Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman

309 Pages·1988·17.622 MB·English

by  Jane Marcus

ART & ANGER
Miami University, through an arrangement with the Ohio State University
Press initiated in 1975, publishes works of original scholarship, fiction, and
poetry. The responsibility for receiving and reviewing manuscripts is invested
in an Editorial Board comprising Miami University faculty.
ART 5 AIMED

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Reading
Like A
Woman
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JANE MARCUS

Published for Miami University by the
Ohio State University Press
Columbus
Copyright ® 1988 by the Ohio State University Press.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marcus, Jane.
Art and anger.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. English literature—History and criticism—Theory,
etc. 2. Women and literature. 3. Feminist criticism.
4. Feminism and literature. 5. Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941
—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PR119.M37 1988 820\9f352042 88-1223
ISBN 0-8142-0453-8
ISBN 0-8142-0460-0 (paper)
Printed in the U.S.A.
for Jason
Su describes her anger as "a little Jemina, two centimeters tail"
who claps inside her head every time she speaks out. "I'm dedicat­
ing my life to her, whatever the trends of the times. No more anger-
sitters. No more camps or schools. No more lollipops. She's going
to get all the advantages my expanse of years can provide, every
opportunity to become whatever she wants to become, even if she
wants to get married and have lots of little angers."
—June Arnold, Sister Gin
Hatred ojbaseness
Also distorts the features,
And anger at injustice
Makes the voice hoarse.
—Bertolt Brecht
Feminist criticism begins in negation.
—Susan Stanford Friedman
'Women's anger is pervasive, as pervasive as our oppression, but
it frequently lurks underground. If we added up all of woman's
depression; all her compulsive smiling, ego-tending, and sacrifice;
all herpsychosomatic illness, and all her passivity, we could gauge
our rage's unarticulated, negative force. "In a feminist revision of
FrantzFanon SThe Wretched of the Earth, we can imagine: "Feminist
revolution never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals
and modifies themfundamentally It transformspassivefemininity
crushed with inessentiality into privileged agency under the flood­
lights of history. A new kind of woman brings a new rhythm into
existence with a new language and a new humanity; combatting
women's oppression means the veritable creation of new women
who become fully human by the same process by which they freed
themselves. . . . At the level of individuals, anger is a cleansing
force. It frees the woman from her inferiority complex and from
despair and inaction; it makes her fearless and restores her self-
respect. "
—Julia Lesage, "Woman's Rage" in Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture

Contents
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Changing the Subject xiii

Reading Practice I. The Feminist Critic Reads Men:
Wilde, Meredith, Ibsen
1. Salome: The Jewish Princess Was a New Woman 3

2. "Clio in Calliope": History and Myth in Meredith's
Diana of the Crossways 20

3. Nostalgia Is Not Enough: Why Elizabeth Hardwick
Misreads Ibsen, Plath, and Woolf 49

Reading Practice II. The Socialist Critic Reads Virginia Woolf
4. Thinking Back through Our Mothers 73

5. "No More Horses": Virginia Woolf on Art and Propaganda 101

6. Art and Anger: Elizabeth Robins and Virginia Woolf 122

Writing Practice. The Lupine Critic Writes a (Biased) History
of Virginia Woolf Scholarship
7. Tintinnabulations 157

8. Storming the Toolshed 182

9. Quentin's Bogey 201

A Theoretical Perspective
10. Still Practice, A/Wrested Alphabet: Toward a Feminist
Aesthetic 215

Notes 251

Index 281