How to Suppress Women's Writing

170 Pages·1983·39.746 MB·English

by  Joanna Russ

She didn’t write it. She
Ϊ1ΓΛ-...
wrote it, b u t she shouldn’t have.
She wrote it, but look
i
masculine, feminisi.
w hat she wrote about. *!££££%;
She wrote it, but she wrote only
one o f it. She wrote it,
S T Â ^
but she isn t really an artist, and
(l,s a ,hriller a romance
it isn t von ΊΊλ j nirt
ί-Ο/l·- 1/ (/l·/ L. a children's book. It's sei fi!)
She urote it, but she had help.
(Robert Browning. Branwell Brontë. C U ^ 1 ! ΥίΤΓίΐΟ i t f a l l t
Her own "masculine side.") , )/./(. I I t ' / I C. / I, t J l I I
she’s an anom aly.
£Γ. T ι““Λ
She wrote it BUT. . .
How to Suppress Women’s
Writing by Joanna Russ
How to Suppress Women’s Writing
:
How to Suppress
Women’s Writing
by JOANNA RUSS
University of Texas Press Austin
Copyright © 1983 by Joanna Russ
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Eighth paperback printing, 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Russ, Joanna, 1937-
How to suppress womens writing.
Includes index.
1. Women authors. 2. Authorship. I. Title
PN471.R87 1983 809'.89287 83-5910
ISBN 0-292-72445-4 (pbk.)
Requests for permission to reproduce material
from this work should be sent to:
Permissions
University of Texas Press
Box 7819
Austin, Texas 78713-7819
www.utexas.edu /utpress/about / bpermission.html
® The paper used in this publication meets the mini­
mum requirements of American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to W. W. Norton and
Company for permission to reprint lines from a poem
by Adrienne Rich, originally published in her Poems:
Selected and New, 1950—1974.
This book is dedicated to my students.

Contents
Prologue 3
1. Prohibitions 6
2. Bad Faith 17
3. Denial of Agency 20
4. Pollution of Agency 25
The Double Standard of Content
6. False Categorizing 49
7. Isolation 62
8. Anomalousness 76
9. Lack of Models 87
10. Responses 97
11. Aesthetics 110
Epilogue 122
Author’s Note 133
Afterword 135
Notes 143
Index 155

How to Suppress Women’s Writing