Review: The Madwoman in the Attic
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsThis book asks the question: If the pen is a metaphorical penis, where does that leave women writers? Answer: Not out in the cold, but boxed in the architectural shapes of patriarchal society (from the parlor to the glass coffin) and of paternal literary forms. When a woman picks up the pen, argue English professors Gilbert and Gubar (Univ. of Calif., Davis, and Indiana Univ., respectively), she is transformed from the angel of papa's house to slimy monster and falls victim to understandable anxiety. Consequently, they say, the work of 19th-century women writers is haunted by complementary images of confinement and agoraphobia; the heroine often is trapped in her mirror like Snow White or, like Jane Eyre, twin to the madwoman in the attic. Aware of their fall from Lilith's primordial power, the women writers spin images of disease and more subtle fantasies of subversion. The authors advance this picture of the female literary imagination in three relentlessly metaphoric chapters moving ""toward a feminist poetics,"" then illustrate and amplify their theory by close (sometimes microscopic) readings of Austen, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickinson, and a score of other writers. At times their analysis strikes brilliant sparks, but at others it is merely convoluted. On a poem by Christina Rossetti, they write: ""Plainly, the very act of poetic assertion, with its challenge to attempt self-definition or at least self-confrontation, elicits evasions, anxieties, hostilities, in brief painful preoccupations,' from all competitors, so that the jolly poetry game paradoxically contains the germ of just that gloom it seems designed to dispel."" But on the whole it's an ambitious and provocative attempt to reevaluate some of the best and least of 19th-century writers in terms of an aesthetic of their own.
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Deborah Biancotti - GoodreadsBy far my favourite piece of criticism from my Uni days, Gilber & Gubar were full of radical suggestions. For example, their analysis of FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley posed the question, 'why should a ... Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Eddy Allen - GoodreadsThis pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the ... Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Goodreads"Where does such an implicitly or explicitly patriarchal theory of literature leave literary women? If the pen is a metaphorical penis, with what organ can females generate texts?"
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Suzanne - GoodreadsThis is just fantastic. All that literary criticism should be. It actually makes you look at things a new way and consider things you hadn't before. Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Hannah Taylor - GoodreadsUnfortunately, I've only had time to read the Charlotte Bronte section on Jane Eyre, as it has to be returned to The British Library tomorrow, but I will certainly look for a copy elsewhere sometime in the future, as the detail and depth in which individual texts are explored is exceptional. Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Lara K - GoodreadsRead this if you like classic literature written by Austen, the Bronte sisters, Shelley, etc. or teach it. Some great essays in here. Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Janine - GoodreadsInteresting essays. I used some for graduate papers and we use the one on Mary Shelley in AP Lang (sometimes). Read full review
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - GoodreadsThis book literally saved my life when I was doing Pre-U English. I particularly liked the chapter on Snow White. Full of really interesting ideas and relatively easy to read, which is rarer than you might think.
Review: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
User Review - Klarissa - Goodreadsonly read Chapter 10 of this book because it was to help with my coursework but the one chapter was actually quite interesting. The feminist viewpoint seemed an obvious approach but seeing as Bertha's my favourite character in Jane Eyre, it was nice to see tthat she was acknowledged. Read full review
