) with an acknowledgement of the central place her work retains in feminist
literary history. Pearce makes a number of shrewd points concerning Millett's
theoretical viewpoint, her main criticisms resting on doubts about what she
describes as Millett's 'assumption of authorial intent' (p. 27), as the following
quotation illustrates:

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 Reviews 733
Whether a text is reflecting, condoning or criticising a particular social relation depends, in
Millett's terms, on what one considers to be the 'intentions' of the author. The reason she
approves of Hardy, Meredith and Bronte is that she identifies in these texts an authorial voice
critical of the institutions being described. The reason she disapproves of Lawrence, Miller
and Mailer is because she believes their author-narratorsto be condoning the sexual politics
they participate in. (p. 27)
The difficulties such assumptions cause are made particularly apparent by Pearce
with reference to WutheringHeights, a novel in which it is nowhere clear what the
author's intentions were, and in her conclusion she shows that the confusion which
Millett attributes to Hardy with reference to Jude the Obscureis, in fact, her own
confusion:
Her confusion is most noticeable in her approach to the texts of the Sexual Revolution [...]
she saw them as being only partly conscious of their mission. While she was able to present the
texts of the Counter-Revolution as unproblematic 'reflections' [...] of male chauvinism,
Hardy, Meredith et al. uncomfortably exposed the weakness of her hypothesis. The confusion
she consequently accredits to Hardy as author (did Sue's behaviour really challenge
patriarchy, or did her nervous recapitulation merely condone it?) is clearly her own. She is
torn between implying that these novels unconsciously reflect patriarchal society and
showing that they are consciously critical of it. She is unable to decide, in other words, the
exact role of the author in relation to the text, and the exact role of the text to patriarchy it is
engaged with. (p. 46)
Pearce admits that she encountered similar problems in her own interpretations of
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and WutheringHeights: but her acknowledgement of this as a
potential problem of feminist criticism is balanced by her suggestion that it is the
reader, and not the author, who imposes the structure of analysis upon a text, and
that it is very possible to reinterpret a text radically without suggesting that such a
reinterpretation is in any way definitive. However, she finishes her critique upon a
positive note by suggesting that Millett's theories can be used positively to engage
with texts that have challenged patriarchy, and also that Millett has been a victim of
the same selective reading which she herself practised.
I have concentrated in this review upon the chapter which deals with Sexual
Politics chiefly because it is probably the most widely read of the critical works
discussed in the novel; however, Feminist Readings: Feminists Reading contains a
number of refreshing analyses of established texts, including what I believe is the
first reappraisal in this country of The Madwoman in the Attic, which Sue Spaull and
Elaine Millard examine in their chapter on 'The Anxiety of Authorship'. There is
also a challenging chapter on French feminism by Elaine Millard, in which she
tackles some of the difficulties which British feminists can have with French feminist
writers, notably Luce Irigaray andJulia Kristeva. Other chapters address Marxist-
feminist literary criticism through an examination of 'Women Writing' by the
Marxist-feminist Literary Collective, and its application to Margaret Atwood's
Surfacing and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper;gynocriticism, with
examinations of the work of Elaine Showalter, Jean Rhys, and Margaret Atwood;
and authentic realism, through analyses of The Authority of Experience by Arlyn
Diamond and Lee Edwards, and its application to The Color Purple and Wuthering
Heights.
Altogether, this provides a useful and wide-ranging textbook which offers some
worthwhile and interesting interpretations for the literary students of the I99os, and
is a credible and well-researched addition to the established body of feminist critical
work.
ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE, LONDON SIV JANSSON

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