Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman PDF
Preview Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman
ART & ANGER Miami University, through an arrangement with the Ohio State University Press initiated in 1975, publishes works of original scholarship, fiction, and poetry. The responsibility for receiving and reviewing manuscripts is invested in an Editorial Board comprising Miami University faculty. ART 5 AIMED tttt Reading Like A Woman tttt JANE MARCUS Published for Miami University by the Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright ® 1988 by the Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marcus, Jane. Art and anger. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. English literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 2. Women and literature. 3. Feminist criticism. 4. Feminism and literature. 5. Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 —Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PR119.M37 1988 820\9f352042 88-1223 ISBN 0-8142-0453-8 ISBN 0-8142-0460-0 (paper) Printed in the U.S.A. for Jason Su describes her anger as "a little Jemina, two centimeters tail" who claps inside her head every time she speaks out. "I'm dedicat ing my life to her, whatever the trends of the times. No more anger- sitters. No more camps or schools. No more lollipops. She's going to get all the advantages my expanse of years can provide, every opportunity to become whatever she wants to become, even if she wants to get married and have lots of little angers." —June Arnold, Sister Gin Hatred ojbaseness Also distorts the features, And anger at injustice Makes the voice hoarse. —Bertolt Brecht Feminist criticism begins in negation. —Susan Stanford Friedman 'Women's anger is pervasive, as pervasive as our oppression, but it frequently lurks underground. If we added up all of woman's depression; all her compulsive smiling, ego-tending, and sacrifice; all herpsychosomatic illness, and all her passivity, we could gauge our rage's unarticulated, negative force. "In a feminist revision of FrantzFanon SThe Wretched of the Earth, we can imagine: "Feminist revolution never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies themfundamentally It transformspassivefemininity crushed with inessentiality into privileged agency under the flood lights of history. A new kind of woman brings a new rhythm into existence with a new language and a new humanity; combatting women's oppression means the veritable creation of new women who become fully human by the same process by which they freed themselves. . . . At the level of individuals, anger is a cleansing force. It frees the woman from her inferiority complex and from despair and inaction; it makes her fearless and restores her self- respect. " —Julia Lesage, "Woman's Rage" in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Changing the Subject xiii Reading Practice I. The Feminist Critic Reads Men: Wilde, Meredith, Ibsen 1. Salome: The Jewish Princess Was a New Woman 3 2. "Clio in Calliope": History and Myth in Meredith's Diana of the Crossways 20 3. Nostalgia Is Not Enough: Why Elizabeth Hardwick Misreads Ibsen, Plath, and Woolf 49 Reading Practice II. The Socialist Critic Reads Virginia Woolf 4. Thinking Back through Our Mothers 73 5. "No More Horses": Virginia Woolf on Art and Propaganda 101 6. Art and Anger: Elizabeth Robins and Virginia Woolf 122 Writing Practice. The Lupine Critic Writes a (Biased) History of Virginia Woolf Scholarship 7. Tintinnabulations 157 8. Storming the Toolshed 182 9. Quentin's Bogey 201 A Theoretical Perspective 10. Still Practice, A/Wrested Alphabet: Toward a Feminist Aesthetic 215 Notes 251 Index 281
The list of books you might like
