Elaine Showalter
Author of The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980
About the Author
In 1977, Showalter published A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. It was one of the most influential works in feminist criticism, as it sought to establish a distinctive tradition for women writers. In later essays, Showalter helped to develop a clearly show more articulated feminist theory with two major branches: the special study of works by women and the study of all literature from a feminist perspective. In all of her recent writing, Showalter has sought to illuminate a "cultural model of female writing," distinguishable from male models and theories. Her role as editor bringing together key contemporary feminist criticism has been extremely influential on modern literary study. (Bowker Author Biography) Elaine Showalter is chairperson of the department of English at Princeton University & the author of "A Literature of Their Own" & "Sexual Anarchy". A frequent contributor & book reviewer for American magazines & British newspapers, including the "London Times Literary Supplement", she also has written television reviews for "People". Showalter lives in Princeton, New Jersey. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Elaine Showalter
A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (2009) 378 copies, 12 reviews
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates (1966) — Editor; Introduction — 86 copies, 1 review
Sister's Choice: Traditions and Change in American Women's Writing (Clarendon Lectures) (1991) 75 copies
Scribbling Women: Short Stories by 19th-Century American Women (1997) — Selected and introduced by — 50 copies
Showalter, Elaine Archive 1 copy
Feminist Criticism 1 copy
Christina Rossetti: 'Maude' and Dinah Mulock Craik: 'On Sisterhoods' and 'A Woman's Thoughts About Women' (Women's Classics Series) — Editor — 1 copy
Interview with David Lodge 1 copy
Associated Works
Little Women / Little Women, Part Second {Good Wives} / Little Men / Jo's Boys (2005) — Editor, some editions — 1,201 copies, 11 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,017 copies, 7 reviews
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English (1985) — Contributor — 938 copies, 2 reviews
And Jill Came Tumbling After: Sexism in American Education (1974) — Contributor — 32 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Showalter, Elaine
- Other names
- Cottler, Elaine (birth name)
- Birthdate
- 1941-01-21
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Bryn Mawr College (BA | 1962)
Brandeis University (MA | 1964)
University of California, Davis (Ph.D | 1970) - Occupations
- professor
literary critic - Organizations
- Princeton University
Rutgers University
Modern Language Association - Awards and honors
- Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 2011)
Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism (2003) - Relationships
- Showalter, English (husband)
Showalter, Michael (son) - Short biography
- Elaine Showalter was born on January 21, 1941, in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied English at Bryn Mawr College (B.A., 1962), Brandeis University (M.A., 1964), and the University of California, Davis (Ph.D., 1970). She turned her doctoral thesis into her first book, "A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing" (1977), a study in which she created a critical framework for analyzing literature by women.
Showalter joined the faculty of Douglass College, the women's division of Rutgers University, in 1969, where she developed women's studies courses and began editing and contributing articles to books and periodicals about women's literature. She later taught at Rutgers and Princeton University and has been a television critic for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio and television. Showalter specializes in Victorian literature and the Fin-de-siècle and often writes on madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in women's writing and in the portrayal of female characters. She is the founder of gynocriticism – "a female framework for the analysis of women's literature."
Showalter retired from Princeton University in 2003. She now divides her time between Washington, D.C. and London, where she was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2012, she also received an honorary degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx" (2009). - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Washington, D.C., USA
London, Middlesex, England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
This was an exceptionally compelling overview of "all that ails us" ... the us being women. It appears that the only thing that ails us is men, according to Showalter. I'm not sure whether I disagree, although I'll throw in just a pinch of irony.
With an eye to tracking our inner malady, Showalter traces the treatment of women from 1830 to 1980: a nice chunk of time which should have shown progression and breakthroughs in dealing with mental health issues in women. From my point of view, not show more much had "progressed" in 150 years, except that the facilities were somewhat more modern. The attitudes, the biases, the prejudices remained extant, for the most part -- at least well into the 1980s when this book was published. (Whether much has changed since the 30-odd years that Showalter wrote this book, I wouldn't begin to guess. Superficially, it seems so.)
Mental health is quite a misnomer, in any case, for the most part of this book, for women were considered "mad" for the most innocuous of "offences". Suffice it to say that I wanted to set my own hair on fire while reading the travesties that women committed against society: the travesty of wanting dignity to raise their children out of poverty; the travesty of earning a decent wage for a profession of choice, and not relegated to the kitchen or the scrubhouse; the travesty of wanting a voice in how their bodies were treated; the travesty of wanting a say in society. All these were crimes for which at one time or other women were imprisoned in asylums for merely speaking their minds. Oh, and you'd definitely not want to speak your mind. That in itself is the worst travesty.
Suffice it to say, also, that in the Victorian era, "they" would have locked me up and thrown the key into the deepest well for I am one who has never known "my place". Lord knows I've tried to scrape and curtsey; to do obeisance, and even genuflect, on occasion. But it just isn't me. The gall rises every time. So, I had my gall stones removed, and became a whole human being. If only society had known long ago the remedy to women's madness.
This is not a review by any means. Just some random thoughts. A review would require a thesis: and I'd be quoting more than half the book. Just read it. Showalter has such an engaging style, you'll be thinking you're reading just another gothic novel, but by the time you're through, you'll be scared to death. For real.
Recommended to everyone!
Why only 4 stars? I wanted more. : ( show less
With an eye to tracking our inner malady, Showalter traces the treatment of women from 1830 to 1980: a nice chunk of time which should have shown progression and breakthroughs in dealing with mental health issues in women. From my point of view, not show more much had "progressed" in 150 years, except that the facilities were somewhat more modern. The attitudes, the biases, the prejudices remained extant, for the most part -- at least well into the 1980s when this book was published. (Whether much has changed since the 30-odd years that Showalter wrote this book, I wouldn't begin to guess. Superficially, it seems so.)
Mental health is quite a misnomer, in any case, for the most part of this book, for women were considered "mad" for the most innocuous of "offences". Suffice it to say that I wanted to set my own hair on fire while reading the travesties that women committed against society: the travesty of wanting dignity to raise their children out of poverty; the travesty of earning a decent wage for a profession of choice, and not relegated to the kitchen or the scrubhouse; the travesty of wanting a voice in how their bodies were treated; the travesty of wanting a say in society. All these were crimes for which at one time or other women were imprisoned in asylums for merely speaking their minds. Oh, and you'd definitely not want to speak your mind. That in itself is the worst travesty.
Suffice it to say, also, that in the Victorian era, "they" would have locked me up and thrown the key into the deepest well for I am one who has never known "my place". Lord knows I've tried to scrape and curtsey; to do obeisance, and even genuflect, on occasion. But it just isn't me. The gall rises every time. So, I had my gall stones removed, and became a whole human being. If only society had known long ago the remedy to women's madness.
This is not a review by any means. Just some random thoughts. A review would require a thesis: and I'd be quoting more than half the book. Just read it. Showalter has such an engaging style, you'll be thinking you're reading just another gothic novel, but by the time you're through, you'll be scared to death. For real.
Recommended to everyone!
Why only 4 stars? I wanted more. : ( show less
I'd picked up a remaindered copy of this because after our Civil War reading group, I'd been left with the feeling: BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WOMEN? Then I picked it up to read once I'd started buddy reads with my dad so I'd have other reading to report on (and have someone to talk about it all with!)
While at first I primarily enjoyed seeing the ways her life intersected with those I was already aware of to some degree or another -- the transcendentalists, John Brown, Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan, show more her life is a splendid illustration both of the rising women's suffrage movement and also the way creative women have been suppressed throughout history -- both by society at large and also by individuals, at home. That she could write something as effective and well known and loved as the Battle Hymn of the Republic and be lauded for it on one hand, while the other says "Oh, that was cute, you should go back to raising babies now."
I do wonder if there is an insightful take on her husband out there somewhere. How he could have chosen to marry Julia, only to immediately suppress everything about her that most others (including herself) found valuable. Ugh. show less
While at first I primarily enjoyed seeing the ways her life intersected with those I was already aware of to some degree or another -- the transcendentalists, John Brown, Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan, show more her life is a splendid illustration both of the rising women's suffrage movement and also the way creative women have been suppressed throughout history -- both by society at large and also by individuals, at home. That she could write something as effective and well known and loved as the Battle Hymn of the Republic and be lauded for it on one hand, while the other says "Oh, that was cute, you should go back to raising babies now."
I do wonder if there is an insightful take on her husband out there somewhere. How he could have chosen to marry Julia, only to immediately suppress everything about her that most others (including herself) found valuable. Ugh. show less
The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told her, would be shocked. The consciousness of — what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about her passions had roused her from her artist’s state of unconsciousness. She could write no more.
(Virginia Woolf, show more "Professions for women" (1931), in The death of the moth)
The point Showalter keeps coming back to in her discussion of women novelists in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain is how what women could write about was constrained by their own upbringing, social norms and — above all — the prejudices of (real or imaginary) male readers. She sees this active or passive censorship (vividly dramatised by Woolf in her famous lecture) as the thing above all others limiting the literary achievement of women during this period. Geniuses like George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë were able to circumvent it to some extent by using non-explicit techniques to get their message across, but for most writers it meant at least a fudged ending to their stories, if not an abject surrender to convention. There was almost a breakthrough with the sensationalist writers of the sixties and seventies (Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the many imitators of her bestsellerLady Audley's secret), and Showalter has obviously had a lot of fun rediscovering their work. But she finds that they didn't quite have the nerve to push things as far as they might have, and were overtaken by the political campaigning literature around the turn of the century, which Showalter finds of little literary interest, being so concerned not to distract attention from the Suffrage issue by offending other sensibilities.
She moves on to looking in some detail at the "aesthetic" writers of the post-1914 period, Katharine Mansfield (who probably shouldn't be here, being neither British nor a novelist, but never mind...), Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson. There's a valuable, detailed look at both Richardson, whom Showalter clearly admires, even though she was writing herself into something of a dead end, and Woolf, whom Showalter finds it very difficult to like. Showalter likes Woolf as a critic and essayist, and points out how her mental health problems could be related to the way she was discouraged from relating properly to her own femininity by her father, husband and sister. However, she can't help finding most of Woolf's fiction limited, prejudiced and irrelevant to the feminist cause. Perhaps she'd have seen this differently a decade or two further on, but in the world of the early seventies she certainly wasn't alone in this. (The arguments here reminded me a bit of what John Carey says about writing and class in The intellectuals and the masses, for instance.)
Looking at her own time, Showalter doesn't attempt a complete survey of British women's writing, but focusses on a small number of writers whom she considers relevant to both the development of the literary tradition they inherited and the advance of feminism, in particular Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble. I wouldn't argue with that, but it does mean that some important (in hindsight) writers like Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark only get mentioned in passing. And of course there's a big gap in the middle of the century Showalter doesn't look at at all — from Ivy Compton-Burnett and Rebecca West to Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, it's radio silence. And what happened to Angela Carter? — surely Showalter ought to have known about her at the latest by the time of the revised 1982 edition?
Also missing, as Showalter acknowledges, is any reference to working-class authors. Obviously there weren't many working-class women writing novels in the nineteenth century, but by the 1970s there would have been a few to choose from: Jessie Kesson would be an obvious example, or the Manchester socialist novelist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. Neither make it into Showalter's otherwise very interesting and useful Biographical Appendix.
A bit of a period piece, then, but it made me more interested than I expected to be in obscure nineteenth century novelists — a few more names have been added to the reading list! show less
(Virginia Woolf, show more "Professions for women" (1931), in The death of the moth)
The point Showalter keeps coming back to in her discussion of women novelists in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain is how what women could write about was constrained by their own upbringing, social norms and — above all — the prejudices of (real or imaginary) male readers. She sees this active or passive censorship (vividly dramatised by Woolf in her famous lecture) as the thing above all others limiting the literary achievement of women during this period. Geniuses like George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë were able to circumvent it to some extent by using non-explicit techniques to get their message across, but for most writers it meant at least a fudged ending to their stories, if not an abject surrender to convention. There was almost a breakthrough with the sensationalist writers of the sixties and seventies (Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the many imitators of her bestsellerLady Audley's secret), and Showalter has obviously had a lot of fun rediscovering their work. But she finds that they didn't quite have the nerve to push things as far as they might have, and were overtaken by the political campaigning literature around the turn of the century, which Showalter finds of little literary interest, being so concerned not to distract attention from the Suffrage issue by offending other sensibilities.
She moves on to looking in some detail at the "aesthetic" writers of the post-1914 period, Katharine Mansfield (who probably shouldn't be here, being neither British nor a novelist, but never mind...), Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson. There's a valuable, detailed look at both Richardson, whom Showalter clearly admires, even though she was writing herself into something of a dead end, and Woolf, whom Showalter finds it very difficult to like. Showalter likes Woolf as a critic and essayist, and points out how her mental health problems could be related to the way she was discouraged from relating properly to her own femininity by her father, husband and sister. However, she can't help finding most of Woolf's fiction limited, prejudiced and irrelevant to the feminist cause. Perhaps she'd have seen this differently a decade or two further on, but in the world of the early seventies she certainly wasn't alone in this. (The arguments here reminded me a bit of what John Carey says about writing and class in The intellectuals and the masses, for instance.)
Looking at her own time, Showalter doesn't attempt a complete survey of British women's writing, but focusses on a small number of writers whom she considers relevant to both the development of the literary tradition they inherited and the advance of feminism, in particular Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble. I wouldn't argue with that, but it does mean that some important (in hindsight) writers like Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark only get mentioned in passing. And of course there's a big gap in the middle of the century Showalter doesn't look at at all — from Ivy Compton-Burnett and Rebecca West to Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, it's radio silence. And what happened to Angela Carter? — surely Showalter ought to have known about her at the latest by the time of the revised 1982 edition?
Also missing, as Showalter acknowledges, is any reference to working-class authors. Obviously there weren't many working-class women writing novels in the nineteenth century, but by the 1970s there would have been a few to choose from: Jessie Kesson would be an obvious example, or the Manchester socialist novelist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. Neither make it into Showalter's otherwise very interesting and useful Biographical Appendix.
A bit of a period piece, then, but it made me more interested than I expected to be in obscure nineteenth century novelists — a few more names have been added to the reading list! show less
A fascinating look inside the life of an important figure in our history, especially good at getting beyond the cardboard heroine cutouts and setting her achievements within the context of a seriously troubled if loving marriage and a sometimes-ambivalent (even neglectful) if loving parenthood. Julia Ward Howe first romanticized then condemned the Civil War (and war itself). She hesitated to join the suffragettes because of the popular assumptions in the culture at large, but soon became one show more of the most influential voices within the movement. She wrestled with the expectations put upon her, but often imposed similar expectations on others. She was beautifully, frustratingly human, and a powerful force for good even as she stumbled a bit in different situations. "
"Ambitious people climb," she wrote. "Faithful people build." We could use a few more faithful people like Julia Ward Howe. show less
"Ambitious people climb," she wrote. "Faithful people build." We could use a few more faithful people like Julia Ward Howe. show less
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- Popularity
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- Rating
- 3.9
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- 41
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- 86
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