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A review by hannahmayreads
A Literature Of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë To Lessing by Elaine Showalter
informative
medium-paced
4.0
…the Austen peaks, the Brontë cliffs, the Eliot range, and the Wolfe hills.
The four corners of women’s literature. But what lies between them? Lots!
There is still lots missing, writers of colour being the most obvious gap. Though Angela Carter, Audre Lord and Alice Walker are included in the last chapter, ‘Beyond the Female Aesthetic’, with particular reference to the collective acceptance speech Lord and Walker (along with Adrienne Rich) wrote for the 1974 National Book Awards that Showalter calls the “first manifesto of women’s literature". I recommend looking it up - it’s a profound read. But this book does stop fairly early on given it was first published in the 70s. The acknowledgements alone are a veritable who’s-who of writers from the 60s to 80s who are otherwise not mentioned in the book.
The chapter headings give a good indication of the ground to be covered, beginning with ‘The Female Tradition’ and ending on ‘Beyond the Female Aesthetic: Contemporary Women Novelists'. What unites them and what divides them is largely the theme throughout, and perhaps that thing is one and the same. But as Showalter points out,
There is still lots missing, writers of colour being the most obvious gap. Though Angela Carter, Audre Lord and Alice Walker are included in the last chapter, ‘Beyond the Female Aesthetic’, with particular reference to the collective acceptance speech Lord and Walker (along with Adrienne Rich) wrote for the 1974 National Book Awards that Showalter calls the “first manifesto of women’s literature". I recommend looking it up - it’s a profound read. But this book does stop fairly early on given it was first published in the 70s. The acknowledgements alone are a veritable who’s-who of writers from the 60s to 80s who are otherwise not mentioned in the book.
The chapter headings give a good indication of the ground to be covered, beginning with ‘The Female Tradition’ and ending on ‘Beyond the Female Aesthetic: Contemporary Women Novelists'. What unites them and what divides them is largely the theme throughout, and perhaps that thing is one and the same. But as Showalter points out,
…the concept of greatness for women novelists often turns out to mean four or five writers - Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf… having lost sight of the minor novelists, who were the links in the chain between one generation to the next, we have not had a very clear understanding of the continuities in women’s writing…”
There is a vast number of years between Austen and Woolfe, and even more books. And this is before we’ve even mentioned that it was more often than not men doing all the talking about these novelists! The “Scylla of insufficient information and the Charybdis of abandons prejudice” as Showalter calls this conundrum.
The whole idea of there being 'women's literature', given we don’t talk about there being a 'men's literature', may feel preposterous in one sense. But there is so much food for thought here that I largely welcome the conversation. Sad though that the same conversation has been happening since the dawn of the female novelist in the 19th century (Austen, Brontë, Eliot, et al).
I’d love to know what Showalter would make of the 21st-century woman writer - does the label still apply? Have we regressed or pushed forward? You could probably make arguments for both, much as you could 100 years ago.
The whole idea of there being 'women's literature', given we don’t talk about there being a 'men's literature', may feel preposterous in one sense. But there is so much food for thought here that I largely welcome the conversation. Sad though that the same conversation has been happening since the dawn of the female novelist in the 19th century (Austen, Brontë, Eliot, et al).
I’d love to know what Showalter would make of the 21st-century woman writer - does the label still apply? Have we regressed or pushed forward? You could probably make arguments for both, much as you could 100 years ago.
As the women’s movement turns to these silent women, they may find their voice at last: perhaps the next literary generation will be theirs.