STILL MAD: AMERICAN WOMAN WRITERS AND THE FEMINIST IMAGINATION 1950-2020 By Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar

Forty years ago, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar rocked the academic world with their Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Ninteeth-Century Literary Imagination. Gilbert and Gubar ignited a conversation on why women writers were mostly ignored in English Departments.

In their latest disruptive book, Gilbert & Gubar bring their analysis to women writers of the 1950s to 2020. There’s plenty here about Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Adrienne Rich, Nina Simone, Margret Atwood, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Steinem.

My favorite chapter is Chapter 6: Speculative Poetry, Speculative Fiction with excellent profiles of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr, Joanna Russ, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Gilbert & Gubar cover a lot of ground in Still Mad. But for a one-volume history of major women writers in America from mid-20th Century until now, this would be my pick. Do you have a favorite woman writer from this era? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Possible and the Impossible 1

Glass Ceilings and Broken Glass 3

How the Seventies Changed Our Lives 7

The Schooling of Hillary Rodham and Her Generation 12

The Cultural Chaos We Face 19

Keeping Things Going 23

Section 1 Stirrings in the Fifties

1 Midcentury Separate Spheres 29

Sylvia Plath’s Paper Dolls 31

HIS AND HER Time 36

Anatomy and Destiny 41

2 Race, Rebellion, and Reaction 48

Diane di Prima as a Feminist Beatnik 49

Gwendolyn Brooks’s Bronzeville 51

The Stages of Lorraine Hansberry’s Militancy 54

Audre Lorde’s Lesbian Biomythography 62

Joan Didion’s Vogue versus Betty Friedan’s Problem That Has No Name 66

Section II Eruptions in the Sixties

3 Three Angry Voices 73

Plath Despairs While Ariel Takes Wing 76

Adrienne Rich as a Cultural Daughter-in-Law 85

Nina Simone, Diva 92

4 The Sexual Revolution and the Vietnam War 102

Sex in New York City: Gloria Steinem versus Helen Gurley Brown 103

Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and San Francisco 110

Women Strike for Peace 119

Valerie Solanas and the Rise of the Second Wave 125

Section III Awakenings in the Seventies

5 Protesting Patriarchy 135

Kate Millett’s Touchstone Book 139

Susan Sontag as Feminist Philosopher 146

Best Sellers in the Womanhouse: From Toni Morrison to Marilyn French 152

Plath’s Electric Take on the Fifties 164

6 Speculative Poetry, Speculative Fiction 173

The Metamorphoses of Adrienne Rich 175

Dystopias and Utopias 187

Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr. 188

Joanna Russ’s Misandry 197

Ursula Le Guin’s Androgyny 199

7 Bonded and Bruised Sisters 204

Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker at Ms. 205

Audre Lorde Dismantles the Master’s House 215

Maxine Hong Kingston’s Ghosts and Warriors 220

The Dinner Party 227

Section IV Revisions in the Eighties and Nineties

8 Identity Politics 235

Andrea Dworkin and the Sex Wars 238

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Mestiza Consciousness 244

Adrienne Rich’s Judaism 249

The Intersectionality of Toni Morrison 256

9 Inside and Outside the Ivory Closet 265

The Culture Wars 267

The Queer Theories of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler 269

Anne Carson’s Poetics of Love and Loss 276

Postmodernism/Transsexualism 281

Who Owns Feminism? 285

Section V Recessions/Revivals in the Twenty-First Century

10 Older and Younger Generations 293

The New Millennium 293

Alison Bechdel’s Literary Genealogy 298

Are You My Mother? 304

Eve Ensler’s V-Days 308

Transgender Visibility: From Susan Stryker to Maggie Nelson 311

11 Resurgence 318

Claudia Rankine Makes Black Lives Matter 320

The Broken Earth of N. K. Jemisin 326

Patricia Lockwood Sends Up the Church and the Family Romance 329

Headlining Feminism: From Rebecca Solnit to Beyoncé 332

Keeping Things Stirring 335

Epilogue: White Suits, Shattered Glass 345

Acknowledgments 355

Notes 359

Credits 413

Index 417

27 thoughts on “STILL MAD: AMERICAN WOMAN WRITERS AND THE FEMINIST IMAGINATION 1950-2020 By Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar

  1. Jerry House

    Tiptree, Russ, and Le Guin make a great trifecta. Luckily there are many more strong voices today in the SF/Fantasy genre that do well in exploring feminism, as well as LGBTQ and POC issues. Not so much the mystery genre, alas, where the market seems to lead writers to myriad variations of the cozy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but even P. D. James, Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, and others tend to avoid strong feminist issues. If a society can be explained and/or judged by how it treats women, we still have a long way to go, baby.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jerry, I’ve always been disturbed by the way our society cheats women economically. You would think by now that equal pay for equal work would be standard by now. Not so much…

      Reply
    2. Jeff Smith

      Elizabeth George’s new one is about female genital mutilation, so let’s give her credit for tackling a feminist issue this time.

      Reply
  2. Deb

    My favorite mid-century writer (male or female) is Barbara Pym. Highly unlikely to be represented in this book—although quietly subversive in her own way, especially presenting gay male characters as normal people and not sensationalizing them. I do like Alison Bechdel—although I think FUN HOME is vastly superior to ARE YOU MY MOTHER.

    Reply
  3. Todd Mason

    Just one? Maybe a dozen. I might need to read this book, for several reasons, not least the notion that Russ was genuinely misandryst…I’d say she had some pretty sharp critiques of our species as a whole, while not hating humanity. Also the notion that Solanas was key or indicative of “second wave” feminism would seem a pretty thin argument to make…an example of the anger of the times, sure.

    Jerry, look to Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, Kate Wilhelm, Elizabeth Hand, Kit Reed (often as Kit Craig), Marijane Meaker (as “Vin Packer” and under other names), Laurie R. King, Liza Cody, and not a few others for some feminist analysis in crime fiction, among established writers, in non-cozy work. Expecting that sort of thing from P D. James, particularly, would be a very long wait.

    Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        I think those who’ve read Russ tend to rate her work as impressive…a lot haven’t read her, and to insist she’s misandrist, even as a chapter title, is to (at very least mostly) misread her.

  4. Neeru

    Of the authors mentioned here, I have read Plath, Morrison, and Kingston. Very frankly Plath’s The Bell Jar and Morrison’s The Song of Solomon left me underwhelmed. But Kingston’s China Men left a deep impression.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Neeru, I agree with you on THE BELL JAR and THE SONG OF SOLOMON. I know critics praise these books, but like you I was underwhelmed.

      Reply
  5. Dan

    Barbara Deming’s RUNNING AWAY FROM MYSELF (1969) offered penetrating — and affectionate! — analysis of the films of the 1940s & 50s, quite the equal of better known books by Sarris, Wood, Durgnat et al.

    Reply
  6. Byron

    “Mad Woman in the Attic” certainly had an intriguing thesis but I found it too much of an academic slog, bordering on self-parody, to get through although there is no denying the book’s impact. This looks potentially more interesting. All the usual suspects are here along with many whose work I’m less familiar with if at all.

    My pick of the bunch would be Sontag who was frequently brilliant while always being very readable. Le Guin was certainly ahead of her time, particularly in daring to write about gender issues but much of her seminal works like the early Earthsea books, are very dated in that regard (something she fully acknowledged and addressed in her later work).

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      MAD WOMAN IN THE ATTIC kicked off an academic firestorm when it was first published. Plenty of controversy! STILL MAD celebrates more recent women writers.

      Reply
  7. patti abbott

    I do think Rendell pursued some societal issues in books like Road Rage and Simiisola. Looks like a great book, George. I will reserve it at my library.

    Reply
  8. Jeff Meyerson

    Bummer about the Bills’ finale. Like you, I was not surprised that 13 seconds were enough for Mahomes to tie the score. I might have had to go for the two point conversion. Granted, they might have lost, but had they made it, it would have been a 4 point game and they’d have won. (Anyway, they lost so what did the PAT do for them?)

    As for the book, Didion is #1 for me, a real representative of her era. A lot of mystery writers would make my list of favorites.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, the Bills Defense was gassed by the end of the game. If the Bills had won the toss in OT, I’m convinced they would have won. Didion impressed me from the beginning.

      Reply
  9. wolf

    I don’t remember reading many female US authors when younger – they just didn’t appear. Maybe the America House thought they were not important?
    But then in the 60s at least in SF it was different!
    “Tiptree, Russ, and Le Guin make a great trifecta.” I totally agree and we shouldn’t forget A Norton (that’s how Andre N was named at first so she didn’t be recognized as a woman). And somehow their writing was different, something new – though I can’t explain it.
    And Kate Wilhelm was in the same category.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Wolf, I read “Andre Norton” as a kid and it was only years later that I learned Norton was a woman writer. Norton’s STORM OVER WARLOCK (with the great EMSH cover) was one of my favorite SF books back in the Sixties.

      Reply

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