WEBVTT 00:01.380 --> 00:05.200 Prof: This lecture, I think, starts with a series 00:05.200 --> 00:06.520 of preliminaries. 00:06.520 --> 00:10.520 The technical term for preliminaries of this kind in 00:10.524 --> 00:13.904 literary study is "prolepsis"-- 00:13.900 --> 00:16.870 that is to say, the form of anticipation which, 00:16.870 --> 00:20.610 in a certain sense, covers what will be talked 00:20.607 --> 00:21.767 about later. 00:21.770 --> 00:25.190 They are prolepses of this kind. 00:25.190 --> 00:30.760 First, I wanted to say that in entering upon the phase of this 00:30.756 --> 00:35.956 course which concerns a series of particular identities as 00:35.957 --> 00:38.737 perspectives, as points of departure, 00:38.736 --> 00:41.006 we're still thinking about the literary text; 00:41.010 --> 00:44.980 and, of course, in thinking about identity 00:44.981 --> 00:50.591 itself, we come upon a form of critical 00:50.593 --> 00:55.663 endeavor which is, in practical terms, 00:55.657 --> 00:59.137 incredibly rich and productive. 00:59.140 --> 01:04.690 It is simply amazing how, as Jonathan Culler once put it, 01:04.688 --> 01:08.108 "reading as a woman," or reading as an 01:08.113 --> 01:12.903 African-American, or reading as any of the other 01:12.897 --> 01:19.107 sort of identity that we're going to be talking about-- 01:19.110 --> 01:21.900 it's simply amazing how this kind of reading, 01:21.900 --> 01:25.090 if it's done alertly, transforms everything. 01:25.090 --> 01:30.170 That is to say, it has an incredible practical 01:30.165 --> 01:31.175 payoff. 01:31.180 --> 01:35.250 Last time in the context of the New Historicism, 01:35.250 --> 01:39.390 Stephen Greenblatt's brilliant anecdote begins with Queen 01:39.391 --> 01:42.731 Elizabeth saying, "I am Richard II, 01:42.732 --> 01:44.852 know you not that?" 01:44.849 --> 01:49.009 Well, Stephen Greenblatt isn't concerned with investigating a 01:49.013 --> 01:52.973 pronouncement of that sort from the standpoint of feminist 01:52.968 --> 01:55.928 criticism, or indeed from the standpoint 01:55.927 --> 01:58.767 of something we'll be taking up later on-- 01:58.769 --> 02:02.009 gender theory; but still, it's rather an 02:02.006 --> 02:04.826 amazing thing for Queen Elizabeth to say, 02:04.831 --> 02:05.681 isn't it? 02:05.680 --> 02:10.530 It suggests really that it's, after all, 02:10.530 --> 02:14.970 remarkable that she, a woman, would find herself in 02:14.973 --> 02:20.393 a position not so much needing to endure the kind of suffering 02:20.394 --> 02:25.914 and peril that her own sex has traditionally endured but rather 02:25.905 --> 02:30.525 potentially enduring the suffering and peril that one 02:30.526 --> 02:35.766 would experience in the masculine gender position, 02:35.770 --> 02:39.310 made perhaps even more interesting and complicated by 02:39.311 --> 02:43.401 the fact that Elizabeth knows perfectly well that despite the 02:43.397 --> 02:47.737 rarity of her being Richard II, it's nevertheless not a unique 02:47.740 --> 02:48.370 position. 02:48.370 --> 02:51.090 She has subjected > 02:51.090 --> 02:55.190 Mary Queen of Scots to precisely that position. 02:55.190 --> 02:59.120 She has deposed and beheaded her, ultimately, 02:59.121 --> 03:04.391 in just the way that she fears the Earl of Essex will depose 03:04.391 --> 03:06.091 and behead her. 03:06.090 --> 03:10.910 So the way in which this remark, "I am Richard II, 03:10.908 --> 03:15.748 know you not that?"--so easily commandeered and made use 03:15.753 --> 03:19.713 of from the standpoint of the New Historicism-- 03:19.710 --> 03:24.010 can come to life in a completely different way when we 03:24.014 --> 03:28.894 think about it as a question of a gendered experience is, 03:28.889 --> 03:32.079 I think, in itself a fascinating one. 03:32.080 --> 03:37.030 Now at the end of the last lecture, by way of further 03:37.027 --> 03:40.357 preliminary, I told a little fib. 03:40.360 --> 03:43.980 I said that there were no women in Tony the Tow Truck, 03:43.979 --> 03:46.319 and of course in your prose text of it-- 03:46.318 --> 03:50.178 the one that you've been clutching to your bosom 03:50.179 --> 03:53.299 feverishly for the entire semester-- 03:53.300 --> 03:55.130 there are no women. 03:55.129 --> 03:57.479 There are just guys talking. 03:57.479 --> 04:01.409 However, if to the prose text, and I've told you about these, 04:01.408 --> 04:04.558 you add the illustrations--this [gestures to board] 04:04.556 --> 04:06.796 is one of them, roughly speaking, 04:06.801 --> 04:10.351 and I did it from memory-- if you add the illustrations, 04:10.348 --> 04:13.538 you'll have to realize that it's not just the cars. 04:13.538 --> 04:16.898 You see the little smiles on the faces of the houses there: 04:16.899 --> 04:20.549 it's not just the cars that are happy about what's going on when 04:20.547 --> 04:23.267 Bumpy finally comes along and pushes Tony, 04:23.269 --> 04:28.339 but it's the houses in the background which have been 04:28.336 --> 04:34.276 expressing disapproval at the reactions of Neato and Speedy to 04:34.281 --> 04:36.231 the predicament. 04:36.230 --> 04:39.830 There are big frowns on the faces of those houses in those 04:39.834 --> 04:40.914 illustrations, 04:40.910 --> 04:41.210 04:41.209 --> 04:46.459 houses that now express beaming approval when the morally 04:46.459 --> 04:48.709 correct thing is done. 04:48.709 --> 04:51.519 Now in the Victorian period--and in a certain sense I 04:51.523 --> 04:54.663 think Tony the Tow Truck in this regard harkens back 04:54.661 --> 04:59.061 to the Victorian period-- there was a poet named Coventry 04:59.060 --> 05:02.350 Patmore who, actually a rather good poet, 05:02.346 --> 05:05.726 became notorious, however, in the feminist 05:05.725 --> 05:10.845 tradition for having written a long poem in which he describes 05:10.851 --> 05:14.801 woman as "the angel in the house." 05:14.800 --> 05:17.750 You're probably familiar with that expression, 05:17.750 --> 05:20.620 and it's an idea which is also, I think, 05:20.620 --> 05:25.010 embodied in a monumental book of some twenty-five years ago by 05:25.009 --> 05:28.539 Ann Douglas called The Feminization of American 05:28.536 --> 05:32.936 Culture. The idea is that moral and 05:32.939 --> 05:40.029 aesthetic and cultural values are somehow or another in the 05:40.031 --> 05:44.801 hands of women in the drawing room, 05:44.800 --> 05:48.440 at the tea table, dictating to the 05:48.435 --> 05:53.965 agencies of society-- all of which are strictly male 05:53.966 --> 05:58.176 prerogatives-- what a proper ethical sense of 05:58.182 --> 06:00.252 things ought to be. 06:00.250 --> 06:02.510 In other words, the role of the angel in the 06:02.514 --> 06:05.464 house is not just to wash the dishes and take care of the 06:05.463 --> 06:07.733 kids, although that's a big part of it. 06:07.730 --> 06:13.070 The role of the angel in the house is also to adjudicate the 06:13.072 --> 06:17.242 moral aspect of life at the domestic level, 06:17.240 --> 06:21.720 and that's exactly what these houses, 06:21.720 --> 06:24.770 obviously inhabited by angels--how else could they be 06:24.771 --> 06:29.101 smiling and frowning?-- that's what these houses are 06:29.103 --> 06:29.823 doing. 06:29.819 --> 06:34.289 So it is the case after all that there are women in Tony 06:34.291 --> 06:36.871 the Tow Truck. All right. 06:36.867 --> 06:40.887 Now, as I say, this moment is not exactly a 06:40.887 --> 06:43.757 crossroads in our syllabus. 06:43.759 --> 06:47.489 It's not like moving from language to the psyche to the 06:47.494 --> 06:51.924 social, because obviously we're still very much in the social. 06:51.920 --> 06:56.280 In fact, it's not even as though we haven't hitherto 06:56.279 --> 06:59.699 encountered the notion of perspective. 06:59.699 --> 07:02.019 Obviously, we have in all sorts of ways, 07:02.019 --> 07:06.469 but particularly in the work of Bakhtin or Jameson, 07:06.470 --> 07:10.620 we're introduced to the way in which class conflict-- 07:10.620 --> 07:13.150 that is to say, being of a certain class, 07:13.149 --> 07:18.229 therefore having an identity--gets itself expressed 07:18.233 --> 07:24.443 in literary form dialogically and gets itself expressed either 07:24.435 --> 07:30.635 as the expression of conflict between or among classes or as a 07:30.636 --> 07:35.236 more cacophonous and yet, at the same time, 07:35.237 --> 07:39.517 very frequently harmonious chorus of voices of the sort 07:39.516 --> 07:41.306 that-- in notions of 07:41.309 --> 07:45.709 "carnivalization" and other such notions-- 07:45.709 --> 07:47.719 one finds in Bakhtin. 07:47.720 --> 07:51.030 In other words, the way in which the language 07:51.031 --> 07:54.131 of a text, the language of a narrative or 07:54.125 --> 07:57.435 of a poem or of a play gets itself expressed, 07:57.440 --> 08:01.560 is already, as we have encountered it, 08:01.560 --> 08:03.380 a question of perspective. 08:03.379 --> 08:06.839 That is to say, it needs to be read with 08:06.839 --> 08:11.189 notions of identity, in this case notions of class 08:11.189 --> 08:15.359 identity, in mind if it's to be understood. 08:15.360 --> 08:18.690 Well, what's also interesting, though, 08:18.689 --> 08:22.939 about turning to questions of identity is that perhaps more 08:22.935 --> 08:26.635 sharply now than hitherto-- although I have been at pains 08:26.639 --> 08:30.069 to point out certain moments in the syllabus in which one really 08:30.074 --> 08:34.424 does arrive at a crossroads, and you simply can't take both 08:34.424 --> 08:36.354 paths-- nevertheless, 08:36.347 --> 08:42.107 within the context of thinking about identity in these ways as 08:42.110 --> 08:46.620 literary theory, we begin to feel an increased 08:46.621 --> 08:50.511 competitiveness among perspectives. 08:50.509 --> 08:54.389 I'm going to be pointing this out from time to time in the 08:54.389 --> 08:57.519 sequence of lectures that we now undertake, 08:57.519 --> 09:03.199 but from the very beginning there is a sense of actually a 09:03.200 --> 09:09.180 competition which is in some ways unresolved to this day-- 09:09.178 --> 09:12.318 for example, between the feminist and the 09:12.315 --> 09:14.035 Marxist perspective. 09:14.038 --> 09:18.038 That is to say: what is the underlying 09:18.043 --> 09:23.023 determination of identity and consciousness? 09:23.019 --> 09:28.819 Is it class or gender, just for example? 09:28.820 --> 09:30.460 This is not a new topic. 09:30.460 --> 09:35.060 This isn't a topic that we stumble on today as a result of 09:35.062 --> 09:38.862 some belated sophistication we have achieved. 09:38.860 --> 09:43.480 Listen to Virginia Woolf on page 600 of A Room of One's 09:43.480 --> 09:47.940 Own where she says, top of the left-hand column: 09:47.940 --> 09:51.770 For genius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, 09:51.769 --> 09:53.719 uneducated, servile people. 09:53.720 --> 09:56.230 It was not born in England among the Saxons and the 09:56.227 --> 09:56.727 Britons. 09:56.730 --> 09:59.980 It is not born today among the working classes. 09:59.980 --> 10:03.800 How, then, could it have been born among women whose work 10:03.804 --> 10:05.544 began, according to Professor 10:05.544 --> 10:08.414 Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, 10:08.408 --> 10:12.878 who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all 10:12.884 --> 10:15.164 the power of law and custom? 10:15.158 --> 10:20.078 Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must 10:20.083 --> 10:23.453 have existed among the working classes. 10:23.450 --> 10:25.840 Now in a way, Woolf is pulling her punches 10:25.841 --> 10:26.251 here. 10:26.250 --> 10:30.570 She is not saying class has priority over gender, 10:30.570 --> 10:34.150 nor is she saying gender has priority over class, 10:34.149 --> 10:38.599 if we're to understand the history of the oppression of 10:38.601 --> 10:43.301 women or the history of the limits on the forms of women's 10:43.303 --> 10:44.543 expression. 10:44.538 --> 10:47.688 She's pulling her punches, and yet at the same time I 10:47.687 --> 10:51.497 think we can see a point of view in Woolf's Room of One's Own 10:51.500 --> 10:54.970 which is, after all, rather surprising. 10:54.970 --> 10:56.200 Think of the title. 10:56.200 --> 11:01.180 Think of the later title of a tract in some ways similar about 11:01.177 --> 11:05.587 the possible scope for contemporary activity for women, 11:05.586 --> 11:07.296 Three Guineas. 11:07.298 --> 11:11.458 These titles are grounded in material circumstances. 11:11.460 --> 11:17.230 Woolf stands before her audience, her Oxbridge audience 11:17.227 --> 11:20.627 of women, and says all she really has to 11:20.629 --> 11:24.509 say is just this one thing: if you're going to expect to 11:24.514 --> 11:28.684 get anything done in the way of writing or in the way of any 11:28.681 --> 11:32.711 other activity that's genuinely independent of patriarchal 11:32.706 --> 11:36.096 limitation, you've really got to have 500 11:36.101 --> 11:38.791 pounds a year and a room of your own. 11:38.788 --> 11:41.928 That's all she really says she has to say. 11:41.928 --> 11:45.718 In fact, as you read through the six chapters of A Room of 11:45.722 --> 11:48.192 One's Own, you find that, 11:48.190 --> 11:52.880 as if on an elastic band after the extraordinary range of 11:52.878 --> 11:57.398 impressionist thinking that each chapter manifests, 11:57.399 --> 12:00.489 she is pulled back to this one particular-- 12:00.490 --> 12:04.800 as she sees it--necessary practical precondition, 12:04.799 --> 12:06.959 a material precondition. 12:06.960 --> 12:10.890 If you want to get anything done--you're not Jane Austen, 12:10.889 --> 12:14.819 you're not a genius sitting in your parlor whisking your 12:14.817 --> 12:19.167 novel-in-progress under a piece of blotting paper every time a 12:19.172 --> 12:23.802 servant comes in to the room, you're not like that--you 12:23.796 --> 12:28.186 really do need today the independence of having 500 12:28.190 --> 12:31.090 pounds and a room of your own. 12:31.090 --> 12:33.760 In other words, I think one could show that 12:33.755 --> 12:36.165 even in A Room of One's Own-- 12:36.168 --> 12:41.008 which is, if not the greatest, certainly the most eloquent 12:41.014 --> 12:45.524 feminist treatise on the conditions of women's writing 12:45.519 --> 12:48.989 ever written-- one could show that even in 12:48.991 --> 12:52.231 that, there is a certain priority given to the 12:52.230 --> 12:56.880 perspective of class, as opposed to the perspective 12:56.879 --> 12:57.959 of gender. 12:57.960 --> 13:04.050 Gender will continue to be conditioned by the effects of 13:04.046 --> 13:09.686 money and power if in fact something isn't done-- 13:09.690 --> 13:14.160 let's face it--to redistribute money and power. 13:14.158 --> 13:15.818 This is a perspective which, by the way, 13:15.820 --> 13:21.800 is even clearer in Three Guineas and suggests that 13:21.797 --> 13:26.677 despite its main agenda, which is a feminist one--that 13:26.677 --> 13:30.737 underlying that there is a sense of the priority of class. 13:30.740 --> 13:34.380 These sorts of tensions continue to haunt not just 13:34.383 --> 13:37.883 feminist criticism, but other forms of criticism 13:37.876 --> 13:41.986 having to do with other forms of identity really to this day. 13:41.990 --> 13:47.300 Conferences featuring a variety of identity perspectives very 13:47.303 --> 13:52.443 typically develop into debates on precisely this issue, 13:52.440 --> 13:56.770 and the one-ups-persons of conferences of this kind are 13:56.774 --> 14:01.594 always the ones who somehow get in the last word and say, 14:03.139 --> 14:05.879 You suppose that this is the basic issue, 14:05.879 --> 14:09.239 but there's an underlying issue which is the basic issue, 14:09.240 --> 14:11.910 and that's the one that, I'm going to demonstrate, 14:11.909 --> 14:13.889 must absolutely prevail." 14:13.889 --> 14:18.139 It's not necessarily always the Marxist card which is played in 14:18.139 --> 14:21.019 this context, although it frequently is. 14:21.019 --> 14:24.399 It could be some other card, but it's always a card played. 14:24.399 --> 14:26.609 It's always the last word at the conference which makes 14:26.605 --> 14:28.155 everybody go away and say, "Oh. 14:28.159 --> 14:30.009 I thought this was about women. 14:30.009 --> 14:30.729 Oh, dear. 14:30.730 --> 14:32.640 It must be about something else." 14:32.639 --> 14:38.919 We will have to come back to that because in a way, 14:38.918 --> 14:43.808 the material we cover today and the way that we're enabled to 14:43.807 --> 14:48.937 discuss it by its own nature is something that calls for another 14:48.937 --> 14:53.497 lecture and a lecture that we will actually provide. 14:53.500 --> 14:57.080 There's a very real sense, as I hope to show by the end of 14:57.077 --> 14:59.827 the lecture, in which traditional--I call 14:59.831 --> 15:02.941 this "classical feminist criticism"-- 15:02.940 --> 15:05.910 in which traditional or classical feminist criticism 15:05.908 --> 15:10.488 needs to be supplemented, perhaps in the Derridean sense, 15:10.488 --> 15:15.478 by something more, which is gender theory. 15:15.480 --> 15:19.880 As I say, at the end of the lecture I'll try to explain what 15:19.881 --> 15:23.921 that might entail, and then come back to it when 15:23.918 --> 15:28.858 we discuss Judith Butler and Michel Foucault a few lectures 15:28.857 --> 15:29.877 from now. 15:29.879 --> 15:30.669 All right. 15:30.666 --> 15:34.826 So A Room of One's Own is an absolutely amazing 15:34.832 --> 15:36.722 tour de force. 15:36.720 --> 15:38.550 It's actually one of my favorite books. 15:38.548 --> 15:43.678 I read it like a novel, and in many ways it is a novel. 15:43.678 --> 15:48.058 I think immediately that that might give us pause because if 15:51.620 --> 15:54.210 tendentiousness-- that is to say, 15:54.212 --> 15:57.452 for writing from the standpoint of complaint, 16:01.561 --> 16:05.141 tendentiousness gets in the way of the full expression of what 16:05.144 --> 16:07.314 she has to say-- which is to say, 16:07.307 --> 16:10.417 the unfolding of a novel; and if as Virginia Woolf, 16:10.418 --> 16:12.448 I think, actually rightly remarks, 16:12.450 --> 16:14.220 at least from an aesthetic point of view, 16:14.220 --> 16:18.710 we wonder why on earth Grace Pool suddenly appears after 16:18.712 --> 16:23.132 Jane's diatribe about wishing that she could travel and 16:23.125 --> 16:27.205 wishing that her horizons had been broadened, 16:27.210 --> 16:30.020 that somehow, Virginia Woolf says, 16:30.019 --> 16:34.789 Grace Pool is out of place and there's been a rift in the 16:34.788 --> 16:38.788 narrative fabric: if this criticism of Charlotte 16:42.769 --> 16:45.949 in other contexts, then of course it could be 16:45.947 --> 16:49.667 turned against the choice of narrative style, 16:49.668 --> 16:52.598 of narrative approach, in A Room of One's Own 16:52.599 --> 16:53.409 itself. 16:53.408 --> 16:55.538 This, I suppose, could only strike you 16:55.535 --> 16:59.095 forcefully if you read the whole of A Room of One's Own, 16:59.100 --> 17:02.370 all six chapters, which I urge you to do because 17:02.370 --> 17:03.590 it's so much fun. 17:03.590 --> 17:05.080 If you read the whole of A Room of One's Own, 17:05.076 --> 17:06.116 you'd say, "Well, gee. 17:06.118 --> 17:07.768 This is sort of a novel, too." 17:07.769 --> 17:11.369 The speaker says, "Oh, call me anybody you like," 17:11.374 --> 17:13.724 not unlike Melville's speaker saying, 17:13.720 --> 17:14.820 "Call me Ishmael." 17:14.819 --> 17:16.119 You can call me Mary Beton. 17:16.118 --> 17:18.698 You can call me Mary Seton, call me Mary Carmichael. 17:18.700 --> 17:21.590 It doesn't really matter, but I've had certain 17:21.593 --> 17:22.433 adventures. 17:22.430 --> 17:26.110 At least that person speaking has had certain adventures which 17:26.105 --> 17:29.125 are fictitious, or at least I reserve the right 17:29.130 --> 17:32.010 to have you suppose that they are fictitious. 17:32.009 --> 17:35.659 In other words, this is a narrative that moves 17:35.655 --> 17:39.055 quite by design in the world of fiction. 17:39.058 --> 17:40.828 In other words, Virginia Woolf is saying it 17:40.826 --> 17:43.706 really isn't true, as she tells us in the first 17:43.705 --> 17:45.775 chapter, that she, Mary Beton, 17:45.776 --> 17:48.226 after sitting at the river thinking, 17:48.230 --> 17:51.720 wondering what on earth she's going to tell these young ladies 17:51.722 --> 17:55.012 about women and fiction-- as she's been thinking about 17:55.005 --> 17:57.355 that, finally she gets a little idea. 17:57.358 --> 17:59.588 It's like pulling a bit of a fish out of the river, 17:59.588 --> 18:01.818 and the fish starts swimming around in her head. 18:01.818 --> 18:05.798 She becomes quite excited and she walks away across the grass. 18:05.798 --> 18:10.388 At that point up arises a beadle, a formidable person 18:10.387 --> 18:14.977 wearing Oxonian gowns and pointing at the gravel path 18:14.976 --> 18:18.466 where she, as an unauthorized woman, 18:18.471 --> 18:22.561 should be walking, as the grass is the province 18:22.557 --> 18:26.327 only for the men enrolled in the university; 18:26.328 --> 18:30.538 and then she has repeated encounters of that kind. 18:30.538 --> 18:32.958 She goes to the library unthinkingly, 18:32.960 --> 18:37.610 only to be told by an elderly wraithlike gentleman that since 18:37.605 --> 18:42.325 she's a woman she needs a letter of introduction to get in. 18:42.328 --> 18:45.568 And so her day, her fictitious day of thinking 18:45.570 --> 18:49.890 about what on earth she should say to these young women about 18:49.893 --> 18:53.183 women and fiction, begins, somewhat unpleasantly 18:53.176 --> 18:57.326 for her character, as a presented fiction. 18:57.328 --> 18:59.518 In other words, A Room of One's Own is, 18:59.519 --> 19:00.589 in a sense, a novel. 19:00.588 --> 19:05.128 It continues with a very pleasant lunch that she has. 19:05.130 --> 19:08.780 She's been invited to the campus as a distinguished 19:08.781 --> 19:09.441 writer. 19:09.440 --> 19:17.310 It's okay to be a woman who is a novelist as long as you don't 19:17.313 --> 19:20.543 rock the boat too much. 19:20.538 --> 19:23.498 In that regard, she can have been invited to 19:23.500 --> 19:27.220 such a lunch and has a very pleasant lunch because it's 19:27.220 --> 19:31.560 provided by men in an atmosphere which is designed for men. 19:31.558 --> 19:35.918 Then she goes to visit a friend who is teaching at this 19:35.923 --> 19:37.623 fictitious college. 19:37.618 --> 19:41.018 She has dinner with the friend in that college's dining hall, 19:41.019 --> 19:45.549 and the dinner is extremely inferior and plain, 19:45.548 --> 19:49.398 and then they go to her rooms and they start talking about the 19:49.404 --> 19:52.254 conditions in which this college was built. 19:52.250 --> 19:55.290 A bunch of women in the nineteenth century did all they 19:55.290 --> 19:59.010 could do to raise 30,000 pounds, no frills, thank you very much. 19:59.009 --> 20:00.179 None of them had any money. 20:00.180 --> 20:04.370 There were no major donations and so the grass never gets cut, 20:04.368 --> 20:09.648 the brick is plain and unadorned, and that's the way 20:09.650 --> 20:14.310 life is in this particular women's college. 20:14.308 --> 20:18.138 The next day she goes to the library because she decides 20:18.142 --> 20:21.972 she's really got to find out something about what people 20:21.974 --> 20:25.814 think of women; and so, what is a woman? 20:25.808 --> 20:28.658 I don't know so I'd better look it up in the library, 20:28.664 --> 20:29.384 she thinks. 20:29.380 --> 20:33.350 She finds out that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men 20:33.349 --> 20:37.589 have written books about women: on the inferiority of women, 20:37.588 --> 20:41.528 the moral sensitivity of women, the lack of physical strength 20:41.530 --> 20:43.640 of women, on and on and on. 20:43.640 --> 20:47.050 She lists them as items in the library catalog which actually 20:47.054 --> 20:48.994 are there > 20:48.990 --> 20:51.960 in the library catalog--all of them, of course, 20:51.955 --> 20:55.885 getting themselves expressed in these hundreds and hundreds of 20:55.888 --> 20:57.758 books about women by men. 20:57.759 --> 20:59.379 Well, this is very frustrating but, 20:59.380 --> 21:03.570 as you can imagine, it's an occasion for wonderful 21:03.574 --> 21:06.984 satire-- one has to say tendentious 21:06.981 --> 21:11.401 satire, because obviously it's male-bashing. 21:15.432 --> 21:17.002 get away with that. 21:21.386 --> 21:27.016 Virginia Woolf wants to say, if she's going to get the whole 21:27.015 --> 21:30.445 of what's on her mind expressed. 21:30.450 --> 21:34.250 Well, Virginia Woolf, who sort of doesn't sound very 21:34.249 --> 21:37.339 angry, but you could well be mistaken 21:37.339 --> 21:40.639 about that-- she's venting her anger in 21:40.636 --> 21:43.886 comic effects-- Virginia Woolf allows herself, 21:43.891 --> 21:46.451 because that really is the case, 21:46.450 --> 21:47.640 a measure of anger. 21:47.640 --> 21:49.540 So it is in that chapter. 21:49.538 --> 21:53.168 Then she goes home and the rest of A Room of One's Own 21:53.173 --> 21:55.123 takes place in her home. 21:55.118 --> 21:58.758 She's in her study pulling books off the shelf of her 21:58.759 --> 22:02.259 library, and this is more or less chronological. 22:02.259 --> 22:05.999 It starts with a time when she looks on the shelf where the 22:05.996 --> 22:10.116 women writers ought to be and there aren't any women writers, 22:10.118 --> 22:13.698 and then later, yes, there are women writers, 22:13.700 --> 22:15.870 there are quite a few novelists. 22:15.868 --> 22:18.808 Then later in the twentieth century, 22:18.808 --> 22:22.028 women writers get a little bit more scope for their activity, 22:22.028 --> 22:24.788 and as she passes all of this in review, 22:24.788 --> 22:28.698 we continue to get her reflections on the state of 22:28.704 --> 22:32.944 literary possibility for women in literary history. 22:32.940 --> 22:37.880 That's the structure of A Room of One's Own overall 22:37.876 --> 22:43.926 and it is within this structure, which is an impressionistic and 22:43.930 --> 22:46.510 narrative, undoubtedly novelistic 22:46.508 --> 22:49.068 structure--there are precedents for it. 22:49.068 --> 22:50.948 Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Mr. 22:50.945 --> 22:51.065 W. 22:51.067 --> 22:51.367 H. 22:51.368 --> 22:57.508 is one in particular--and which is, 22:57.509 --> 23:00.959 in a way, itself what it's talking about: 23:00.960 --> 23:04.420 It is a novella, and in the context of the 23:04.415 --> 23:08.195 novella, as I say, there's a certain tension or 23:08.196 --> 23:13.266 contradiction in an author who is allowing herself tendentious 23:13.267 --> 23:18.247 opinions while denying the right to have such opinions on the 23:18.253 --> 23:21.333 part of one of her predecessors. 23:21.328 --> 23:24.848 As you can imagine, what she says about Charlotte 23:28.292 --> 23:29.982 feminist criticism. 23:29.980 --> 23:34.470 There are a number of ways in which feminist critics feel that 23:34.473 --> 23:38.533 Virginia Woolf is misguided or needs to be supplemented, 23:38.526 --> 23:40.586 and this is one of them. 23:40.588 --> 23:43.268 By and large, feminist critics feel that 23:46.163 --> 23:48.643 has the right to be tendentious. 23:48.640 --> 23:54.010 We'll have more to say about Virginia Woolf's criterion of 23:54.008 --> 23:58.528 androgyny, which is not thinking like either sex, 23:58.529 --> 23:59.659 in part. 23:59.660 --> 24:04.750 We'll come back to that, but most feminist criticism has 24:04.746 --> 24:10.386 felt for a variety of reasons that androgyny isn't necessarily 24:10.387 --> 24:15.937 the ideal toward which women's prose ought to be aspiring and 24:15.938 --> 24:21.388 takes Virginia Woolf to task therefore for having taken this 24:24.910 --> 24:30.590 Now yes, feminist criticism has taken A Room of One's Own 24:30.586 --> 24:34.046 to task in a variety of ways, 24:34.048 --> 24:37.198 but at the same time--and I think this is freely and 24:37.195 --> 24:40.215 handsomely acknowledged by feminist criticism-- 24:40.220 --> 24:42.610 it is amazing--when you read the whole text, 24:42.608 --> 24:45.938 and even when you read the excerpts that you have in your 24:45.944 --> 24:49.014 anthology-- it is amazing how completely 24:49.008 --> 24:53.748 Virginia Woolf's arguments anticipate the subsequent course 24:53.750 --> 24:57.020 of the history of feminist criticism. 24:57.019 --> 25:00.499 I just want to point out a few of the ways in which it does. 25:00.500 --> 25:05.080 As Showalter points out, the first phase of modern 25:05.075 --> 25:10.485 feminist criticism was the kind of work that primarily paid 25:10.490 --> 25:15.440 attention to men's treatment of women in fiction. 25:15.440 --> 25:23.160 Mary Ellmann's book of 1968 called Thinking about Women, 25:23.160 --> 25:28.640 Kate Millett's Sexual Politics in 1970 are both 25:28.640 --> 25:34.120 books which focus primarily on sexist male novelists whose 25:34.119 --> 25:39.699 demeaning treatment of women is something that the feminist 25:39.695 --> 25:43.345 perspective needed to bring out. 25:43.348 --> 25:48.828 This criticism is superseded in Elaine Showalter's account by 25:48.826 --> 25:51.376 what she calls, and prefers, 25:51.377 --> 25:55.767 "gynocriticism" or "the gynocritics." 25:55.769 --> 26:00.649 Gynocriticism is not so much concerned with men's treatment 26:00.653 --> 26:05.623 of women in fiction as with the place of women as writers in 26:05.621 --> 26:08.991 literary history and as characters-- 26:08.990 --> 26:12.870 regardless of whether they are characters in men's or women's 26:12.868 --> 26:17.848 books in their own right-- in the history of fiction. 26:17.848 --> 26:22.778 In other words, gynocriticism turns the topic 26:22.778 --> 26:29.498 of feminist criticism in the late sixties and early seventies 26:29.499 --> 26:35.769 from the history of oppression by men to the history of a 26:35.770 --> 26:38.460 women's tradition. 26:38.460 --> 26:43.960 Now this sense of the unfolding of things, it seems to me, 26:43.957 --> 26:47.427 is already fully present in Woolf. 26:47.430 --> 26:51.500 She, too, wants to talk about the possibilities for women 26:51.499 --> 26:55.349 writers, about the need for women writers to feel that 26:55.351 --> 26:56.951 they're not alone. 26:56.950 --> 27:00.010 Above all at the same time, however, 27:00.009 --> 27:07.749 she frames this emphasis on the woman's perspective with the 27:07.752 --> 27:12.112 sort of trenchant, frequently satirical 27:12.111 --> 27:16.601 observations about men's treatment of women and men's way 27:16.595 --> 27:20.995 of demeaning women and keeping them in their place-- 27:21.000 --> 27:23.340 as, for example, all the men, 27:23.340 --> 27:27.700 most of them professors, who wrote books about women, 27:27.700 --> 27:30.700 as she discovered in the British library, 27:30.700 --> 27:31.150 do. 27:31.150 --> 27:35.930 All of this is very much in the tradition of that first phase of 27:35.933 --> 27:39.583 feminist criticism that Showalter identifies with 27:39.578 --> 27:43.678 Ellmann and Millett and others of that generation. 27:43.680 --> 27:49.020 So the capaciousness of Woolf's approach in one sense can be 27:49.022 --> 27:54.282 understood as precisely her ability to bridge both sorts of 27:54.277 --> 27:58.577 modern tradition-- no longer chronological as 27:58.584 --> 28:01.704 Showalter presents them as being, 28:01.700 --> 28:08.260 correctly--but rather as a kind of simultaneity in which the 28:08.256 --> 28:13.696 emphasis on men's marginalization of women and the 28:13.701 --> 28:19.371 emphasis on women's consciousness and traditions can 28:19.368 --> 28:23.368 be set forth at the same time. 28:23.368 --> 28:27.328 Now also in Virginia Woolf there is what-- 28:27.328 --> 28:31.378 Since the publication of the fascinating book by Sandra 28:31.382 --> 28:36.112 Gilbert and Susan Gubar called The Madwoman in the Attic-- 28:36.108 --> 28:39.808 this is also an allusion to Jane Eyre, 28:39.808 --> 28:43.398 you remember Bertha, the madwoman in the attic of 28:43.402 --> 28:46.902 Jane Eyre-- since the publication of 28:46.895 --> 28:51.505 The Madwoman in the Attic, feminist criticism has 28:51.505 --> 28:55.075 talked about the madwoman thesis: the idea, 28:55.078 --> 28:58.608 in other words, that because they could not 28:58.607 --> 29:02.977 openly express themselves creatively as writers or as 29:02.977 --> 29:07.577 artists of other kinds, women were forced to channel 29:07.577 --> 29:10.387 their creativity into subversive, 29:10.390 --> 29:13.790 devious and perhaps psychologically self-destructive 29:13.788 --> 29:15.458 forms, as in, for example, 29:15.459 --> 29:18.609 Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. 29:18.609 --> 29:24.389 29:24.390 --> 29:29.230 You find Woolf already on page 600-- 29:29.230 --> 29:34.650 just actually below the passage about class and gender that I 29:34.654 --> 29:38.304 read before-- you find her touching on this 29:38.301 --> 29:41.941 madwoman theme long before Gilbert and Gubar. 29:41.940 --> 29:44.800 She says: When, however, one reads of a witch 29:44.798 --> 29:48.318 being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, 29:48.324 --> 29:52.464 of a wise woman selling herbs, [and then of course she adds] 29:52.462 --> 29:55.722 and even of a very remarkable man who had a mother… 29:55.720 --> 30:00.480 There, in other words, one strongly suspects that 30:00.482 --> 30:05.642 there is a person whose creativity has been oppressed 30:05.643 --> 30:10.803 and unfortunately channeled in unsocial or antisocial 30:10.803 --> 30:12.493 directions. 30:12.490 --> 30:16.420 This, as I say, is a tradition that's 30:16.420 --> 30:17.730 sustained. 30:17.730 --> 30:46.590 It still exists in Showalter. 30:46.588 --> 30:50.258 In her gynocritical perspective--that is to say, 30:50.259 --> 30:55.829 her insistence on our registering, chronicling, 30:55.828 --> 30:59.488 and becoming familiar as scholars with the history of 30:59.494 --> 31:03.094 women as well as the history of women's writing-- 31:03.088 --> 31:09.038 the recognition of such forms of repression as witchcraft, 31:09.038 --> 31:13.918 as madness, as herbalism, as whatever it might be, 31:13.920 --> 31:17.020 need to be taken into account. 31:17.019 --> 31:20.689 Also very much on the mind of Woolf already, 31:20.690 --> 31:23.970 as it still is particularly for Showalter because this is 31:23.971 --> 31:27.371 Showalter's understanding of the task of gynocriticism, 31:27.368 --> 31:31.098 is the notion that one needs a tradition, 31:31.098 --> 31:34.908 that one of the great difficulties and shortcomings 31:34.910 --> 31:37.730 facing the woman's writer is that, 31:37.730 --> 31:41.220 yes, there are a few greats--the same ones always 31:44.166 --> 31:47.486 George Eliot-- but there is not a sense of an 31:47.490 --> 31:50.780 ongoing tradition, of a developing tradition 31:50.779 --> 31:56.599 within which one could write; so that Woolf on page 606, 31:56.602 --> 32:02.562 the right-hand column, talks about "the man's 32:02.557 --> 32:06.887 sentence," the difficulty of coming to 32:06.894 --> 32:12.044 terms with not having, not just a room of one's own, 32:12.038 --> 32:14.498 but a language of one's own. 32:14.500 --> 32:16.600 This is toward the top of the right-hand column: 32:16.602 --> 32:18.752 "Perhaps the first thing she would find, 32:18.750 --> 32:22.810 setting pen to paper, was that there was no common 32:22.808 --> 32:25.708 sentence ready for her use." 32:25.710 --> 32:31.100 All the literary models, all the models of novelistic 32:31.096 --> 32:34.406 prose--most of them, in any case, 32:34.413 --> 32:38.613 are engendered male; because the atmosphere of 32:38.605 --> 32:42.765 writing--and this is a point that we'll be getting to soon-- 32:42.769 --> 32:47.069 the very fact of writing is something that we have to 32:47.067 --> 32:50.537 understand as having a male stamp on it. 32:50.538 --> 32:52.578 Further down in the right-hand column: 32:52.578 --> 32:57.528 That is a man's sentence [she's just quoted a long sentence]; 32:57.529 --> 33:00.969 behind it one can see Johnson, Gibbon and the rest." 33:00.970 --> 33:04.220 It was a sentence that was unsuited for a woman's use. 33:07.519 --> 33:11.579 prose, stumbled and fell with that clumsy weapon in her hands. 33:11.578 --> 33:14.558 George Eliot committed atrocities with it that beggar 33:14.557 --> 33:15.357 description. 33:15.358 --> 33:18.908 Jane Austen looked at it and laughed at it and devised a 33:18.905 --> 33:22.065 perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her 33:22.065 --> 33:24.575 own use and never departed from it. 33:24.578 --> 33:28.448 Thus, with less genius for writing than Charlotte 33:32.000 --> 33:36.040 By the way, this is disputable because certainly it's possible 33:36.039 --> 33:39.949 to understand Jane Austen's prose style as emerging from the 33:39.948 --> 33:43.258 work of Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson, 33:43.259 --> 33:45.949 in particular, so it is disputable. 33:45.950 --> 33:50.010 At the same time, Woolf's point is that Austen 33:50.013 --> 33:55.343 was able to shake herself free from this terrible problem of 33:55.343 --> 34:00.493 wanting to say something but finding that one doesn't have 34:00.490 --> 34:04.790 one's own language, a language suitable to-- 34:04.788 --> 34:08.688 appropriated by and for and as one's identity-- 34:08.690 --> 34:09.810 for saying it. 34:09.809 --> 34:11.919 "So I want to write as a woman, 34:11.920 --> 34:15.630 I want to say the things that a woman wants to say, 34:15.630 --> 34:18.870 but all I've got to say it with is a man's sentence." 34:18.869 --> 34:25.789 That's Woolf's point, and of course it has many and 34:25.791 --> 34:28.701 long ramifications. 34:28.699 --> 34:33.139 I'm holding at bay the criticism of a great deal of 34:33.137 --> 34:38.287 this that has to be leveled at it by feminist criticism and 34:38.286 --> 34:41.656 gender theory roughly since 1980, 34:41.659 --> 34:45.489 but in the meantime the ramifications are interesting 34:45.487 --> 34:50.047 and they are reinforced by the theoretically very sophisticated 34:50.052 --> 34:54.472 wing of feminist criticism that we call French feminism. 34:54.469 --> 35:00.079 Some of you may know the work of Luce Irigaray and Helene 35:00.077 --> 35:00.977 Cixous. 35:00.980 --> 35:06.420 Writers of this kind insist that there is such a thing as 35:06.422 --> 35:08.272 women's language. 35:08.268 --> 35:12.588 Women write not just with their heads and their phalluses but 35:12.594 --> 35:14.474 with their whole bodies. 35:14.469 --> 35:18.999 Women don't write carefully constructed periodic sentences. 35:19.000 --> 35:23.640 Women write ongoing paratactic, impressionist, 35:23.639 --> 35:31.309 digressive, ad hoc sentences: sentences without 35:31.306 --> 35:34.666 ego-- being without structure more or 35:34.666 --> 35:37.766 less corresponding to being without ego. 35:37.768 --> 35:39.968 We'll come back to this in a minute in Showalter, 35:39.969 --> 35:46.309 but in the meantime French feminism was willing to settle 35:46.311 --> 35:51.411 on and for an idea of women's writing and, 35:51.409 --> 35:57.079 implicitly behind this idea, an idea of what a woman is that 35:57.083 --> 36:01.413 is very easy to identify as somehow or another 36:01.411 --> 36:03.241 essentializing. 36:03.239 --> 36:07.129 Why can't a woman write a rigorous periodic sentence? 36:07.130 --> 36:12.910 After all, that's the kind of sentence that Jane Austen did, 36:12.913 --> 36:14.583 in fact, write. 36:14.579 --> 36:19.549 In a whole variety of ways that one might think of, 36:19.550 --> 36:23.230 why can't a woman, if she is to be free to be 36:23.228 --> 36:28.328 whatever she wants to be, write a sentence which isn't 36:28.327 --> 36:32.657 necessarily of this gendered feminine sort? 36:32.659 --> 36:35.269 Why does women's writing, in other words, 36:35.269 --> 36:37.619 have to be women's writing? 36:37.619 --> 36:43.379 It seems to me that it is French feminism and the possible 36:43.380 --> 36:49.650 critique of French feminism that Virginia Woolf is anticipating 36:49.648 --> 36:55.408 when she embarks on this perilous idea of androgyny, 36:55.409 --> 36:59.479 of the kind of mind that needs to be both male and female and 36:59.480 --> 37:03.210 that needs to write in a way that Virginia Woolf says is 37:03.210 --> 37:07.190 actually very sexy, precisely in the moment when 37:07.190 --> 37:10.380 one is not thinking about one's sex-- 37:10.380 --> 37:13.760 the moment, in other words, when there is no longer a 37:13.764 --> 37:17.544 question of the man's sentence and the woman's sentence. 37:17.539 --> 37:21.939 I think it has to be said that although one could emphasize in 37:21.943 --> 37:26.273 A Room of One's Own this sort of advanced criticism of 37:26.273 --> 37:30.203 French feminism, and also of the idea that there 37:30.204 --> 37:33.794 is essentially something that we call woman-- 37:33.789 --> 37:35.359 and I'm not through with that topic-- 37:35.360 --> 37:39.090 I think it has to be said that although we could read A Room 37:39.085 --> 37:43.025 of One's Own in this way, at the same time we have to 37:43.025 --> 37:47.205 recognize an ambivalence on Virginia Woolf's part on this 37:47.208 --> 37:48.028 subject. 37:48.030 --> 37:53.050 There is a difference between her insistence that Jane Austen 37:53.048 --> 37:57.108 wrote like a woman, that she shrugged off the 37:57.110 --> 38:01.910 tyranny of the man's sentence and wrote her own kind of 38:01.905 --> 38:04.785 sentence, a woman's sentence--regardless 38:04.791 --> 38:08.021 of whether or not that is actually in literary historical 38:08.023 --> 38:09.913 terms true-- between the idea, 38:09.914 --> 38:12.574 on the one hand, that it's important to write 38:12.570 --> 38:15.430 like a woman and the idea, on the other hand, 38:15.427 --> 38:17.987 that it's important to write androgynously. 38:17.989 --> 38:22.109 We have to concede, I think, the impressionistic 38:22.105 --> 38:25.865 form of these lectures that she's giving. 38:25.869 --> 38:30.299 We have to concede that she wavers on this point; 38:30.300 --> 38:34.340 that somehow or another it's very difficult to pin down in 38:34.338 --> 38:38.518 Woolf the question of whether there is essentially something 38:38.519 --> 38:41.709 to be called "women's writing"; 38:41.710 --> 38:44.860 just as the question behind that, whether there is 38:44.862 --> 38:48.212 essentially something to be called "woman," 38:48.208 --> 38:50.588 or the question on the contrary-- 38:50.590 --> 38:56.720 whether the ideal of all writing is to shed as fully as 38:56.719 --> 39:01.259 it can precisely its gendered aspects. 39:01.260 --> 39:06.820 There is perhaps a kind of creative or rich inconsistency 39:06.824 --> 39:10.134 on this point that, it should be said, 39:10.130 --> 39:13.560 one also finds and needs to take into account in reading 39:13.557 --> 39:15.487 A Room of One's Own. 39:15.489 --> 39:18.539 39:18.539 --> 39:19.509 All right. 39:19.510 --> 39:25.500 Now getting a little closer to this whole question of beyond 39:25.498 --> 39:28.918 the gynocritical-- because Showalter, 39:28.923 --> 39:32.263 for example, in talking about the history of 39:32.255 --> 39:35.355 the novel talks about those three phases: 39:35.356 --> 39:39.926 first the "feminine," the phase in which women try 39:39.927 --> 39:44.107 very much to write as though they were men by deferring 39:44.112 --> 39:49.152 completely to male values in all the ways that they can; 39:49.150 --> 39:54.550 perhaps introducing a kind of, again, 39:54.550 --> 39:59.100 "angel in the house" cultural benevolence and 39:59.103 --> 40:04.333 benignity into perspectives of men that can be sometimes rather 40:04.331 --> 40:06.611 militaristic and harsh. 40:06.610 --> 40:10.850 but nevertheless hiding behind frequently male names like 40:10.853 --> 40:13.773 Currer Bell, Acton Bell, George Eliot, 40:13.773 --> 40:18.733 and so on, and not really entering into 40:18.728 --> 40:25.168 questions of the place of women in society. 40:25.170 --> 40:29.410 Showalter then says this is a phase supplanted by a feminist 40:29.413 --> 40:33.593 moment in the history of the novel in which novels like the 40:33.585 --> 40:34.805 late work of Mrs. 40:34.807 --> 40:38.327 Gaskell, for example, and other such novels become 40:38.333 --> 40:42.293 tendentious, and the place and role of women becomes the 40:42.289 --> 40:45.669 dominant theme of novels of this kind. 40:45.670 --> 40:49.450 By the way, this takes Woolf's critique of Charlotte 40:55.762 --> 40:58.412 Showalter is calling "the feminine phase" 40:58.411 --> 41:02.341 in the history of the novel, and so it's interesting that 41:02.344 --> 41:05.394 Woolf finds a kind of proto-feminism, 41:05.389 --> 41:08.069 damaging to the texture of Jane Eyre, 41:10.860 --> 41:14.340 Then finally what Elaine Showalter likes best: 41:14.344 --> 41:17.524 the supplanting of the feminist novel-- 41:17.518 --> 41:20.608 because Elaine Showalter, too, is nervous about the 41:20.612 --> 41:24.512 tendentiousness of fiction-- the supplanting of that by what 41:24.510 --> 41:28.260 she calls "the female novel," which is the novel 41:28.264 --> 41:32.224 that simply takes for granted the authenticity and legitimacy 41:32.215 --> 41:36.065 of the woman's point of view, writes from that point of view 41:36.070 --> 41:38.570 but, as in Virginia Woolf, 41:38.567 --> 41:44.707 having shed or shaken off the elements of anger or adversary 41:44.711 --> 41:51.171 consciousness that earlier novels had typically manifested. 41:51.170 --> 41:56.480 This history of the novel is very similar to what Showalter 41:56.480 --> 42:01.610 is doing with her sense of the history of recent feminist 42:01.608 --> 42:02.888 criticism. 42:02.889 --> 42:06.009 That's in two phases: first the feminist, 42:06.007 --> 42:09.587 as she calls it, when the treatment of women by 42:09.594 --> 42:12.484 men in fiction is the main focus; 42:12.480 --> 42:16.550 and then the gynocritical, which is the appropriation for 42:16.552 --> 42:18.882 women of a literary tradition. 42:18.880 --> 42:22.960 Showalter is at pains to point out that much of the most 42:22.961 --> 42:26.601 important work of recent feminist scholarship, 42:26.599 --> 42:29.169 the feminist scholarship of the 1970s, 42:29.170 --> 42:34.080 is in simply the unearthing of and expanding of a canon of 42:34.083 --> 42:38.053 women's writing not exclusively novelistic, 42:38.050 --> 42:42.720 because there had been a time when the novel was sort of half 42:42.722 --> 42:47.322 conceded to women as a possible outlet for their writing. 42:47.320 --> 42:51.370 But this concession was accompanied by the sovereign 42:51.365 --> 42:55.725 assertion that they couldn't write poetry and plays, 42:55.730 --> 42:59.720 and so an expansion of the canon such that all forms of 42:59.719 --> 43:03.779 writing are available and made visible and recognized as 43:03.782 --> 43:06.592 actually existing in a tradition-- 43:06.590 --> 43:09.450 so that we can trace women's writing, 43:09.449 --> 43:13.079 as Showalter puts it, from decade to decade and not 43:13.081 --> 43:16.891 from great book to great book, so that there really is a 43:16.893 --> 43:20.283 tradition comparable to the male tradition that one can think 43:20.284 --> 43:22.364 about, think within, 43:22.356 --> 43:27.336 and draw on as a creative writer oneself, 43:27.340 --> 43:31.590 So both Showalter's history of the novel and her history of 43:31.592 --> 43:35.602 modern feminist criticism-- or modern women's criticism, 43:35.599 --> 43:40.639 one had better say-- end at the point when it is 43:40.639 --> 43:46.689 still a question of the woman's perspective. 43:46.690 --> 43:52.930 But this raises a question--and I've been touching on it in a 43:52.925 --> 43:57.115 variety of ways-- but it really raises the 43:57.121 --> 44:01.751 question that has to haunt thinking of this kind. 44:01.750 --> 44:06.340 We're going to be encountering it again and again and again as 44:06.335 --> 44:10.315 we move through other forms of identity perspective in 44:10.320 --> 44:12.200 criticism and theory. 44:12.199 --> 44:17.449 It raises the question whether if I say that a woman's or 44:17.449 --> 44:21.199 women's writing is of a certain sort, 44:21.199 --> 44:26.739 if I identify a woman in a way that I take somehow to be 44:26.737 --> 44:31.937 recognizable-- let's say I identify a woman as 44:31.940 --> 44:35.210 intuitive, imaginative, 44:35.208 --> 44:39.748 impressionistic, sensitive, 44:39.750 --> 44:46.510 illogical, opposed to reason, a refuser of that periodic sort 44:46.510 --> 44:52.930 of subject-predicate sentence that we associate with men's 44:52.934 --> 44:56.774 writing-- I can appropriate that for 44:56.773 --> 45:02.353 women like the French feminists and I can identify women in so 45:02.346 --> 45:06.356 doing as such people-- but isn't that simply inverting 45:06.364 --> 45:09.614 what men say in Virginia Woolf's discoveries in the British 45:09.608 --> 45:12.908 museum in the second chapter of A Room of One's Own-- 45:12.909 --> 45:17.499 isn't that just inverting all the negative values that men 45:17.503 --> 45:20.143 have attached to women all along? 45:20.139 --> 45:25.719 Isn't it ultimately to accept men's opinions of women, 45:25.719 --> 45:29.449 men's ways of saying that because they are avatars of 45:29.452 --> 45:32.552 reason, science, logic and all the rest 45:32.545 --> 45:35.405 of it-- isn't a way of saying that the 45:35.409 --> 45:38.859 head is higher than the heart and accepting, 45:38.860 --> 45:42.600 in other words, the lower or inferior status of 45:42.603 --> 45:47.403 this organ to this organ even though one supposes oneself to 45:47.404 --> 45:50.664 have transvalued them and insisted, 45:50.659 --> 45:53.059 in promoting women's consciousness, 45:53.059 --> 45:57.309 that the heart is higher than the head? 45:57.309 --> 45:59.819 One hasn't done anything, in other words, 45:59.815 --> 46:03.385 to the essential identities that have governed patriarchal 46:03.387 --> 46:05.327 thought from the beginning. 46:05.329 --> 46:10.369 It is precisely this characterization of women that 46:10.373 --> 46:14.413 has enabled and engendered patriarchy. 46:14.409 --> 46:19.359 This is where the theoretical problem arises. 46:19.360 --> 46:22.910 It calls for, it seems to me, 46:22.909 --> 46:31.279 a sense that somehow or another one has to put the possibility-- 46:31.280 --> 46:32.960 and there's really no other way to say it, 46:32.960 --> 46:36.620 and this is something that Judith Butler frequently says 46:36.621 --> 46:40.351 and people who work in the mode of Judith Butler say-- 46:40.349 --> 46:44.909 one has to put the suggestion that perhaps the best thing one 46:44.911 --> 46:49.551 can say as a feminist is there is no such thing as a woman; 46:49.550 --> 46:51.810 there is no woman. 46:51.809 --> 46:57.799 Now of course this is perilous, and this is what drives such an 46:57.804 --> 47:02.934 unfortunate wedge in the midst of feminist thought. 47:02.929 --> 47:06.139 In real life, in real material existence, 47:06.135 --> 47:08.375 there certainly are women. 47:08.380 --> 47:12.960 They are oppressed by laws, they are oppressed by men, 47:12.958 --> 47:18.318 and their rights and their very lives need to be protected with 47:18.315 --> 47:20.385 perpetual vigilance. 47:20.389 --> 47:23.139 The theoretical idea, in other words, 47:23.139 --> 47:27.949 that there's no such thing as a woman is not an idea that can be 47:27.949 --> 47:29.629 sustained in life. 47:29.630 --> 47:33.500 Yet at the same time, the implications of what the 47:33.498 --> 47:37.128 language of identity politics is always calling 47:37.132 --> 47:41.162 "essentialism," the implications of saying 47:41.159 --> 47:45.029 "woman" is one particular thing-- 47:45.030 --> 47:47.070 and it might be better if we said "woman" 47:47.068 --> 47:49.898 was one particular thing, but something other than what 47:49.904 --> 47:52.304 men have been saying she was all along-- 47:52.300 --> 47:55.290 but making the problem worse, saying that "woman" 47:55.288 --> 47:58.368 is one particular thing, which is just what men have 47:58.371 --> 48:01.511 always said she was-- only it's a good thing, 48:01.507 --> 48:06.247 right, that positions of this kind are taken up in this way, 48:06.250 --> 48:10.000 despite the fact that they're absolutely necessary for 48:09.996 --> 48:13.526 practical feminism and for real-world feminism-- 48:13.530 --> 48:18.810 is nevertheless detrimental to a more sensitive theoretical 48:18.807 --> 48:24.357 understanding of gender and of the possibilities of gender. 48:24.360 --> 48:28.840 It's all very well to be intuitive and emotional and 48:28.836 --> 48:32.956 impressionistic, but one wants to say two things 48:32.963 --> 48:34.283 about that. 48:34.280 --> 48:36.220 In the first place, a guy gets to be that if he 48:36.219 --> 48:36.979 wants to, right? 48:36.980 --> 48:37.610 > 48:37.610 --> 48:40.460 In the second place, why does a woman have to 48:40.460 --> 48:41.410 be that, right? 48:41.409 --> 48:46.229 It's perfectly clear in both cases that there are exceptions 48:46.228 --> 48:51.128 which go vastly beyond the exception that proves the rule. 48:51.130 --> 48:55.950 It's perfectly clear that in both cases there are 48:55.951 --> 49:02.281 sensibilities across gender that completely mix up and discredit 49:02.280 --> 49:06.780 these categories, and so for all of those reasons 49:06.775 --> 49:08.245 there is a problem. 49:08.250 --> 49:12.570 Just very quickly I want to point out, looking at 49:12.565 --> 49:16.335 Showalter's essay, that this is a bind that 49:16.342 --> 49:21.022 criticism around 1980 really hasn't gotten past. 49:21.019 --> 49:22.579 Time's up. 49:22.579 --> 49:24.909 I'm not going to take the time to quote passages, 49:24.909 --> 49:28.509 but notice her animus--and here, in a way, 49:28.510 --> 49:31.020 we go back to the beginning--her animus against 49:31.023 --> 49:33.433 Marxism and structuralism on the grounds-- 49:33.429 --> 49:35.579 and of course we've said this ourselves-- 49:35.579 --> 49:37.869 on the grounds that both of them present themselves as 49:37.867 --> 49:38.857 "sciences." 49:38.860 --> 49:39.860 Aha! 49:39.860 --> 49:41.520 They're gendered male! 49:41.518 --> 49:45.568 Marxism and structuralism aren't anything we want to have 49:45.572 --> 49:50.062 to do with because this is just Virginia Woolf's beadle raising 49:50.057 --> 49:53.457 its ugly head again and imposing its will-- 49:53.460 --> 49:57.570 through its superior rationality--on women. 49:57.570 --> 49:59.450 So we don't want any of that. 49:59.449 --> 50:03.409 What we want instead is a form of criticism, 50:03.409 --> 50:09.499 and this is what she says in effect at the end of the essay 50:09.500 --> 50:14.910 on pages 1385 and 1386, that evades scientificity; 50:14.909 --> 50:19.679 a form of criticism that engages with the reality of 50:19.675 --> 50:24.625 texts and of the textual tradition but doesn't trouble 50:24.628 --> 50:28.178 its head with theoretical matters. 50:28.179 --> 50:31.779 In other words, a form that dissociates itself 50:31.780 --> 50:35.300 from the logical, from overarching structure, 50:35.300 --> 50:37.140 from scientificity. 50:37.139 --> 50:39.629 Showalter leaves herself in this position, 50:39.630 --> 50:44.430 and she leaves feminist criticism in this position as-- 50:44.429 --> 50:49.859 how might one put it?--a colonized enterprise that can do 50:49.862 --> 50:54.812 anything it likes as long as it's not reasonable. 50:54.809 --> 50:58.729 If that's the case, then of course it imposes an 50:58.726 --> 51:03.056 essentializing limit on the possibilities of feminist 51:03.059 --> 51:05.669 criticism, just as of course the 51:05.672 --> 51:09.242 characterization of men's criticism in the way that it's 51:09.240 --> 51:11.900 characterized, needless to say, 51:11.898 --> 51:14.598 also imposes limits on that. 51:14.599 --> 51:18.489 Whether fair and legitimate limits, or perhaps exaggerated 51:18.485 --> 51:20.525 limits, is open to question. 51:20.530 --> 51:24.830 That's not nearly as important a point as the reminder that 51:24.829 --> 51:27.799 there is a kind of marginalization of the 51:27.795 --> 51:31.795 possibilities for feminist criticism involved in saying 51:31.797 --> 51:35.877 that it has to be something other than the sort of thing 51:35.875 --> 51:40.615 that Marxist and structuralist paradigms make available. 51:40.619 --> 51:41.309 Okay. 51:41.309 --> 51:45.839 Now I think that Henry Louis Gates, 51:45.840 --> 51:49.970 influenced by Bakhtin, will have a very interesting 51:49.967 --> 51:55.247 way of coming to terms with this question of what's available for 51:55.251 --> 51:59.711 a marginalized minority criticism once it avoids or has 51:59.710 --> 52:05.160 succeeded in avoiding the terms of the mainstream criticism. 52:05.159 --> 52:09.969 I want you to read Gates' essay with that particularly in mind. 52:09.969 --> 52:12.089 Then we'll come back with the question of, 52:12.090 --> 52:16.210 as it were, the future of feminist criticism, 52:16.210 --> 52:19.880 in a way since 1980, when we turn to the work of the 52:19.880 --> 52:23.540 gender theorists, in particular Judith Butler. 52:23.539 --> 52:28.999