Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx

Class, Gender, Pleasure, and Criticism
Author(s): Norman N. Holland, Lawrence Hyman, James
O'Rourke, Daniel W. Ross, Richard
Levin, Alan G. Gross and Susan Winnett
Source: PMLA, Vol. 106, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 130-136
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/462833
Accessed: 01-12-2018 17:48 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend
access to PMLA
This content downloaded from 164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec
2018 17:48:39 UTC

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Forum
Class, Gender, Pleasure, and Criticism
To the Editor:
Richard Levin's "The Poetics and Politics of Bardi-
cide" (105 [1990]: 491-504) makes wicked fun of what
this reader-response critic terms the text-active position.
Levin points out the absurdities of critics' claims to the
"real meaning" of a text. He shows the pretentiousness
of the pretense to an absolute, god's-eye view of what
a text does or is. He punctures the claim that we can
step out of the mortal psychological processes of per-
ception and interpretation that necessarily produce any
critic's reading. Levin targets those who premise The
Death of the Author and substitute an active, project-
ing, strategizing, revealing, concealing text for the lost
bard. I think he makes it clear, however, that the same
anomalies and pretensions appear when more tradi-
tional critics claim "objective knowledge of the real
meaning of a text" (499).
Levin's critique thus calls down-I hesitate to say
it-a Shakespearean plague on both houses. He leaves
us with the ever-daunting question, Where do we go
from here?
I suggest that the beginning of wisdom is frankly to
acknowledge a different "project of the text." The real
purpose of all these readings, formalist-humanist or

anti-formalist-humanist, is that their authors may pub-
lish and not perish. (From this point of view, Levin
might note, the authors he cites are very much in exis-
tence, indeed somewhat frantically so.) We can begin
by granting that the primary aim of literary criticism
as we know it today is publication and all the rewards
that publication brings.
If so, then what might we publish if we were to give
up our claims to superhuman objectivity? We would,
of course, have to acknowledge our own activity in our
criticism, but greater critics than we have done so. In-
deed it was customary until recent decades. We might,
for example, express opinions. We might point to things
to admire or condemn. We might conduct a dialogue
with a text. We might parody, we might contest the text,
or we might engage the author in a conversation as some
historians today engage their subjects. In short, we
might try for a little more imagination in our publish-
ing than either the old or the new New Critics show.
Levin's witty expose points, if not the only way, one way.
NORMAN N. HOLLAND
University of Florida
To the Editor:
By using their own words, for the most part, Richard
Levin clearly shows us how neo-Marxist and feminist
Freudian critics have reduced Shakespeare's plays to
parables of the consequences of domination by a class
or a gender. For these critics, every one of Shakespeare's
plays, no matter how diverse the surface action, con-
ceals the same economic or social conflict. They con-

tend that "no matter how 'silent' the text may be about
elements of this conflict, it must really contain them"
(499). Nor is the conclusion in any play a real resolu-
tion of these conflicts; it is merely an attempt to ration-
alize the patriarchal or upper-class values: "[N]o matter
how satisfactory the resolution may appear, it must
really be 'imaginary' because the contradictions it seems
to resolve are by definition unresolvable ... " (499).
But as successful as he is in pointing out the absurd
lengths to which neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian critics
go to reach their conclusions, Levin is less successful,
it seems to me, when he explains just what causes these
critics to arrive at such absurd conclusions. For Levin,
the cause is The Death of the Author. Bypassing the
author allows critics to find in every play their own ideas
rather than Shakespeare's and to judge the success of
a play by how clearly it demonstrates their own values.
To avoid such solipsistic criticism, we should, Levin con-
cludes, repudiate not only the particular biases of these
neo-Marxists and feminist Freudians but also the con-
cepts of the intentional fallacy and irony associated with
the New Critics of a previous generation, and we should
adopt in their place the kind of interpretation that
would be limited to the author's intentions.
Levin's mistake is the obvious one of not question-
ing the assumptions that the meaning of a literary work
is the reflection of the author's intentions, that we can
discover these intentions, and that no matter how much
an interpretation might increase our understanding and
enjoyment of a work (and even if it came from the pen
of a brilliant critic such as Coleridge, Bradley, Knight,

or Frye) the interpretation can only be justified by evi-
dence that Shakespeare wanted us to see it. But what
is more important in this context, although not as
obvious, is that Levin's focus on the intention of the
author, as well as his distrust of ironic meanings, pre-
vents him from recognizing the real source of the ab-
surd conclusions of the neo-Marxist and feminist
interpretations-namely, their failure to distinguish
what happens on the stage from the real event. Thefons
et origo malorum, what allows criticism to see failure
(particularly in the conclusions) in plays that most
readers find to be among the greatest works ever writ-
ten, is that politicized (or moralized) criticism does not
130
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Forum
recognize the autonomy of the literary experience.
Levin gets very close to noting this weakness when
he points out how suspicious these critics are of plea-
sure. He cites one author who wants us to deny the "aes-
thetic satisfaction" in King Lear because if we allow
ourselves to enjoy the play, we would be endorsing its
"ideological position" (503n13)-and the play's posi-
tion is, of course, not in accord with the critic's values.
Levin is equally caustic of those who argue that there
can be no resolution in Othello as long as the play does

not resolve "the same impotent dialectic of [male] vio-
lence . . . that caused its rupture" or in Macbeth "so
long as the ... ideology of restoration prevails" (qtd.
on 496). But when considering just why critics who cer-
tainly show evidence of a literary sensitivity far above
that of the average reader nevertheless seem to derive
little pleasure from the plays, Levin merely repeats the
critics' viewpoint: "[P]leasure is seen as a kind of bait
offered by the text . . . to make us complicit in its ideo-
logical project" (496).
But to see the play as an "ideological project" has
nothing to do with The Death of the Author but stems
from the tendency of some critics, from Plato through
Tolstoy to those of the present day, to see art only as
an instrument for the inculcation of religious, politi-
cal, or moral values and feelings. And to the extent that
these neo-Marxist and feminist Freudian critics follow
this tradition and so refuse to find at least some delight
in literature that may "shock the virtuous Philosopher"
(whether the virture is Christian, feminist, revolution-
ary, or conservative), their writing will lead to the ab-
surd conclusions cited by Levin. Until we realize that
the problem is not the displacement of the author by
the text but rather the idea of literature as instrumen-
tal rather than autonomous, we will not be able to go
forward with the kind of criticism that deepens our
understanding and enhances our enjoyment of
Shakespeare's plays.
LAWRENCE HYMAN
Brooklyn College
City University of New York

To the Editor:
The reappearance in PMLA of Richard Levin's bash-
ing of the new historicism will no doubt be the occa-
sion for another round of outraged protest (see
"Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy," 103
[1988]: 125-38; Forum, 103 [1988]: 817-19, 104 [1989]:
77-79). Before Levin's defenders once more claim the
moral high ground of the oppressed minority struggling
for freedom of speech against a fantasized hegemony
of the left, let me try to clarify why the response to
Levin's essays is so much more heated than any response
to Edward Pechter's critique of the new historicism in
these same pages ("The New Historicism and Its Dis-
contents: Politicizing Renaissance Drama," 102 [1987]:
292-303).
I will focus on one characteristic passage in Levin's
essay:
One does not ask how or why the text gave itself, or was
given, this project-that is treated as a donn6e. The proj-
ect is always bad since it involves the reproduction or
reaffirmation of some aspect of the oppressive and decep-
tive ideology (in the Marxist sense of "false consciousness")
that dominated the Renaissance world.... (492)
The first sentence implies that the assumption that the
text is carrying out an ideological project is of some
mysterious origin. The second sentence at least partly
dispels the mystery; Marxist literary critics follow
Marx's critique of the social formation of conscious-
ness, in which one's beliefs reflect one's place in a par-

ticular class and in which the dominant ideas of a
society are a veiled representation of the interests of the
ruling class. Marxist critics do in fact ask how and why
texts carry out the work of ideological mystification,
and there is a clear continuity from the theoretical for-
mulations of Marx and Marxist theorists on this issue
to the use of those ideas in Marxist literary criticism.
One might wish to question whether Marxist princi-
ples are sometimes applied to literary analysis in an
overly positivistic fashion, and that critique could be
carried out at both the theoretical and the practical
levels. That is what Pechter does, but that is not what
Levin does. Levin takes gratuitous potshots ("One does
not ask . . .") that he should know are wrong. The
connection between the first and the second sentences
from Levin that I have quoted is loose enough to allow
two possible interpretations of Levin's misrepresenta-
tion of the grounds of Marxist literary criticism. Either
Levin, in order to launch some gratuitous sarcasm, sup-
presses his knowledge of a theoretical basis for assum-
ing that a text is doing the work of ideology or else he
simply did not do any reading into the theoretical back-
grounds of Marxist criticism before he set out to prove
its errors. If his reading in the subject is insufficient,
I would suggest that he begin with The German
Ideology.
The opposition to Levin's appearance (and reappear-
ance) in PMLA does not proceed from an intolerance

for contrary viewpoints. It arises from the sense that
his essays are critical gossip and not serious scholar-
ship. It is difficult to believe that anyone's intellectual
131
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Forum
horizon is expanded by them. Those who agree with
Levin simply have their prejudices confirmed, and they
are set free to follow their leader in deploring new direc-
tions in criticism without going through the bother of
learning anything about them. Those who are angered
by Levin's reappearance in PMLA might wish to put
the whole matter in historical perspective by recalling
Virginia Woolf's caricature of Professor Von X in A
Room of One's Own:
His expression suggested that he was labouring under some
emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he
were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when
he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on
killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation
remained ..
I knew that he was angry by this token. When I read
what he wrote about women [feminism, Marxism] I
thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself. When
an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the ar-

gument; and the reader cannot help thinking of the argu-
ment too. If he had written dispassionately about women
[feminism, Marxism], had used indisputable proofs to es-
tablish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing
the result should be one thing rather than another, one
would not have been angry either. One would have accepted
the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a
canary yellow. So be it, I should have said. But I had been
angry because he had been angry.
I couldn't have put it nearly so well myself.
JAMES O'ROURKE
Florida State University
To the Editor:
Seldom can one see more clearly how the battle lines
of contemporary criticism have been drawn than in the
juxtaposition in the May 1990 issue of two articles:
Richard Levin's "The Poetics and Politics of Bardicide"
and Susan Winnett's "Coming Unstrung: Women, Men,
Narrative, and Principles of Pleasure" (105 [1990]:
505-18). Each critic represents what the other despises:
Winnett is a "neo-Freudian," a revisionist reader of
masculine paradigms both in primary texts and in criti-
cism, while Levin is an "androcentric" reader who, like
Peter Brooks, would see Winnett's effort as little more
than a new version of thematics. Yet each, I believe,
could learn something from the other.
Winnett polarizes the issue of the pleasures of read-
ing, saying that there are masculine and feminine ways
of reading. But her discussion of feminine pleasure

offers (for me, at least) new ways of reading male as
well as female texts. I take as my example a poem widely
regarded as "masculine": Yeats's "Among School Chil-
dren." The speaker, conscious of aging and mortality,
wonders what adoring mother, if she could see her in-
fant son become "that shape / With sixty or more
winters on its head," would consider that image "A
compensation for the pang of his birth / Or certainty
of his setting forth?" (37-40). Yeats's question antici-
pates Winnett's revisionist perspective of narratologi-
cal pleasure. As she puts it, "[B]oth childbirth and
breast feeding force us to think forward rather than
backward" (509). Unlike Winnett, however, Yeats seems
to have realized that such looking ahead will not neces-
sarily produce pleasure. Also, Yeats's poem contradicts
Winnett's broad generalization that in "the erotics of
oedipal transmission, the woman is always a stage (in
both senses of the word) for or in the working out of
a problem of paternal interdiction, toward the moment
of 'significant discharge' when the son frees himself
from the nets of paternal restriction and forges a self-
creation-however ironized this process may be" (512;
my italics). In "Among School Children" woman does
not appear to be a stage, in either sense of the word.
Rather, Yeats uses woman as a symbol to free himself
from the "restriction" of masculine philosophy: neither
Plato nor Aristotle nor Pythagoras offers Yeats a satis-
factory answer to his questions about origins and mor-
tality in the poem. The images of woman offer Yeats
a new way to conceive of experience-a way that cir-
cumnavigates the masculine tendency (so evident in
Freud's "masterplot" of the death drive) to view life as
linear, an unbroken progression from birth to death.
Yeats, instead, adopts the more feminine (and for many

readers more satisfying) image of "labour" that is "blos-
soming or dancing / Where body is not bruised to plea-
sure soul" (57-58). The cyclic pattern suggested by this
image is more consistent with the pattern of mother-
hood than with the linear vision of life that pre-
dominates in so much of the masculine, meditative verse
written by Donne, Wordsworth, and others. Yet one feels
that for Yeats (and, ostensibly, for many readers) this
image also adheres to the "pattern of tension and reso-
lution ('tumescence and detumescence,' 'arousal and sig-
nificant discharge')" that Winnett rejects (508). We need
not insist on a choice of masculine or feminine plea-
sures. This text, like many others, might satisfy the var-
ious forms of desire as defined by Brooks, Scholes, and
Winnett.
Levin's argument raises other problems. Both his
recent PMLA articles use remarkable subtlety in analyz-
ing contemporary approaches to Shakespeare. Levin
correctly sees how Marxist and feminist-psychoanalytic
views have politicized Shakespeare studies, yet I am not
convinced that he represents those approaches fairly.
132
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Forum
As one who has learned much from the feminist-

psychoanalytic critics especially, I agree that their
strategy may be defined as a version of thematics, but
I do not believe that this strategy is inherently bad. Nor
do I think Levin's system of fragmented quoting gives
readers an accurate picture of the method.
Ultimately, Levin's best point has to do with the style
of recent criticism. As he shows, the new methodolo-
gies, with their emphasis on passive-voice constructions
and personified indirections (e.g., "the text has a proj-
ect" and "the text conceals"), obscure interpretation ab-
surdly. The quotations I have taken from Winnett make
this point well enough. And yes, these critics do have
their own agendas, as the "formalist-humanist" critics
do, and those agendas are frequently moral. But I am
disturbed that Levin finds so little use in, for example,
the absent-mother theme in Shakespeare; surely, to a
critic as perceptive as he the repetition of this theme
in so many plays must "reveal" something significant
(and very moral) about Shakespeare and his society.
I believe that both critics have something to teach us
about the limitations and opportunities that various
forms of criticism offer. But I also believe that Win-
nett and Levin emulate the pattern of too many critics
today, those who write hostilely and who are so deeply
entrenched in their own positions that they cannot see
what others have to offer. And that, I think, is the most
important lesson to be derived from the politics of con-
temporary criticism.
DANIEL W. ROSS
Columbus College

Reply:
Since these four letters come from four different
directions, I cannot in my allotted space give each one
the attention it deserves and so will limit myself to some
major points. Holland is wrong in saying that I object
to the concept of "the real meaning of a text." I object
to the inconsistency of critics who reject this concept
in principle but violate their principle in their own prac-
tice. I think that the attempt to determine the real mean-
ing is legitimate and does not assume a "god's-eye view,"
as he contends. It is what all normal human beings do
hundreds of times daily, whenever they are at the receiv-
ing end of a verbal communication. They try to infer
the real meaning of the words coming from the sender,
which is the meaning that the sender meant, and they
are usually successful. Otherwise communication would
be impossible. Inferences from a literary text are more
difficult, but the process is the same-that is, if we are
trying to interpret the text's intended meaning.
Hyman misconstrues my position in the opposite
direction by having me insist that interpretation should
be "limited to the author's intentions." I never say that.
I am a pluralist and believe there are several valid critical
approaches. One of these approaches attempts to find
the intended meaning, as the New Critics did (Hyman
is wrong about them); but that is not the only thing one
can do with a text. This also applies to his main concern,
the "autonomy" of literature. No human artifact is

really autonomous, but it is possible to interpret a liter-
ary text as if it were, in certain respects, which is again
what the New Criticism did. And again I would say that
this is just one of the valid approaches to interpretation.
I agree with Holland that critics should try to evalu-
ate literature, a very important function that was poorly
performed by most New Critics (who thought their task
was to prove that every work they interpreted was per-
fectly unified) and has now virtually disappeared, in
part because evaluation poses such difficult problems
for both Marxists and Freudians. And I agree with Hy-
man that The Death of the Author is not the sole cause
of the practices I examine; I should have made this
clearer, although I mention that some of them are em-
ployed by "weak" intentionalists like Snow. I also agree
with Ross's conclusion that every mode of criticism has
"something to teach us" and that we should learn from
one another. This is the rationale of my pluralism, and
I have certainly learned from the feminists, as I state
in my earlier article, and (less) from the Marxists, as
I should have stated in this one. I have not learned, how-
ever, that the recent proliferation of absent-mother
figures in Shakespeare "must 'reveal' something signifi-
cant" about him. It only reveals that critics are now
searching for these figures with a method that guaran-
tees success since it has no negative test-no way of de-
termining if any play does not contain an absent mother.
The same applies to the proliferation of Christ figures
and of appearance-versus-reality themes in the older
criticism. Does Ross think they revealed something
about Shakespeare or about the critics who sought
them?

O'Rourke's only specific criticism of my article in-
volves one sentence on the text's acquisition of a proj-
ect. The sentence is sarcastic, but it raises a serious issue
about critics evading the problem of agency. O'Rourke
evades it too by shifting to the next sentence to charge
me with concealing my knowledge of Marx's theory of
ideology or revealing my ignorance of the theory. Now
I never claim to be an expert on Marxist theory, since
my concern is the practice of the new Marxist critics,
and I do not know if some statement of Marx's sup-
ports their conceptions of ideology and the text as
personified agencies that do things by themselves. But
all his writings known to me assume that ideology is
133
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Forum
produced by human minds (The German Ideology,
which O'Rourke suggests I read, says, "Men are the
producers of their conceptions") and that literature is
produced by authors, who have various relationships
to the dominant ideology (see Literature and Art by Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels: Selections from Their Writ-
ings, New York: International, 1947; this was also the
assumption of almost all Marxist criticism of Shake-
speare until recently). I will let O'Rourke decide whether
Marx or Stallybrass is the better Marxist, a judgment

that is not relevant to the issue raised by my sentence.
If O'Rourke wanted to face that issue, he should have
explained how a text can acquire an ideological proj-
ect without the help of any human agency-a matter
that, contrary to what he seems to think, is not the same
as a text's "carrying out an ideological project."
O'Rourke's other criticisms of my article are so
generalized that it is hard to answer them. He compares
it unfavorably to Pechter's article because Pechter did
not provoke as "heated" a response; but in fact that
article, which I admire, provoked plenty of anger that
never reached the PMLA Forum. (Michael Cohen
reports that in a 1988 Folger Shakespeare Institute Semi-
nar some members "talked about the Pechter article
with disgust and horror" and "someone wondered
aloud how PMLA could have published such a nasty
piece of work" [Shakespeare Newsletter 38 (1988): 38].)
O'Rourke also claims that those who agree with me will
"simply have their prejudices confirmed" without
having to study the new approaches; this observation
is probably true of some readers, but it is equally true
that some of those who disagree with me will simply
be confirming their prejudices about the perfidy of the
enemy and will dismiss my article as "gratuitous
sarcasm" and "critical gossip," as he does, without
having to deal with it. I do not think I should be blamed
for either of these responses, which are obviously not
what I aimed at. And at the end he uses Woolf's carica-
ture to relocate the anger in me rather than in the re-
action against me. But I do not feel at all angry at the
critics I discuss, some of whom I like, and I leave it to
disinterested readers (if there are any left) to judge

whether my article or his exhibits more anger.
RICHARD LEVIN
State University of New York, Stony Brook
To the Editor:
Susan Winnett's "Coming Unstrung: Women, Men,
Narrative, and Principles of Pleasure" asserts that the
study of the structure of narrative would benefit from
a feminist perspective. Winnett quotes with approval
Scholes's contention that narrative form is essentially
determined by the tumescence and detumescence of the
male sexual cycle. But, she suggests, is not this view fun-
damentally sexist? Does it not privilege the male sex-
ual cycle over the rather different female one? In her
provocative paper, Winnett asks us to consider the im-
pact on fiction and its interpretation if the female sex-
ual cycle were, to some extent, determinative of the
pleasures of the text. As examples of what that deter-
mination might mean to practical criticism, she ana-
lyzes two novels by women-Frankenstein and Romola.
Her analyses suggest that what are usually construed
as narrative flaws may be, according to a feminist read-
ing, alternative structures influenced by the sexual ex-
perience of their authors.
I have two points to make concerning Winnett's the-
sis, one methodological and epistemological, the other
political. My first concern is with the matter of evidence
and arguments. I do not mean that Winnett owes to her
skeptical readers the actual evidence and arguments that

might found her claim. Her paper is frankly specula-
tive; she intends, she tells us, only to arrive at "the giddy
brink of an alternative" cultural paradigm (505). Still,
I think she does owe readers a sketch of the kinds of
evidence and arguments that might support so radical
a claim. If I found such evidence, what would it look
like? If I invented such an argument, what would be its
form?
It might be thought that her analyses of Frankenstein
and Romola not only suggest but actually constitute
the sought-for evidence and argument. The grounds for
her claim, then, are as simple as they are effective: her
hypothesis constitutes an explanation of these works
at least as compelling as any alternative sponsored by
the representatives of patriarchical dominance. But
Winnett gives no hint that she wishes to ground her
claim in these analyses. Rightly so; novels are fictions
so extended and complex that one might almost believe
that they would sustain a coherent reading on the basis
of any interpretative scheme, no matter how outland-
ish. Winnett is quite right to discount such easy victo-
ries. A causal hypothesis such as hers needs firmer
buttressing.
It is important not only to substantiate a preferred
claim but also to accommodate its plausible alterna-
tives. The alternatives to Winnett's claim form two
classes. The first counters Scholes's general assertion
that "[t]he archetype of all fiction" is the sexual cycle
(qtd. on 506). This alternative holds that the archetype
is some other human or natural cycle or some combi-
nation of natural and human cycles, a combination that

might very well differ as we move from fiction to fic-
tion. The second class of alternatives rejects the very
134
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Forum
notion of an archetype of fiction. It asserts rather that
every fiction is sui generis; indeed, in its strongest form,
this class reverses the causal arrow, contending that fic-
tions may themselves be the cause of our interpretation
of the various human and natural cycles of which we
are aware. Winnett recognizes and respects these alter-
natives (506, 508), but recognition and respect are in-
sufficient; it is also necessary to avoid a benign and
empty pluralism under whose protection any set of be-
liefs can garner its faction and found a critical school.
My second concern involves the political implications
that must follow the truth of Winnett's claim. In the
literature of feminism, it has been repeatedly asserted
that the patriarchal rationalizations that have barred
women from full participation in social and political
life are powerfully distorting of that life; in supporting
unfairness to women, such rationalizations make our
society less humane, less viable for everyone. In the dis-

ciplines, the particular concern of academics, these ra-
tionalizations infect the very structures that constitute
knowledge. In short, these rationalizations are danger-
ous nonsense; differences between men and women
have been manufactured to suit a narrow ideology. It
follows that equal participation of men and women will
lead to a more humane and viable society and polity
and to a firmer, more durable form of knowledge. The
implications of this claim seem wholly progressive.
But this claim must not be conflated with Winnett's
very different claim. Hers seems rather a version of the
general claim that women qua women have something
special to offer society, that there is something remark-
able, something unique in their point of view. Accord-
ing to Winnett, storytelling and story understanding are
not, as we might have thought, social capacities gener-
ated by our common humanity; they are instead psy-
chological capacities founded on our (generally)
irremediable sexual biology. Such biological deter-
minism suited well an archconservative and social pes-
simist like Freud, and it may well suit contemporary
neoconservatives of whatever stripe; but it can hardly
be attractive to a movement that depends heavily on
progressive and meliorist assumptions. If true, the claim
that women possess unique, biologically determined
qualities seems to serve, not the women's movement,
but its opponents. Why not argue, instead, that a spe-
cifically female pleasure is itself a patriarchal construct,
an interested valorization of physical differences that
ought to be insignificant socially and politically?
I hope that it will not be asserted in reply that my

separation of methodology and epistemology from pol-
itics is itself political, that the division itself affirms a
male "logocentrism" that must be abandoned in the in-
terest of authentic intellectual progress. Whatever the
eventual nature of our intellectual society, those mak-
ing claims will have to assume a genuine burden of
proof. When they do, they must deploy evidence and
make arguments; moreover, that evidence and those ar-
guments must be capable of close characterization.
ALAN G. GROSS
Purdue University, Calumet
Reply:
At the end of Henry James's novel The SacredFount,
the narrator concludes that the reason his antagonist
has unstrung the interpretive system he has pursued is
not that he "hadn't three times her method" but rather
that he "too fatally lacked . . . her tone." I don't for
a moment doubt that Gross and Ross have at least three
times my method, but both seem to have had consid-
erable difficulties reading my tone.
Gross begins his commentary with the observation
that I quote "with approval Scholes's contention that
narrative form is essentially determined by the tumes-
cence and detumescence of the male sexual cycle." Only
a total misunderstanding of the tone of my essay could
lead him to read "approval" into my examination of
Scholes's readerly approximation of the sexual act.
More serious for Gross's argument than the issue of

whether or not I "approve" of Scholes is Gross's view
that I would agree with any "essentialist" notion of what
determines narrative form. One of the major goals of
the article is to demonstrate how any discussion of nar-
rative determinants depends entirely on the conscious
or unconscious ideological position of the critic as well
as on the text that the discussion is supposed to illumi-
nate or that is to "prove" (as Gross puts it) the viability
of the theory. My introduction of possible female coun-
terparts to the images of male "tumescence and
detumescence" invoked by Brooks and Scholes is, from
the outset, intentionally perverse. (I am not aware of
having discussed either the male or the female "sexual
cycle"; here, as in Gross's contention that I "suggest that
what are usually construed as narrative flaws [in
Frankenstein and Romola] may be ... influenced by
the sexual experience of their authors," I am troubled
by his assumption that experiences of the body-and
indeed experiences of pleasure-are necessarily sexual.
I allude to Shelley's "maternal" experiences but to nei-
ther her "sexual experience" nor Eliot's.) The wording
of the article makes my limited stakes in the narrative
model I devise fairly clear, which doesn't mean that I
haven't put considerable care into constructing the
model and thinking about its implications: my purpose
is to show that even if we retain Brooks's and Scholes's
135
2018 17:48:39 UTC

Forum Forum
preferred images for narrative incipience and resolution
and seek to derive a narratology from whatever analo-
gies we can find in the experience of the female body,
we will come up with a model that diverges from and
challenges a (male) narratology that is insufficiently (if
at all) aware of its own arbitrariness. But a reader who
demands "evidence and arguments that might support
so radical a claim" is going to have missed my tone of
serious play. I'd be slightly less hard-pressed to think
about possible "proof" of my "radical . . . claim" if
Gross had made it clearer to which claim he is refer-
ring and-since readings seem not to be "proof"
enough-what kind of proof he would accept.
Having missed much of the point of my essay, Gross
proceeds to deem my "biological determinism" reac-
tionary; there is a serious philosophical and scientific
debate about whether maleness and femaleness are bi-
ological categories, a debate to which I consider my-
self, as neither a philosopher nor a scientist, unprepared
to contribute. I do believe that being born with two X
chromosomes tends to initiate an experience of female-
ness that differs substantially from the experience of
maleness that usually follows being born with an X and
a Y chromosome. Of course these differences are con-
structions, but it is nonetheless true that constructed
females have something to offer that differs from what
constructed males have, and I find much of what
constructed females say when they read narrative "re-
markable" and "unique." Any talk of our "common

humanity" can only rest on the common denominator
of a dominant, patriarchal culture.
I have no objection to "learning something" from
Levin's article, as Ross suggests, and I find his assump-
tion of my hostility to Levin a bit presumptuous. It is
interesting that Ross conflates my tone and Levin's;
"[e]ach critic represents what the other despises" sug-
gests that both articles are informed by a tone of an-
ger. I hope my affection for Brooks and my sense of
the real importance of his work on narrative is as evi-
dent in my article as is my serious criticism of his work.
Levin's criticism of passive constructions in contem-
porary criticism is indeed illuminating, and I plead
guilty to the occasional claim that "the text has a. ..."
But I find very few such constructions in "Coming Un-
strung" and none in the passages Ross cites in his let-
ter. Again, a problem of tone?
I am touched that Ross finds that my discussion
offers new ways of reading male as well as female texts,
but I do not see that the mother figure in "Among
School Children" is anything but another fantasy stage
on which, as Ross himself puts it, "Yeats uses woman
preferred images for narrative incipience and resolution
and seek to derive a narratology from whatever analo-
gies we can find in the experience of the female body,
we will come up with a model that diverges from and
challenges a (male) narratology that is insufficiently (if
at all) aware of its own arbitrariness. But a reader who
demands "evidence and arguments that might support
so radical a claim" is going to have missed my tone of
serious play. I'd be slightly less hard-pressed to think
about possible "proof" of my "radical . . . claim" if

Gross had made it clearer to which claim he is refer-
ring and-since readings seem not to be "proof"
enough-what kind of proof he would accept.
Having missed much of the point of my essay, Gross
proceeds to deem my "biological determinism" reac-
tionary; there is a serious philosophical and scientific
debate about whether maleness and femaleness are bi-
ological categories, a debate to which I consider my-
self, as neither a philosopher nor a scientist, unprepared
to contribute. I do believe that being born with two X
chromosomes tends to initiate an experience of female-
ness that differs substantially from the experience of
maleness that usually follows being born with an X and
a Y chromosome. Of course these differences are con-
structions, but it is nonetheless true that constructed
females have something to offer that differs from what
constructed males have, and I find much of what
constructed females say when they read narrative "re-
markable" and "unique." Any talk of our "common
humanity" can only rest on the common denominator
of a dominant, patriarchal culture.
I have no objection to "learning something" from
Levin's article, as Ross suggests, and I find his assump-
tion of my hostility to Levin a bit presumptuous. It is
interesting that Ross conflates my tone and Levin's;
"[e]ach critic represents what the other despises" sug-
gests that both articles are informed by a tone of an-
ger. I hope my affection for Brooks and my sense of
the real importance of his work on narrative is as evi-
dent in my article as is my serious criticism of his work.

Levin's criticism of passive constructions in contem-
porary criticism is indeed illuminating, and I plead
guilty to the occasional claim that "the text has a. ..."
But I find very few such constructions in "Coming Un-
strung" and none in the passages Ross cites in his let-
ter. Again, a problem of tone?
I am touched that Ross finds that my discussion
offers new ways of reading male as well as female texts,
but I do not see that the mother figure in "Among
School Children" is anything but another fantasy stage
on which, as Ross himself puts it, "Yeats uses woman
as a symbol to free himself from the 'restriction' of mas-
culine philosophy." Does it matter that the fathers are
Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras and not M. Sorel and
Baldassare Calvi?
Both Gross and Ross seem to want first to "correct"
ny style of argumentation or writing (to bring it more
in line with their senses of what academic writing or
academic debate should be) and then to appropriate for
"common humanity" what(ever) is left. When Ross
writes, "We need not insist on a choice of masculine or
feminine pleasures" (my emphasis), he writes from the
position of someone who thinks he has a choice. My
point is that women have long had this choice thrust
on them and that, now that they (or at least some of
them) can choose, they are likely to want to claim their
own pleasures as their own.
SUSAN WINNETT

Columbia University
"Universal Americanisms" in PMLA
To the Editor:
As a member of the Modern Language Association
I feel that I must object to the "universal American-
isms" that occur in PMLA. Allow me to mention two
cases. The first has to do with the issue of fetal-tissue
use that was put forth by the MLA some time last year.
In urging its members to contact President Bush about
this issue, the MLA did not discriminate between its
American members and those (like me) who are Cana-
dian. Does the association, like Walt Whitman, consider
that Canada is just an extension of the United States
of America? I came to the conclusion that this must
be the case when I received the May 1990 issue of the
journal. David Kaufmann, in his article "The Profes-
sion of Theory" (105 [1990]: 519-30), states that "a sur-
prising number of us in this country think our colleges
and universities are caught in a crisis" (519). Which
country does Kaufmann mean by "this country"? I pre-
sume that he means the United States of America.
Please remember that not all your members are from
the United States or from the "Third World" countries
that have become patronizingly trendy to write about.
Perhaps you could reflect this with the publication of
an article dealing with the literature of Canada or
Mexico.

as a symbol to free himself from the 'restriction' of mas-
culine philosophy." Does it matter that the fathers are
Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras and not M. Sorel and
Baldassare Calvi?
Both Gross and Ross seem to want first to "correct"
ny style of argumentation or writing (to bring it more
in line with their senses of what academic writing or
academic debate should be) and then to appropriate for
"common humanity" what(ever) is left. When Ross
writes, "We need not insist on a choice of masculine or
feminine pleasures" (my emphasis), he writes from the
position of someone who thinks he has a choice. My
point is that women have long had this choice thrust
on them and that, now that they (or at least some of
them) can choose, they are likely to want to claim their
own pleasures as their own.
SUSAN WINNETT
Columbia University
"Universal Americanisms" in PMLA
To the Editor:
As a member of the Modern Language Association
I feel that I must object to the "universal American-
isms" that occur in PMLA. Allow me to mention two
cases. The first has to do with the issue of fetal-tissue
use that was put forth by the MLA some time last year.
In urging its members to contact President Bush about

this issue, the MLA did not discriminate between its
American members and those (like me) who are Cana-
dian. Does the association, like Walt Whitman, consider
that Canada is just an extension of the United States
of America? I came to the conclusion that this must
be the case when I received the May 1990 issue of the
journal. David Kaufmann, in his article "The Profes-
sion of Theory" (105 [1990]: 519-30), states that "a sur-
prising number of us in this country think our colleges
and universities are caught in a crisis" (519). Which
country does Kaufmann mean by "this country"? I pre-
sume that he means the United States of America.
Please remember that not all your members are from
the United States or from the "Third World" countries
that have become patronizingly trendy to write about.
Perhaps you could reflect this with the publication of
an article dealing with the literature of Canada or
Mexico.
ANDREW WILLIAMS
Repentigny, Quebec
ANDREW WILLIAMS
Repentigny, Quebec
136 136
2018 17:48:39 UTC
Contentsimage 1image 2image 3image 4image 5image 6image
7Issue Table of ContentsPublications of the Modern Language

Association of America, Vol. 106, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 1-
192Front Matter [pp. 1-189]Editor's Note [pp. 8-9]Nobel
Lecture 1989: In Praise of Storytelling [pp. 10-17]Hispanic
ClusterIntroduction [pp. 18-20]Decentering Garcilaso: Herrera's
Attack on the Canon [pp. 21-33]Narrating the past: History and
the Novel of Memory in Postwar Spain [pp. 34-45]La tía Julia y
el escribidor: The Writing Subject's Fantasy of Empowerment
[pp. 46-59]Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics in Donoso's El jardín
de al lado [pp. 60-70]"Mountaigny Saith Prettily": Bacon's
French and the Essay [pp. 71-82]Suffering and Sensation in The
Ruined Cottage [pp. 83-95]In Defense of Plato's Gorgias [pp.
96-109]Canonicity [pp. 110-121]ForumVirginia Woolf and the
Greek Chorus [pp. 122-124]Tom Stoppard's Artist Descending a
Staircase [pp. 124-125]The Politics of Critical Language [pp.
125-127]A 1951 Dialogue on Interpretation [pp. 127-128]The
Political Truth of Heidegger's "Logos" [pp. 128-129]Class,
Gender, Pleasure, and Criticism [pp. 130-136]"Universal
Americanisms" in PMLA [p. 136]Professional Notes and
Comment [pp. 152+154+156+158]Abstracts [pp. 190-192]Back
Matter
Final Written Assignment: Persuasive Essay
Due Week 9 and worth 215 points
Instructions:
It’s time to finalize your persuasive essay! You should feel
proud of everything you’ve
accomplished so far. You’ve developed your ideas, identified
counter perspectives,
gathered credible research, and drafted your essay. Now you
will use feedback from

your instructor to review, revise, and edit your draft to ensure
that you are submitting
your best work.
You’ll want to deliver a polished essay that meets all the
project requirements and
effectively persuades your reader. Follow the steps below to get
started.
ASSIGNMENT4
Step 1
Revision
Revision is about removing, adding, and refining content to
improve clarity, idea
development, flow, and the overall persuasiveness of your
communication.
Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help ensure
you are submitting
your best work.
Effectiveness of Persuasive Position
Logic: Have you fully explained the rationale? Did you provide
enough
background information, define key terms, build from one idea

to the next?
Credibility: Did you build credibility through citing sources and
using a
voice (personality), tone (mood), and appropriate words for
your
topic and audience?
Emotion: How did you appeal to the emotional side of your
audience?
(e.g., voice (personality), tone (mood), vivid descriptions,
and/or
personal stories)
Balance: Do you hook your audience in the first paragraph? Do
your
appeals work together throughout to create a powerfully
persuasive c
ommunication? Do you include a call to action in the last
paragraph?
Clarity of Ideas
Have you fully explained your ideas?
Do you build logically from one point to the next?
Is your communication clear?
Is it straightforward and easy to understand?

Do your ideas flow smoothly from one to the next?
Organization and Structure
Introduction/Thesis: Does your thesis statement tell the reader
what
your essay is about? Does it communicate your position?
Background Information: Did you provide relevant background
information as necessary?
Body Paragraphs: Do you provide an appropriate amount of
information, analysis, and support?
Counter Perspective(s): Did you include one to three counter
perspectives? Do you fully explain why you’re addressing each
counter
perspective? Does the counter perspective have flaws or weak
evidence that strengthens your argument?
Conclusion: Do you provide a summary, rephrase your thesis,
and
leave a lasting impression?
Step 2

Editing
As this is your final essay, you should pay close attention to
grammar, mechanics,
punctuation, and formatting. This will ensure that your meaning
is clear. You don’t
want to distract your audience or negatively impact your
credibility with small
mistakes!
In-Text Citations
Did you run your Word document through Grammarly and fix
the errors?
Do you have 4-6 credible sources?
Do you have a Source List?
Cover page, page numbers, double-spaced, 1” margins,
indented paragraphs, and 12-point Times New Roman font
Have you used SWS in-text citations to document your
sources? (Author’s last name, number indicating the order in
which you used the source in the paper.) For example, the first
source in your paper would look like this: (Wielding, 1).
Did you number your sources?
Did you list the sources in the order in which you use them in
the paper?
Include major identifying information for each reference.
Apply a consistent and SWS-style flow of information.
(Author's first and last
name, Title of the source, date it was published, comment on

where you found it,
and page numbers). For example: Natalie Goldberg. 2016.
Writing Down the
Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. p.100-126. ISBN-13: 978-
1590307946
Did you follow SWS guidelines?
Step 3
Feedback Reflection
List the feedback you received from your instructor on Writing
Activity 3:
Rough Draft.
Explain how you used the feedback to improve your essay and
create a final,
polished version.
Describe the ways you’ll use the feedback in future writing
RUBRIC
Grading for this activity will be based on the following rubric:
1. Effectiveness
of Persuasion
Weight: 30%
The student is
not persuasive or

is inappropriately
persuasive, does
not use a
balanced
approach, and
only applies one
appeal: logic,
credibility, or
emotion.
The student
attempts to be
persuasive and
use a balanced
approach, but
only applies one
or two appeals to
logic, credibility,
and emotion to

persuade the
audience.
The student is
somewhat
persuasive, uses
a somewhat
balanced
approach, and
applies logic,
credibility, and
emotion to
persuade the
audience.
The student is
persuasive, uses
a balanced
approach, and
applies logic,

credibility, and
emotion to
effectively
persuade the
audience.
The student is
highly persuasive,
uses a well-bal-
anced approach
and strong
application of
logic, credibility,
and emotion to
effectively
persuade the
audience.
POINTS: 215
Criteria

Unacceptable
Below 60% F
Fair
70-79% C
Proficient
80-89% B
Exemplary
90-100% A
Meets
Minimum
Expectations
60-69% D
FINAL WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT: PERSUASIVE ESSAY
2. Clarity of Ideas
Weight: 25%
The student does
not explain or
incompletely
explains ideas.
Ideas may not

build logically
from one point to
the next. Commu-
nication is not
clear, straightfor-
ward, and/or easy
to understand.
Ideas do not flow
smoothly from
one to the next.
The student
ineffectively
explains ideas
and ideas
ineffectively build
logically from one
point to the next.
Communication

is not completely
clear, straightfor-
ward, and/or easy
to understand.
Ideas may not
flow smoothly
from one to the
next.
The student
partially explains
ideas and ideas
somewhat build
logically from one
point to the next.
Communication
is somewhat
clear, straightfor-
ward, and easy to

understand.
Ideas flow
somewhat
smoothly from
one to the next.
The student
mostly explains
ideas and ideas
mostly build
logically from one
point to the next.
Communication
is mostly clear,
straightforward,
and easy to
understand.
For the most part,
ideas flow

smoothly from
one to the next.
The student fully
explains ideas
and ideas fully
build logically
from one point to
the next. Commu-
nication is
completely clear,
straightforward,
and easy to
understand.
Ideas flow
smoothly from
one to the next.
3. Organization
and Structure
Weight: 15%

The essay is
unorganized. It
may be missing
three or more of
the following: an
introduction,
thesis statement,
background
information, body
paragraphs,
counter perspec-
tive(s), and
conclusion. Body
paragraphs are
not structured to
meet the specific
needs of the
audience,

purpose, and
content.
The essay is
mostly unorga-
nized. It may be
missing two of
the following: an
introduction,
thesis statement,
background
information, body
paragraphs,
counter perspec-
tive(s), and
conclusion. Body
paragraphs are
ineffectively
structured to

meet the specific
needs of the
audience,
purpose, and
content.
The essay is
somewhat
organized. It may
be missing one of
the following: an
introduction,
thesis statement,
background
information, body
paragraphs,
counter perspec-
tive(s), and
conclusion. Body

paragraphs are
partially struc-
tured to meet the
specific needs of
the audience,
purpose, and
content.
The essay is
mostly organized.
It has an
introduction,
thesis statement,
background
information, body
paragraphs,
counter perspec-
tive(s), and
conclusion. Body

paragraphs are
mostly structured
to meet the
specific needs of
the audience,
purpose, and
content.
The essay is well
organized. It has
an easily identifi-
able introduction,
thesis statement,
background
information, body
paragraphs,
counter perspec-
tive(s), and
conclusion. Body

paragraphs are
effectively
structured to
meet the specific
needs of the
audience,
purpose, and
content
4. In-Text
Citations and
References
Page
Weight: 15%
Did not appropri-
ately use in-text
citations through-
out the essay. No

source list.
Does not meet
the required
number of
references; all or
most references
are poor-quality
choices. Most
citations are
missing or have
been used
improperly in the
essay and
source list.
Does not meet
the required
number of
references or

there are some
poor-quality
reference choic-
es. Some in-text
citations and
source list items
are improperly
placed, missing,
or not formatted.
Meets the
required number
of references;
most references
are high-quality
choices. In-text
citations and
source list are
mostly correctly

formatted.
Meets or exceeds
number of
required referenc-
es; all references
are high-quality
choices. In-text
citations and
source list are
correctly
formatted.
5. Grammar,
Mechanics,
Punctuation,
and SWS
Formatting
Weight: 5%
There are
numerous

mechanics,
grammar, and
punctuation
errors. The paper
contains
numerous
formatting errors:
it may not be
double-spaced;
font may be
incorrect; margins
may not be one-
inch on all sides,
and there may not
be a cover page. It
includes none or
only one of the
following: page

numbers or
indented
paragraphs.
There are many
mechanics,
grammar, and
punctuation
errors. The paper
includes two of
the following
elements: is
double-spaced;
font is correct;
margins are one-
inch on all sides,
and there is a
cover page. It
only includes one

of the following
elements: page
numbers or
indented
paragraphs.
There are some
mechanics,
grammar, and
punctuation
errors that
distract the
reader. The paper
is double-spaced;
font is correct;
margins are one-
inch on all sides,
and there is a
cover page. It

includes both of
the following
elements: page
numbers and
indented
paragraphs.
There are minimal
mechanics,
grammar, and
punctuation
errors. The paper
is double-spaced;
font is correct;
margins are one-
inch on all sides,
and there is a
cover page. It
includes both of

the following
elements:
page numbers
and indented
paragraphs.
There are no or
few mechanics,
grammar, and
punctuation
errors. The paper
is double-spaced;
font is correct;
margins are one-
inch on all sides,
and there is a
cover page. It
includes both of
the following

elements: page
numbers and
indented
paragraphs.
6. Feedback
Reflection
Weight: 10%
The student is
not reflective,
does not make
connections, and
does not include
future strategies
to continue
improving writing.
The student may
not be reflective,

may not make
connections,
and/or may not
include future
strategies to
continue
improving writing
The student is
somewhat
reflective, makes
some connec-
tions, and
includes some
future strategies
to continue
improving writing
The student is
reflective, makes

connections, and
includes future
strategies to
continue
improving writing.
The student is
highly reflective,
makes insightful
connections, and
includes future
strategies to
continue
improving writing.
Formalist Criticism and the Teaching of Shakespeare
Author(s): Kester Svendsen
Source: College English, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Oct., 1965), pp. 23-27
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/373705
Accessed: 01-12-2018 17:29 UTC
National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to College English
2018 17:29:16 UTC
FORMALIST CRITICISM AND SHAKESPEARE
Formalist Criticism and the Teaching of Shakespeare
KESTER SVENDSEN
HAVING NARROWED THE SUBJECT to
Shakespeare, let us now narrow the ob-
ject, or more precisely, the audience, the

students for whom or on whom we can
use modern critical theory. It is one
thing to address Trinity College sopho-
mores who prepped at Groton or in
Northrop Frye's well-tempered curricu-
lum, and quite another to work with un-
dergraduates at a midwestern or north-
western state university. Upper division,
lower division, graduate, required course,
elective course-these categories further
modify our expectations and our ap-
proach. I speak here of the uses of mod-
ern critical theory in teaching Shake-
speare to the ordinary undergraduate at
a state university. Certainly much of what
works with him will work with any stu-
dent. But we must begin with him where
he is: generally inexperienced in art,
adolescent, a superannuated high school
senior; and we must determine what we
want him to have when we leave him.
The present remarks derive from expe-
rience with a sophomore-level three-term
Shakespeare course populated mostly by
a liberal arts enrollment and taught by
a decayed Miltonist. They derive also
from three main streams of modern criti-
cal theory: psychological criticism, as
represented chiefly by Ernest Jones and
the contributors to Literature and Psy-
chology; anthropologico-synoptic criti-
cism, pioneered by Maud Bodkin and
lately anatomized by Northrop Frye; and
a formalist criticism, whose Brooksian
bankruptcy was somewhat prematurely

announced from Chicago in the 1950's.
I wish to argue the primacy of formalist
literary theory in teaching Shakespeare
to beginners.
I assume agreement that our purpose
in this context is to help the aesthetically
unskilled to understand and to enjoy
reading and seeing Shakespeare's plays.
Our end is not information but a habit
of mind. This is modest enough, and
practical. Ultimates like the self-aware-
ness induced by the dramatic image of
man are not for these beginners. In
Frye's terms, we wish to evoke and to
train powers, to enable a possession. This
seems obvious until we realize how much
recent criticism imbibed by our doctoral
candidates has been devoted to formu-
lating theories of literature and theories
of literary criticism. Our eager young
assistant professors too often use litera-
ture to teach a theory of literature when
they might better use a theory of litera-
ture to teach ways of reading it. Nor
is their excess unusual. XWe all remem-
ber the bad old days following 1938 when
the early New Critic revolutionaries re-
duced all poems to images and irony.
Now, having ignored history, we may be
condemned to repeat it in what Warner
Rice calls "the myth-understanding of
literature." The great disadvantages of
synoptic criticism is the likelihood of
destroying the play by releasing it into

Mr. Svendsen, professor of English and Head
of the Department at the University of Oregon,
delivered this paper at the NCTE meetings last
fall. He has published widely on seventeenth-
century English literature.
23
sion of their ideas and their dreams, the
richer will be the opportunities for our
creative workers. We must never forget
that in the greatest ages of literature lit-
erary scholarship and literary creation
have traveled hand-in-hand. That is some-
thing that we would do well to keep in
mind in order that we may encourage the
creative artist, as well as the scholar,
wherever we find him.
2018 17:29:16 UTC
24 COLLEGE ENGLISH
a tradition or a category, when for be-
ginners it were better to encourage cul-
tivated response to the immediate ob-
ject-to show them what to look for in
a play and what to do with it when
found. Our object in teaching Shakes-
peare to undergraduates is to make them
not teachers but readers, not skimmers

and paraphrasers but articulate partici-
pants in a creative act by their expe-
riencing the play as an imitation of an
action. Clearly, this is not to disparage
synoptic criticism nor to dissuade the
student's later ascent to it. He should
indeed eventually be helped to perceive
the wholeness of literature in its mythic
and archetypal relations with human his-
tory. But at first he must learn what
goes on in particular plays, not abstrac-
tions of plays.
For sophomores I eschew Frye's bril-
liant theory because I find it dangerous
to display to beginners. The danger lies
partly in the necessarily fragmentary
presentation they get and partly in their
inability to distinguish woods from trees.
A sophomore offered a system of cate-
gories or analogues may well feel his re-
sponsibility discharged when he can
pigeon-hole this ritualistic hero or that
archetypal image. He must be helped to
comprehend the individuality of Julius
Caesar, not its classification. In the light
of our stated purpose, I would argue
for his seeing the wholeness of a piece
of literature, not the wholeness of
literature.
Before suggesting some uses of forma-
list theory, I should bow toward Leonard
Manneheim and note that a low-voltage
psychological approach has some benefit

for the inexperienced and immature
imagination; it can clarify the relation
between human motive and human ac-
tion, the complexity of human desires,
the struggle within a Macbeth or a Cleo-
patra. The beginner in Shakespeare re-
sponds to the display and definition of
personality; for him plays are things made
up of people. It is a waste of breath to
tell a sophomore that Hamlet is not a
real person with a life outside or before
the play. This is the only way he can
begin to be interested in Hamlet. For
him the protagonist of Abe Lincoln in
Illinois is as real as the Abraham Lincoln
of history; and he insists on thinking
of Hamlet in the same way. It used to
be fashionable to smile at Bradley's treat-
ing Shakespeare's characters as if they
were recently deceased celebrities. But
this is precisely the way the psychologi-
cal critic must explore Othello and Bru-
tus, as exemplifications of psychological
laws. The play is an imitation of an
action by people. For the beginner the
only dramatic characters without a his-
tory and a life of their own are those
in Everyman: Good Deeds, Riches,
Everyman himself.
From this preliminary engagement
with persons and actions, the teacher
of Shakespeare can draw upon formalist

literary theory to stimulate his students'
discovery of what is going on in the
discourse that is the play. Its great ad-
vantage is that it does not denature the
play, as a Freudian or Marxian or syn-
optic criticism tends to do, making the
play an example of something rather than
a thing in itself. I use the term formalist
to include Reuben Brower as well as
Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom as
well as Eliseo Vivas, Harry Levin in his
essay on the Player King's speech, even
mirabile dictu, that arch-priest of the his-
torical scholars, Don Cameron Allen,
whose Harmonious Vision invests the
New Critical technique with a learning
like that of Rosemond Tuve, than which
there can be no higher compliment. What
all of these have in common is actually
formalist criticism. For the purpose of
this argument, formalist criticism is con-
cerned with sensitivity to structures, with
that interaction of elements which is
form and which generates force. It is
close reading, explication de texte, study
2018 17:29:16 UTC
FORMALIST CRITICISM AND SHAKESPEARE 25

of symbols and images as they interact,
the New Criticism, as we used to call
it. Better, I think, than any other method,
formalist criticism deals with the play
as language, with as it is read a verbal
imitation of an action. If one may para-
phrase Langer, formalist criticism is pre-
sentational where other kinds of criti-
cism are discursive. Formalist criticism
encourages awareness of language as a
living act. The student working with
symbols, images, syntactic patterns, and
figurative language is at once experienc-
ing them and learning what happens to
him and to the discourse before him
when he does. He sees, as in no other
dispensation, the work of art as a made
thing. Nothing so sharply defines the
play as awareness of design in a play:
the larger designs of narrative conflict,
the smaller designs of dominant images
and recurrent figures. The beginner can-
not respond to all, any more than the
playgoer can. But he can respond to
some. It is upon these some that we
build.
I repeat, we must begin where these
undergraduates are, which is to say be-
gin with what they can do. From their
first papers we learn that commonly all
they can do is a shallow sketch of the
characters, a superficial emotional state-
ment of the moral problem, or a
constipated paraphrase of the action.

Commonly, I say, but not exclusively.
Advanced Placement courses, John Hay
Institutes, and Project English programs
have accelerated diffusion of contempo-
rary critical techniques among high
school teachers; and if the freshman com-
position course includes literature, the
graduate assistant who taught our sopho-
more would have introduced him to ex-
plication. Each year a few more students
have the rudiments of critical reading.
But most of them must be taught how
to look for what and why. They must
be led into the practice, not the theory,
of formalist criticism, not a formula. As
I noted a moment ago, inexperienced
readers are like playgoers in this: no
playgoer can respond consciously to
every parallel or contrast in the many
scenes of Antony & Cleopatra any more
than he can to each recurrence of the
blood image in Macbeth. Furthermore,
in this exercise practice can make im-
perfect; and there is every chance of
splintering the play. The sophomore set
to hunting images of disease in Troilus
and Cressida may, when he finds promis-
ing passages, reduce the drama to a group
of lyric fragments not really unified by
what he is taught to call streams or pat-
terns of imagery. Thus we must modify
Heilman's analysis of Lear or of Othello
in presenting it as a model. We would
teach art, not contrivance. We must be

prepared to answer the inevitable echo
of Amy Lowell without the expletive
and say indeed what patterns are for.
Like any method used in isolation or,
if it is not too unkind to say so, in a
vacuum, formalist criticism can become
a travesty of literary experience. We
want the students to become possessed
of a power, not obsessed by a trick. Yet
it is in working with language, in seeing
the connotations of word, image, meta-
phor, and symbol that the sophomore ac-
quires knowledge about literature even
as it excites his imagination, even as he
participates in it. When Octavius says
that the drunken tongue "splits what it
would speak," the student perceives the
statement as a piece of virtuosity char-
acterizing the sober and calculating Cae-
sar even as it bodies forth the forms of
things unknown. Antony could never
have managed the line.
From this particular, then, I would
move to three examples of the way form-
alist criticism can be adapted to the
undergraduate teaching of Shakespeare
and to a brief illustration of what may
be done with one play, Henry IV, Part 1.
The three examples are Cleanth Brooks's
essay on the naked babe in Macbeth,
2018 17:29:16 UTC

26 COLLEGE ENGLISH
Reuben Brower's ordering of The Tem-
pest, and Robert Heilman's monumental
(not to say monolithic) reading of Lear.
It will be observed that one avoids in
these the nit-picking of Roy Walker
and the visionary absolutes of G. Wil-
son Knight. Brooks's essay resolves a crux,
but more significantly to our purpose it
exemplifies a method of exploring tone as
well as idea. Repeated images of defense-
lessness and the cloak of manliness refine
the crucial image and enable the stu-
dent to see the art of language in drama
as well as to grasp a central theme.
Brooks's method is repeatable; and there
lies its strength as formalist theory. The
best criticism of this kind elicits emula-
tion, not mere admiration. The Alexan-
drine elaborations of some early explica-
tors were self-defeating as pedagogy;
students were impressed, all right, and
overwhelmed. Literary analysis was
something they read or heard, but would
hardly presume to attempt. Working
from the same theory as his undisciplined
imitators, Brooks provides a method as
persuasive as its results.
From learning how to read images
from so confined a passage, the student

can be introduced to dramatic design in
Brower's rehearsal of opposed figures in
the language of The Tempest. The outer
form, the act and scene division, the
stages of narrative development, the ris-
ing and falling action-these are apparent
enough to our paraphrasers. What Brow-
er exemplifies is a means of getting at
the inner form, the design effected by
the contrasts between figures of sleep
and figures of wakefulness, figures of
sound and silence, figures of sovereignty
and slavehood. The images are seen as
functional beyond characterization and
thematic resonance; they inform the
play. Brower, Brooks, Traversi, and
Clemen are complementary, not contra-
dictory. Beginners move by easy stages
from the structure or form of a passage
to the structure or form of the whole
play-and always with a sense of their
own past as readers.
The third example is the full length
formalist treatment of a single play. For
years, we recall, the New Critics suffered
under the sneer that their method served
only for brief reflective lyrics, chiefly
from seventeenth-century England. With
the appearance of Warren's book on The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Brooks's
Well Wrought Urn and his shared edi-
tion of Milton's minor poems, and Heil-
man's This Great Stage, the New Critics,

that small infantry warred on by cranes,
demonstrated once and for all that their
theories could be applied to longer works.
I say this well aware of the mixed re-
ception met by these books, well aware
of their faults, and well aware of the
opposed fields magnetizing Chicago and
New Haven. But I say it also well aware
that these books extended the revitaliza-
tion of literary study in the academics
of the late thirties and forties. This va-
riety of formalist criticism works with
students now for the same reasons that it
worked then. And it works not as an
exclusive or excluding method. The stu-
dent who moves from Brooks through
Brower to Heilman will discover its limi-
tations as well as its advantages. This
technique can do little, for example, with
the literary or cultural context of the
play. The relation of Lear to its pred-
ecessors and archetypes, to the Mirrour
for Magistrates, to the Machiavellian
view of nature, to Jacobean melodrama
-he will get none of these because they
lie outside the theory and the method.
Except as inert fact, they also lie out-
side the competence of the beginning
student of Shakespeare; he cannot in-
volve them in any extension of his pow-

ers; he can memorize them but he can-
not possess them. At his age and stage
he is capable of only partial possession
of a work of art. He can learn a way
of looking and thinking that will enable
him really to comprehend "I stumbled
2018 17:29:16 UTC
GRAMMAR, HISTORY, AND CRITICISM
Grammar, History, and Criticism
KENNETH S. ROTHWELL
PREFERABLY THIS PAPER should begin with
some tidy statement such as "history re-
constructs the environment out of which
a work of art grew, while criticism
handles the context in which a work of
art lives." Like so many of my best
thoughts, however (to steal a bon mot
from someone), everything about this
aphorism may be true except the facts.
The fact is that the relationship between
history and criticism is highly contextual,
rarely being reducible to an "either-or"
proposition but normally dwelling in an
atmosphere of "both-and." A second
temptation might be to say that some
kind of Law-of-Inverse-Ratio-to-the-

Dwindling-Past operates, so that works
of recent vintage-like John Kerouac's On
Mr. Rothwell, an associate professor at the
University of Kansas, got the idea for this article
while working last year on a study of the longer
poem in America, a project supported partially
by the American Philosophical Society. He has
published previously in College English and else-
where, both on criticism and on Elizabethan
literature.
27
'when I saw" or "Reason in madness."
Comprehending these themes means see-
ing them as focal points of a structure
that states by being a structure of state-
ments. Only after he has learned to do
this can he aspire to a larger vision, a
more extended possession of Shakes-
peare's plays.
Let me conclude with some remarks
on Henry IV Part 1 as its design has
been or might be viewed, by formalists.
I limit these to those features which
have proved most successful in immedi-
ately involving beginning students of
Shakespeare as participants in the ex-
perience of reading the play. As they
advance from discovering the characters,
they can be led to some perception of
narrative stylization. They identify three

groups of characters: the king's party,
Hotspur's and Falstaff's. These are local-
ized and specified in the first two scenes.
They can see the whole narrative as
made up of three partial and conflicting
narratives. The play moves through three
council scenes, three quarrels, and three
reconciliations, as Hotspur makes peace
with Glendower, Hal with his father, and
Falstaff with Mrs. Quickly. These nar-
ratives advance within themselves, each
with its special excitement of the imagi-
nation, as they intersect and give the
main action its form. This orchestration
of narrative, still dependent upon char-
acter and motive, can then be made
apparent in the conflict of ideas or
themes. The political irresponsibility of
Hotspur, like the social and moral ir-
responsibility in Falstaff, threatens to
assimilate Prince Hal and the future of
England into disaster. Hal's rejection of
both extremes at Shrewbury, as he stands
between the dead Hotspur and the sham-
ming Falstaff, is a piece of thematic stag-
ing-but it is also the logical resolution
of a design initiated by the earliest scenes.
In this briefly stated example may be
seen a capital contribution of formalist
criticism-in defining the relation of form
and idea, it makes the integrity of the
play accessible and significant. That in-
tegrity is of course not mere consistency
of parts and singleness. It is a dynamic

interaction of parts which creates in the
beginning reader a sense of focus, of
developing power to comprehend, a
sense of the wholeness of the play, a
sense of the design of Henry IV Part 1
under which the themes converge and
clarify.
2018 17:29:16 UTC
Contents2324252627Issue Table of ContentsCollege English,
Vol. 27, No. 1 (Oct., 1965), pp. 1-92Front MatterThe Use of
Criticism in the Teaching of Literature [pp. 1-13]The Use of
Criticism in the Teaching of Literature: A Reply [pp. 13-
17]Criticism in Context [pp. 17-23]Formalist Criticism and the
Teaching of Shakespeare [pp. 23-27]Grammar, History, and
Criticism [pp. 27-32]History and Criticism: Psychological and
Pedagogical Notes [pp. 32-38]Criticism and the Old Man in
Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale [pp. 39-44]Gulliver, Yahoos, and
Critics [pp. 45-49]Patristic Exegesis: A Medieval Tom Sawyer
[pp. 50-55]The Secret of "The Secret Sharer" Bared [pp. 55-
61]On the Changing of Literary Allegiances with Time [p.
61]Departmental Memo [pp. 62-64]Back Matter [pp. 65-92]
“Am I That Name?” Feminism, Feminist Criticism, and Gender
Studies
Author(s): Halina Filipowicz
Source: The Polish Review , Vol. 59, No. 1 (2014), pp. 3-15
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the
Polish Institute of Arts &

Sciences of America
Stable URL:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/polishreview.59.1.0003
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/polishreview.59.1.0003?se
q=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked
references.
University of Illinois Press and Polish Institute of Arts &
Sciences of America are collaborating
with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Polish Review
This content downloaded from
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/polishreview.59.1.0003
q=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
q=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
The Polish Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2014
© The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Halina Filipowicz
“Am I That Name?” Feminism, Feminist
Criticism, and Gender Studies
This article takes up three overlapping sets of issues. The first
set brings
into sharper relief current debates about work–family balance
and persistent
gender inequality. The second set traces the emergence of
women’s studies
as a scholarly discipline, examines a shift from women’s studies
to gender
studies, and considers the reception of Western feminist
discourse in Poland.
The final set builds on the first two by addressing assumptions
about the
history of Polish women and their supposedly benighted sisters
in the West,
by questioning the presupposition that archives are passive
depositories, and
by exploring prospects for future work.
In 1988, the British poet-philosopher Denise Riley published a
brilliant, ground-
breaking, but now forgotten book, “Am I That Name?”

Feminism and the Category of
“Women” in History.1 In it, she draws on the existentialist
understanding of what a
human being is to offer an alternative to contemporary theories
that make a clear-cut
distinction between biological sex and a social construction
known as gender.2 The
sex/gender distinction was enormously useful in the 1970s and
1980s as a bulwark
against biological determinism, but has developed a life of its
own and generated
pseudo-problems.3 So how do we extricate ourselves?
Riley’s argument is as follows:
1. The quotation embedded in the title of Riley’s book comes
from Shakespeare’s Othello,
4.2.1622. It is a question that Desdemona asks in a scene with
Iago.
2. In the words of Joan W. Scott, gender is “a social category
imposed on a sexed body.” Scott,
Gender and the Politics of History, rev. ed. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), 32.
3. The distinction between sex and gender is at times attributed
to Judith Butler. In fact, it was
first formulated by Robert Stoller in the 1960s and developed
for feminist theory by Gayle Rubin
in the 1970s. For a history of the sex/gender distinction, see
Toril Moi, “What Is a Woman? Sex,
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��

4 The Polish Review
[The category] “women” is historically, discursively
constructed, and always rela-
tively to other categories which themselves change; “women” is
a volatile collectivity
in which female persons can be very differently positioned, so
that the apparent
continuity of the subject of “women” isn’t to be relied on;
“women” is both syn-
chronically and diachronically erratic as a collectivity, while
for the individual,
“being a woman” is also inconstant, and can’t provide an
ontological foundation.
. . . That “women” is indeterminate and impossible is no cause
for lament. It is
what makes feminism. . . . On such shifting sands feminism
must stand and sway.4
To put these points somewhat differently, history and
contingency count. “Be-
ing female” is not a fixed category, constant across time and
space, but a process,
subject to both natural laws and the human production of
meaning in concrete
historical situations. Accordingly, Riley’s discussion is based
on a flexible but rigor-
ously argued concept of identity as relational. From her
perspective, therefore, it is
vital to acknowledge women’s diversity, rather than define the
category “women”
by referring to the biological characteristics of sex. Riley does
not press the point,
but the conclusion seems inescapable that a conception of
women as a community

or “sisterhood” of like-minded individuals exaggerates the
degree to which women
are united by common interests, whereas in fact they have been
divided by class,
racial, ethnic, religious, and ideological barriers.
In invoking Riley’s book, my purpose is twofold. Now
overshadowed by theo-
rists like Judith Butler, Riley’s work merits closer attention.
Here, within the brief
compass of this introductory essay on cross-cultural approaches
to debates about
gender and feminism in Polish culture, I want to restore to view
Riley’s ideas that
have received scant acknowledgment in scholarship even after
feminist discourse
began to move away from the notion that women speak “in a
different voice” (to
quote the title of Carol Gilligan’s study) or the voice of care
and compassion, that
they are practitioners of tenderness in an otherwise heartless
world, and that their
communitarian ethos offers a badly needed alternative to
competitive individual-
ism, cutthroat rivalry, militarism, and environmentally
destructive technologies.5
My primary interest, however, is in situating this special issue
of The Polish Review
within a broader discursive framework, which Riley’s ideas help
to illuminate.
One of my aims in what follows is also to contextualize the
special issue for
scholars outside the field of gender and women’s studies, as
well as to address issues
of concern to specialists. This introductory essay, then, is a
story about stories, about

Gender, and the Body in Feminist Theory,” in What Is a
Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–120. For a reprint of Rubin’s
pathbreaking essays written
in the 1970s, see Gayle S. Rubin, Deviations (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2011).
4. Denise Riley, “Am I That Name?” Feminism and the
Category of “Women” in History
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 1–2, 113–14.
5. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological
Theory and Women’s Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��
versions of evidence and fragments of information that circle
around the categories
“women” and “men,” “East” and “West.” The essay begins with
a recent American
debate about working mothers and work-family balance, takes a
look at the concept
of “having it all,” attempts to hack its way through the thickets
of feminist theory,
spills over into the reception of Western feminist discourse in
Poland, detours
through the realm of Polish misapprehensions about the history
of women in the
West, and ventures into an area cautiously tiptoed around by
many commentators.
Along the way, it reveals disagreements over the meaning of

feminist criticism and
gender studies, exposes a variety of doubts and anxieties, and
raises questions of
evidence and verification, credulity and credibility, national
myth-making, and the
elusiveness of historical narratives.
In 2012, the Atlantic published a cover story that broke
readership records
for the magazine. Titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,”
it was written by
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first female director of policy
planning at the State
Department.6 In the article, she describes her experience as a
working mother
during her two years in Washington and explains why she has
chosen to leave her
high-powered position at the State Department and return to her
former life as
a professor at Princeton University. At the same time, however,
she addresses a
larger problem in hopes of launching a public debate about it.
This problem—per-
sistence of inequality between men and women—is exemplified
by “an empirical
fact: having a family is a career barrier for women in a way that
is not for men.”7
Slaughter acknowledges the success of the women who have
made it to the top,
but points out that “the success of the few cannot be the answer
to the problems
of the many.”8 Although women have made “tremendous
progress . . ., thanks to
generations of feminist women and men, we need another round
of deep social,
economic, political, and cultural change to achieve real equality
and to be able to

draw on the full talents of both halves of our society.”9
Slaughter explicitly identi-
fies what has to change in American society if Americans truly
believe in equal
opportunity for all women.
In Poland, the media have reported on Slaughter’s article, but
commentar-
ies about it have been replete with heavy-handed moralizing on
both sides of
the political divide. For example, a leading feminist journalist
has disregarded
a complex of social and political proposals put forth in the
article and instead
reduced Slaughter’s multilayered argument to a mix of self-
reproach and self-
sacrifice: “[A]n important female director in the State
Department of the United
6. See Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It
All,” Atlantic 310, no. 1
(July–August 2012): 85–102.
7. Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Anne-Marie Slaughter Replies,”
Atlantic 310, no. 2 (September
2012): 21.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
feminist criticism and gender studies 5
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��

6 The Polish Review
States moved from her prestigious and well-paid position to
academic lecturing
in order to have more time to raise her children.”10
In the United States, Slaughter’s article unleashed a flood of
controversy. Thou-
sands of readers responded online and via more traditional
media with comments
on issues such as work–family practices and policies, the lack
of support for women’s
lifecycle choices, the vast wage gap between men and women,
gendered division of
domestic labor, privilege, role models, and feminism. Many of
the readers shared
Slaughter’s concern about the social realities that still block
women’s paths and
make gender equality elusive. They argued that the United
States needs a workplace
culture that would not “treat all employees as if they were
‘men’ in a historic sense,
with wives at home taking care of their lives.”11At the same
time, however, even
sympathetic readers were quick to throw vitriol at Slaughter for
using the phrase
“having it all.” The dispute over this phrase has revealed how
little many Americans
know about feminism. In feminist discourse, the idea of “having
it all” refers to a
scenario in which women have the same choices as men do
when it comes to bal-
ancing professional and family duties. But most of Slaughter’s
readers understood
the phrase “having it all” literally, as a synonym of “having
everything you want.”

This misunderstanding suggests that it has become standard
practice to equate
feminism with the narcissistic pursuit of individual self-
fulfillment. As the feminist
activist Ruth Rosen argues in her commentary on Slaughter’s
article, the media,
along with self-help publications, have played a major role in
distorting the goals of
feminism.12 The feminist movement sought to create gender
equality at home and
at the workplace and thus to improve the lives of all women. In
the 1970s, however,
the media began to misrepresent feminism by recasting it into a
training program
for superwomen. This misrepresentation was reinforced by self-
help publications
such as Helen Gurley Brown’s best-selling Having It All (1982)
that
tried to teach every woman how to achieve everything she
wanted in life. . . . Mil-
lions of women first heard of the [feminist] movement when
they read about the
different clothes they needed to buy in order to look like a
superwoman and the
therapy they needed to become a confident and competent
superwoman. Self-help
books and magazines ignored the economic and social
conditions women faced
and instead emphasized the way in which each individual
woman, if only she
thought positively about herself, could achieve self-realization
and emancipation.13
10. Aleksandra Klich, “Nim nadejdzie matriarchat,” Tygodnik
Powszechny, no. 26 (June

30, 2013): 11.
11. Rebecca Traister, “Can Modern Women ‘Have It All’?”
Salon, June 21, 2012, http://www
.salon.com/2012/06/21/can_modern_women_have_it_all/
(accessed September 9, 2012).
12. See Ruth Rosen, “We Never Said ‘We Wanted It All’: How
the Media Distorts the Goals
of Feminism.” Alternet, August 5, 2012,
http://www.alternet.org/we-never-said-we-wanted
-it-all-how-media-distorts-goals-feminism (accessed September
9, 2012).
13. Ibid.
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��
This kind of advice, as Rebecca Traister points out in her
response to Slaugh-
ter’s article, is a “booby trap” because it “sets an impossible bar
for female success
and then ensures that when women fail to clear it, it’s
feminism—as opposed to
persistent gender inequality—that’s to blame.”14
Notwithstanding the reductive view of the goals of feminism,
propagated by the
media and self-help publications, the 1970s marked an era in
feminist thought. The
feminist movement that reemerged in the West in the late 1960s
galvanized schol-
ars in several disciplines to question widely established
disciplinary assumptions

about gender-neutral methodologies and to develop
methodological approaches
and analytical procedures that incorporate feminist concerns.
Their research con-
centrated on uncovering women’s activities and experiences,
examining discrimi-
natory discourses and practices, and investigating how and to
what ends societies
conceptualized the signs of sexual difference. For scholars who
studied and taught
literature, the feminist project involved “exposing the sexual
stereotyping of women”
in both literature and literary criticism, “demonstrating the
inadequacy of estab-
lished critical schools and methods to deal fairly or sensitively
with works written
by women,” subjecting works by male writers to a feminist
scrutiny, recovering
“previously lost or otherwise ignored works by women writers,”
and reconsidering
established canons.15 For example, in her 1981 study of a
narrative by an eighteenth
century American author who used the pseudonym Abraham
Panther, Annette
Kolodny detailed two areas that are of particular interest to the
feminist scholar
working on literary and cultural history: “(1) How do
contemporary women’s lives,
women’s concerns, or concerns about women constitute part of
the historical context
for this work? and (2) What is the symbolic significance of
gender in this text?”16
The pioneering work of scholars such as Kolodny, Sandra M.
Gilbert, Susan Gubar,
and Elaine Showalter laid the foundations for a new academic
discipline, women’s

studies, that won, however grudgingly, institutional recognition
and support in the
1970s and 1980s.
Using a wide array of material, feminist scholars have
documented women’s
lives and achievements that seemed to have vanished from the
culture’s radar. They
have also revealed how representations of women have been
infused and informed
by contemporary assumptions about the proper relations
between men and women
and about the (allegedly) intrinsic nature of women or their
(supposedly) typical
female traits; the representations have thus served as metaphors
for the inequitable
14. Traister, “Can Modern Women ‘Have It All?’”
15. Annette Kolodny, “Dancing Through the Minefield: Some
Observations on the Theory,
Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism,” in
Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary
Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane
Price Herndl (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 171–90, here, 171–72.
Kolodny’s article was originally
published in 1980.
16. Annette Kolodny, “Turning the Lens on ‘The Panther
Captivity’: A Feminist Exercise
in Practical Criticism,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter 1981):
329–45, here, 345.
feminist criticism and gender studies 7
��164.106.248.203 on Sat, 01 Dec 2018
17:21:41 UTC��

8 The Polish Review
social and political order they have meant to justify. But the
discipline of women’s
studies does not stand still; its boundaries are continually in
debate and flux. Some
of the most dramatic changes occurred during the late 1980s and
early 1990s, when
African American scholars and poststructuralist theorists burst
onto the feminist stage.
The former demonstrated how inextricably interwoven questions
of race and gender
are; the latter performed revisionist interventions into the
conceptual framework of
feminist discourse. Judith Butler’s theory of gender
performativity has proved to be
particularly influential; her books now function for many
feminist scholars as both a
philosophical buttress and a formal model. Butler’s argument is
“that there need not
be a ‘doer behind the deed,’ but that the ‘doer’ is variably
constructed in and through
the deed.”17 It follows from this that “what is called gender
identity is a performative
accomplishment”; that is, the so-called gender identity is
created through a series of
sustained social performances “compelled by social sanction
and taboo.”18 Playing on
the double sense of the word performance, she concludes that
instead of being under-
stood as a role being acted out, gender must be understood as an

act that constructs
the reality of gender entirely through its performances, as in a
performative speech
act. Butler’s primary target, however, is the dependence of
feminist identity politics on
the idea of “normative” binary heterosexuality, which she
deconstructs by deploying
her concept of performativity. She argues that “normative”
binary heterosexuality is
not innate but an illusion, a fiction, a “phantasmic
construction.”19 She thus suggests
that sexual identity itself is a kind of performance in its own
right.
Butler’s performativity theory has sparked vigorous polemics
and wide-ranging
discussions among feminist scholars. For example, Nancy
Fraser argues that Butler
overestimates the emancipatory potential of gender-bending
performative pos-
sibilities in everyday life and underestimates the ease with
which the concept of
gender performativity can be depoliticized.20 In other words, if
gender identity is
just a self-invention or a form of performance, why is it so
difficult to overcome
gender discrimination and inequality in societies? Toril Moi
points out that Butler’s
analysis brilliantly obscures the fact “that a sexed human being
(man or woman) is
more than sex and gender, and that race, age, class, sexual
orientation, nationality,
and idiosyncratic personal experience are other categories that
always shape the
experience of being of one sex or another.”21 And J. Hillis
Miller, in a Derridean

Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx

Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx

Similar to Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx (20)

More from AASTHA76

More from AASTHA76 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Class, Gender, Pleasure, and CriticismAuthor(s) Norman.docx