NEW ACCENTS General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism IN THE SAME SERIES The Empire Writes Back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literature Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976–84 ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen, and Diana Loxley Translation Studies Susan Bassnett-McGuire Rewriting English: Cultural politics of gender and class Janet Batsleer, Tony Davies, Rebecca O’Rourke, and Chris Weedon Critical Practice Catherine Belsey Formalism and Marxism Tony Bennett Dialogue and Difference: English for the nineties ed. Peter Brooker and Peter Humm Telling Stories: A theoretical analysis of narrative fiction Steven Cohan and Linda M.Shires Alternative Shakespeares ed. John Drakakis The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama Keir Elam Reading Television John Fiske and John Hartley Literature and Propaganda A.P.Foulkes Linguistics and the Novel Roger Fowler Return of the Reader: Reader-response criticism Elizabeth Freund Superstructuralism: The philosophy of structuralism and post- structuralism Richard Harland Structuralism and Semiotics Terence Hawkes Subculture: The meaning of style Dick Hebdige Dialogism: Bahktin and his world Michael Holquist Popular Fictions: Essays in literature and history ed. Peter Humm, Paul Stigant, and Peter Widdowson The Politics of Postmodernism Linda Hutcheon Fantasy: The literature of subversion Rosemary Jackson iii Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist literary theory Toril Moi Deconstruction: Theory and practice Christopher Norris Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the world Walter J.Ong The Unusable Past: Theory and the study of American literature Russell J.Reising Narrative Fiction: Contemporary poetics Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan Adult Comics: An introduction Roger Sabin Criticism in Society Imre Salusinszky Metafiction: The theory and practice of self-conscious fiction Patricia Waugh Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in practice Elizabeth Wright Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism Edited by GAYLE GREENE and COPPÉLIA KAHN London and New York First published in 1985 by Methuen & Co. Ltd This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1985 Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Making a difference: feminist literary criticism. —(New accents) 1. English literature—History and criticism 2. Feminism and literature 3. Women critics I. Greene, Gayle II. Kahn, Coppélia III. Series 820.9′9287 PR65.w6 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Making a difference. (New accents) Includes index. 1. Feminist literary criticism—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Greene, Gayle, 1943- II. Kahn, Coppélia. III. Series: New accents (Routledge) PN98.w64M35 1985 801′.95′088042 85–11427 ISBN 0-203-12973-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17719-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-01011-X (Print Edition) Contents General editor’s preface viii Acknowledgements x Notes on contributors xi 1 Feminist scholarship and the social construction of 1 woman Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn 2 Varieties of feminist criticism 37 Sydney Janet Kaplan 3 The politics of language: beyond the gender 59 principle? Nelly Furman 4 Inscribing femininity: French theories of the feminine 80 Ann Rosalind Jones 5 Mind mother: psychoanalysis and feminism 114 Judith Kegan Gardiner 6 Pandora’s box: subjectivity, class and sexuality in 147 socialist feminist criticism Cora Kaplan 7 What has never been: an overview of lesbian feminist 178 criticism Bonnie Zimmerman 8 Black women writers: taking a critical perspective 211 Susan Willis 9 Notorious signs, feminist criticism and literary 238 tradition Adrienne Munich vii Index 260 General editor’s preface It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. Here, among large numbers of students at all levels of education, the erosion of the assumptions and presuppositions that support the literary disciplines in their conventional form has proved fundamental. Modes and categories inherited from the past no longer seem to fit the reality experienced by a new generation. New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. Some important areas of interest immediately present themselves. In various parts of the world, new methods of analysis haye been developed whose conclusions reveal the limitations of the Anglo-American outlook we inherit. New concepts of literary forms and modes have been proposed; new notions of the nature of literature itself and of how it communicates are current; new views of literature’s role in relation to society flourish. New Accents will aim to expound and comment upon the most notable of these. In the broad field of the study of human communication, more and more emphasis has been placed upon the nature and function of the new electronic media. New Accents will try to identify and discuss the challenge these offer to our traditional modes of critical response. ix The same interest in communication suggests that the series should also concern itself with those wider anthropological and sociological areas of investigation which have begun to involve scrutiny of the nature of art itself and of its relation to our whole way of life. And this will ultimately require attention to be focused on some of those activities which in our society have hitherto been excluded from the prestigious realms of Culture. The disturbing realignment of values involved and the disconcerting nature of the pressures that work to bring it about both constitute areas that New Accents will seek to explore. Finally, as its title suggests, one aspect of New Accents will be firmly located in contemporary approaches to language, and a continuing concern of the series will be to examine the extent to which relevant branches of linguistic studies can illuminate specific literary areas. The volumes with this particular interest will nevertheless presume no prior technical knowledge on the part of their readers, and will aim to rehearse the linguistics appropriate to the matter in hand, rather than to embark on general theoretical matters. Each volume in the series will attempt an objective exposition of significant developments in its field up to the present as well as an account of its author’s own views of the matter. Each will culminate in an informative bibliography as a guide to further study. And, while each will be primarily concerned with matters relevant to its own specific interests, we can hope that a kind of conversation will be heard to develop between them; one whose accents may perhaps suggest the distinctive discourse of the future. TERENCE HAWKES