Around 1981

Book excerpt: A clear-eyed and comprehensive history of feminist literary criticism. In a novel approach, the inquiry is structured around anthologies of feminist criticism: twelve important texts that have had a wide impact on more than a decade of scholarship. In reading an anthology as a whole, the author identifies a central, hegemonic voice which would organise all the voices into a unity, and then explores the resistance within that volume to such a unity. Weight is placed behind these internal differences as a wedge against the centrist drive. This book brilliantly illuminates the dilemma of the feminist critic, divided by her allegiance to both feminism and literary studies.