University of Tulsa

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Sandra M. Gilbert
Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 363-366
Published by: University of Tulsa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464308 .
Accessed: 18/04/2011 02:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=tulsa. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
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 support@jstor.org.

University of Tulsa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Tulsa Studies in
Women's Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

REVIEWS
TRADITION AND THE TALENTS OF WOMEN, edited by Florence
Howe. Urbana:Universityof Illinois Press, 1991. 379 pp. $44.95 cloth;
$17.50 paper.
As feministteacher,women'sstudiesscholar,groundbreakinganthologist,
English department administrator,mentor, friend, and role model, Mary
Anne Ferguson,now ProfessorEmeritusat the Universityof Massachusetts,
Boston, has for manyyearsbeen a major"motherof us all."I can remember
how excited and impressedI was in the mid-seventiesby the cogency of her
importantcollection Imagesof Womenin Literature,firstpublishedin 1973
and now in its fifth edition (1991). But I was equallymoved,when I learned
more abouther life, by the storyof her long struggleforprofessionalequality,
a tale-as FlorenceHoweputs it-of "literaland metaphysicaljourneys"that
she tells in an essay"ironicallycalled'A Success Story [?]"'(p. xv, n. 2).
A "facultywife"(assome of us havebeen deprecatinglycalled) andmother
of three, Fergusonembarkedon her academic career relatively late, then
found herself up against the tangle of "nepotism rules" and commuter
schedules that have increasinglyafflictedprofessionalcouples over the last
few decades.Her triumphoverbureaucraticobstacles,I mustconfess, meant
as much to me personallyas did her powerfuland incisive expose of the ways
in which "imagesof women"overthe centurieshavebeen on the whole more
hurtfulthan helpful, more debilitating than exhilarating.
Now, in honor of this nurturingfigure-whose own "image"is in fact an
inspiringone-Florence Howe has gathereda wide-ranginggroupof essays
on the talents and tradition(s) of women from the Renaissance to the
present. Sensibly organizedinto five coherent sections ("The'Cypher':A
Trope for Women Writers and Characters";"Autobiography:The Self as
Strategyfor Survival";"The Centrality of Marginality";"The Traditionof
Socially Engaged Literature";"Reprise:The TraditionRe-Visioned"),the
book coversauthorsand topics as variousas ElizabethCary and MeridelLe
Sueur,JaneAusten and MargaretWalker,gender politics/"geopolitics,"and
"women'stextile work."In doing so, while paying tribute to a founding
motherof feminist criticismand women'sstudies,this workgives us a pretty
accuratesense of where we have been, wherewe still (productively)are, and
where we may be going.
363

My allusionto JoyceCarolOates'sfamousstoryis, of course,ironic:where

we havebeen and wherewe aregoing is (orso I trust)quite definitivelyout of
the suicidaltrap into which Oates'sadolescentheroine is so bitterlydriven
in "WhereAre YouGoing, Where Have YouBeen?"1But it has certainly
takendecadesof keen analysisnot justof women'sworksbut of the representations of women and women'swork for us to begin to extricate ourselves
from the maze of conflicting messagesthat leads into that trap.
What I like best about Traditionand the Talentsof Womenis preciselythe
keenness of the analysisthat those who are Ferguson'sliteral or figurative
daughterscontinue to undertake.In this respect,the firstthree essaysin the
collection are exemplary even while they seem to be the most conventionally "canonical."The first,by MargaretFerguson,scrupulouslyinvestigates the problematicpsychologicalpressuresand materialconditions surrounding"The Case of'E. C."'-Elizabeth Cary,the Elizabethanauthorof
The Tragedieof Miriam,FaireQueene of Jewry,almost certainly the first
"substantialoriginalworkin a genre socially coded as off-boundsto women,
authors and actressesalike"(p. 37). The second, by jean FergusonCarr,
brilliantlyexploresthe "Polemicsof Incomprehension"associatedwith the
vexed and often vexing figureof Mrs.Bennet in PrideandPrejudice.And the
third, by Karen Lawrence,meticulouslyuncoversthe ambiguitiesof Lucy
Snowe'sself-definitionin Villetteas a "cypher"-a "symbolthat can suggest
she is lesssignificantthan others (a nonentity), secretlysignificant(a code),
moresignificant(a key), or significantdependingupon herrelationto others,
and possessing the power to make others variously significant as well"
(pp. 87-88).
Equally perceptive discussionsof women'sachievements in a range of
genres (including autobiography,oral/collaborativenarrative,feminist polemic) are offeredthroughoutthe rest of the collection. Especiallynotable
are Jean M. Humez'silluminatingstudy of the strategiesof "oral-historical
autobiography"deployed in Lemon Swampand Other Places:A Carolina
Memoir,"thelife storyof MamieGarvinFields,constructedout of conversations with her granddaughter,KarenFields"(p. 131); Blanche H. Gelfant's
lively commenton "LanguageasTheft in MeridelLe Sueur'sTheGirl";Sonia
Saldivar-Hull'smeditation on the brutalityof"Gender Politics"and "Geopolitics"as representedby Gloria Azalduiaand Helena MariaViramontes;
and Elaine Showalter'sexamination of "The Discourse of the Feminist
Intellectual"in the writingsof MargaretFullerand FlorenceNightingale.
Although all the other essaysin this collection deal with similarlycrucial
subjects,I foundmyselfin some caseswantingmoreand keeneranalysis.For
instance, I am in manywaysdelightedby Charlotte Goodman'scelebration
of MargaretWalker'sJubilee-a book that I agreeis too little studied-but at
times I find myself wishing her discussion of this novel were more subtly
364

probing and less simplisticallypraising about the cultural dynamics that

enabled Walker'sVyry to gain strength. Similarly,Lois Rudnick's"A Feminist American Success Myth: JaneAddams'sTwentyYearsat Hull-House"is
useful and informativebut might have profitedfrom a larger theoretical
framework,while Nellie Y.McKay'ssurveyof the autobiographiesof Harriet
Jacobs,Mary Church Terrell,and Anne Moody-for the most part a fine
discussion of the memoirs of African-Americanwomen whose lives and
works are of central importance to any reconstructionof American history-also lapses at times into a purely celebratory (rather than deeply
analytic)mode.
But perhapsthe difficultiesI encounter in a few of these essaysare best
summarizedby my mixed feelings about the contributionsof Jane Marcus
(on Djuna Barnes) and Elaine Hedges (on literary women'schanging attitudestowardtexts and textiles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries).
Focusing on the complexities of Nightwood,Marcus makes a number of
importantpoints about Barnes as a "femaleRabelais,"influencedby Hugo
and in tension with Freud(p. 216). Yether piece tends to be rambling,selfindulgent in its digressions,and hectic in its "politicallycorrect"(as we
wouldsay now) insistence on the often anti-SemiticNightwood"asa prophecy of the Holocaust"(p. 241). Similarly,Elaine Hedges'sbeautifully researchedsurveyof the ambiguitiesgeneratedby "TheNeedle or the Pen"in
women'ssewing (and anti-sewing)circles flirts with what here and there
seemsto be a naive "reclamationof an earlierfemale worldof domesticwork
and culture"(p. 358).
To be sure, Hedges rightly concludes that we must "keepthe continued
oppressiverealityof [women'sdomestic work aroundthe world]steadily in
mind"(p. 359). But her point here is one that I want her and others to make
even moreforcefully.As we look back at wherewe havebeen, in ourongoing
effort to understandwhere we are going, I think that-without necessarily
indulging in the rigors of what Showalter wittily calls Harold Blooms
"aerobicreading"(p. 322)-we have to continue the struggle(firstbegun in
such a work as Mary Anne Ferguson'sImagesof Womenin Literature)to
analyzethe ambiguitiesof the pain our history teaches us along with the
possibilitiesit proposesto us.
That we do have a history of extraordinarydiversity and complexity,
however, is ultimately a matter for us-as

Margaret Walker puts it-of

"Jubilee."And as Florence Howe notes in her fine introduction to this

volume, we mustcertainlyhonor it in all its variety.One keywaywe do that,
obviously,is by payingtributeto the motherswho bore andnurturedus-and
andtheTalentsof Women
thereforeone of the most movingaspectsof Tradition
is its inclusion of essaysby MaryAnne Ferguson's(literal)daughters,Margaret Fergusonand Jean FergusonCarr,along with an essayon the collab365

orative work of Mamie Garvin Fields and Fields's(literal) granddaughter

Karen Fields. We can now have not only a public but a personal literary
lineage, these works demonstrate, and one that may well be historically
unprecedented.After all, how many professionalwomen of letters in the
past have actually been parented or grandparentedby women of letters
(Could Emily Dickinson contribute to a festschriftfor her mother?Could
ZoraNeale Hurston?).
At the same time, there is one omission from this collection that I
seriouslydeplore: its majorlacunais the absence of a work by MaryAnne
Fergusonherself. I wish Howe and her colleagueshad included"A Success
Story[?]"or another one of Ferguson'sessays.The daughtersshouldspeakto
the mother, yes, but the mother should speak too-should speak as our
history has so eloquently spoken to us.
SandraM. Gilbert
University of California, Davis

NOTES
1

JoyceCarolOates,"WhereAreYouGoing,WhereHaveYouBeen?"
Epoch,16,i

(Fall1966), 59-76; rpt. in TheNortonAnthologyofliteratureby Women:TheTradition

inEnglish,
ed.SandraM.GilbertandSusanGubar(NewYorkandLondon:Norton,
1985), pp. 2276-91.

THE CONTOURS OF MASCULINE DESIRE:ROMANTICISMAND

THE RISE OF WOMEN'SPOETRY,by Marlon B. Ross. New York:
Oxford UniversityPress, 1989. 344 pp. $39.95.
MarlonB. Ross'ssignalachievementin The ContoursofMasculineDesireis
to alter the termsof discussionnot only for Romanticistsbut also for those
concerned about the contours of the literary canon. Ross'sargumenthas
three basic premises:that we inheritournarrativesof literaryhistory,as well
as our critical vocabularyand assumptions,from the poetry and criticismof
the majormale romanticpoets; that these romantic narratives,terms, and
assumptionsweredevelopedin responseto, and often in defenseagainst,the
powerfulpresence of women poets who producedpopular and acclaimed
work in the yearsbetween 1790 and 1830; and that the romantic ideology,
an ideology scripted through the forms of masculine desire, both enabled
and eventually erased this rich tradition of British women'spoetry.Ross's
366