Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions

by Sandra M. Gilbert

A collection of essays that reexamine literature through a feminist gaze from "one of our most versatile and gifted writers" (Joyce Carol Oates). "We think back through our mothers if we are women," wrote Virginia Woolf. In this groundbreaking series of essays, Sandra M. Gilbert explores how our literary mothers have influenced us in our writing and in life. She considers the effects of these literary mothers by examining her own history and the work of such luminaries as Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath. In the course of the book, she charts her own development as a feminist, demonstrates ways of understanding the dynamics of gender and genre, and traces the redefinitions of maternity reflected in texts by authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.

Throughout, Gilbert asks major questions about feminism in the twentieth century: Why and how did its ideas become so necessary to women in the sixties and seventies? What have those feminist concepts come to mean in the new century? And above all, how have our intellectual mothers shaped our thoughts today?

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Writing

402 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2011

About the author

Sandra M. Gilbert was an American literary critic and poet who published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She was best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She was Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Gilbert lived in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008.

Reviews

[reading is my hustle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is akin to crack for English Lit majors. I took my time reading it and did so out of order. Much of it is a bit academic (though) there are parts that are real page turners. The bibiography is OUTSTANDING.

Mostly I enjoyed being reminded how important it is to read beneath the surface. I also liked remembering when I was a twenty something humorless feminist- I probably would have tattooed parts of the text from this book on my forearms.

Seriously though- this is a fantastic look at how much feminism has changed over the years.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to give this one up too. It was pretty dry, and also since most of the essays were written around the time I was born, I wasn't sure how relevant they were to me at this moment. A good book for paper writing, but not for fun.

[Sophie]

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