Inventing Herself
Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Sure to take its place alongside the literary landmarks of modern feminism, Elaine Showalter's brilliant, provocative work chronicles the roles of feminist intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the present.
With sources as diverse as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Scream 2, Inventing Herself is an expansive and timely exploration of women who possess a boundless determination to alter the world by boldly experiencing love, achievement, and fame on a grand scale. These women tried to work, travel, think, love, and even die in ways that were ahead of their time. In doing so, they forged an epic history that each generation of adventurous women has rediscovered.
Focusing on paradigmatic figures ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller to Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag, preeminent scholar Elaine Showalter uncovers common themes and patterns of these women's lives across the centuries and discovers the feminist intellectual tradition they embodied. The author brilliantly illuminates the contributions of Eleanor Marx, Zora Neale Hurston, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and many more.
Showalter, a highly regarded critic known for her provocative and strongly held opinions, has here established a compelling new Who's Who of women's thought. Certain to spark controversy, the omission of such feminist perennials as Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Virginia Woolf will surprise and shock the conventional wisdom.
This is not a history of perfect women, but rather of real women, whose mistakes and even tragedies are instructive and inspiring for women today who are still trying to invent themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Showalter begins and ends her account of the lives of famous women with Mary Wollstonecraft and Princess Di, both of them "rule-breakers who followed their own path, who were determined to experience love, achievement, and fame, and who wanted their life to matter." In short, they were "feminist icons," and along with a long list of American and British women (plus Simone de Beauvoir), their life stories make up Showalter's idea of a feminist inheritance. Hers is an idiosyncratic list, as notable for who is out as who is in: Rebecca West, but not Virginia Woolf; Hillary Clinton, not Eleanor Roosevelt; Camille Paglia, not Mary Daly; Princess Di, not Jackie O. The women she highlights were hardly monuments of either invulnerability or consistency, and the book invites us to identify with their wounds and scars as well as with their heroic search for autonomy. Although those familiar with the field of women's studies will discover relatively little that is new here, the general reader will find Showalter's vigorous retelling of the lives of these feminist foremothers engaging and blessedly free of both academic jargon and the weight of theory. Though readers may find her choices occasionally bewildering, they will also discover in them rich material for lively argument.
