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Thinking About Women: Scathingly Witty Literary Criticism on Prejudice in Letters by an Oxonian Critic
A scathingly witty attack on literary misperceptions of women and prejudice against women in letters by an Oxonian critic and writer.
- GenresNonfictionFeminismEssays
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 1970
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March 28, 2018
The good news is this book is just as seminal today as it was when it was released in 1968.
The bad news is this book is just as seminal today as it was when it was released in 1968.
This book was awesome and I highly recommend it, but it also depressed the hell out of me because of the so many additional, subtle ways misogyny and patriarchy exist in our society that I hadn't even noticed. The book is densely written and I often felt like I was reading a text book on the subject, so this isn't light reading, but the material is handled in a witty and comprehensive manner.
The bad news is this book is just as seminal today as it was when it was released in 1968.
This book was awesome and I highly recommend it, but it also depressed the hell out of me because of the so many additional, subtle ways misogyny and patriarchy exist in our society that I hadn't even noticed. The book is densely written and I often felt like I was reading a text book on the subject, so this isn't light reading, but the material is handled in a witty and comprehensive manner.
August 22, 2025
A COMMENTARY ON LITERARY INTERPRETATIONS OF WOMEN (AND MEN)
Author Mary Ellmann (1921-1989) wrote in the Preface to this 1968 book, “The general nature of this book was discussed in an interview conducted several months ago… It seems convenient now to reproduce the exchange as a reader’s guide to all that follows. It also seems convenient to abbreviate the Interviewer and my name as ‘I’ and ‘ME.’:
I: Could you explain why you are writing about women?... you were not prompted by feminism?
ME: Please.
I: Oh. Feminism is out isn’t it?
ME: Well, yes, in the way principles go all out before they’re practiced…
I: Then you do not have a female program of your own?
ME: No. No program…
I: [I]s your work concerned with the status of American women?... a good deal of work has been done on this subject. And it looks as though their status is slipping.
ME: I applaud this work. I deplore this slipping…
ME: There’s an enormous number of opinions about women, and I will admit I’m impressed by the regularity and the intensity with which they are expressed. Some are more plausible than others, but their plausibility or implausibility isn’t so much the point. It’s their REITERATION…
ME: People also say things like ‘Women have a natural capacity for self-sacrifice’ or ‘Women feel deeply.’ Either statement is possibly true, certainly tedious, and evidently irresistible…
ME: Opinions about women are about an eccentric phenomenon, which is felt to exert some obscure influence upon the center…
I: But then perhaps you’ll simply confess that men are more curious than women.
ME: That is a possibility men often raise. And perhaps they’re right. Historically, at any rate, there’s perhaps some correlation between authority and curiosity. As soon as something is controlled, it becomes a problem or a puzzle to the one who controls it…
I: But in the United States… you would like to put an end to tedious opinions about women?
ME: I’m not sure. Imagine the tedium WITHOUT them! Anyway, they’re not simply tedious. They’re often bold--- I mean in their flights beyond embarrassment…
ME: But since I am most interested in women as WORDS---as the words they pull out of mouths, I am not pretending to SOME detachment, some is real….
ME: One can imagine an impossibly different world, in which this kind of attention was diverted from women to some other phenomenon… A suspension of BELIEF, for a change. Or eight sexes instead of two---that would divide all available attention by four…
ME: But what if fixed attention and critical attention are the same?... Nothing can be looked at for very long, that’s why lovers fall asleep. And then so much attention is unloving all over. I am thinking of the kind of attention the English newspapers focus on the United States. Or the way people at the zoo stare at cobras or at the outrageous backsides of baboons.”
She observes, “It is not that male sexual histories, in themselves, are not potentially funny---even though they seem to be thought perceptibly less so than female sexual histories. It is rather that the literal fact of masculinity, unlike femininity, does not impose an erogenic form upon all aspects of the person’s career.” (Pg. 30-31)
She asserts, “for example, Flannery O’Connor is praised not only as a woman writer who writes as well as a man might wish to write, but also as a woman writer who succeeds in being less feminine than some men. She is less ‘girlish’ than Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams. In effect, once the critic’s attention is trained… upon the Female Temperament, he invariably sideswipes at effeminacy in the male as well. The basic distinction becomes nonliterary: it is … between the critic and other persons who seem to him, regrettably, less masculine than he is. The assumption of the piece is that no higher praise of a woman’s work exists than that such a critic should like it or think that other men will like it. The same ploy can also be executed in reverse. Norman Mailer, for example, is pleased to think that Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’ is a man’s book to read, a book which merely ‘puzzles’ women. Women cannot comprehend male books, men cannot tolerate female books. The working rule is simple, basic: there must always be two literatures like two public toilets, one for Men and one for Women.” (Pg. 32-33)
In her chapter entitled ‘Phallic Criticism,’ she comments on Norman Mailer’s book ‘Cannibals and Christians’: “The concept of femininity is static and resistant, that of masculinity at once dynamic and striving… it is difficult not only to pass a test [for ‘masculinity’] but to find a test to pass. Everything conspires to make occasions of courage, in the formal and stylized sense of such occasions in the past, hard to come by.” (Pg. 51-52)
She states, “religions must work like washing machines: men construct them and women run them. To found a religion is inventive, but to keep its rules is piety. At first glance, this piety seems at odds with the still stronger association of women with deceit. But the two are easily reconciled by an intermediary hypocrisy: it can be assumed that piety, like the courage of animals, is fiercely displayed without being truly felt. Henry Miller, for one, has functioned as an authority on this division between women’s professed and actual purposes. His protagonists take pleasure in sexual engagements with women who never cease to describe their sectarian chastity. So we are taught that impatience is honest and compunction pretentious. At any rate, the incongruity of deceit and piety represents only another of the necessary sacrifices of logic to contrast. When men are searching for truth, women are content with lies. But while men are searching for diversion or variety, women counter with their stultifying respect for immediate duty… Similarly, in social manners, the healthy vulgarity of men is constricted by anemic gentility of women.” (Pg. 93-94).
She suggests, “Changes in the condition of work, of payment and of social independence diminished the old availability of the servant, the old impunity of the master. And without them, there was no longer a foundation for the benevolence toward the servant which had always before finally prevailed. The sexual intersection of economic classes was modified: the woman became the mistress, the man the servant and the theme humiliation. The servant took the advantage, and the reader’s vicarious satisfaction was vindictive. The master had previously bent down to the servant, now the ‘proud and stiff’ mistress was BROUGHT down by the servant---as Lady Chatterley was dominated by her game-keeper and Miss Julie by her houseboy. (The emphasis on the polite titles of the women in contrast to their rude copulation is the same in both compositions.) Essentially, if women were not to play servants, others would play servants against them.” (Pg. 130)
She observes, “In intellectual matters, there are two distinctions between men and women, though only one of them applies uniformly and consistently to all participants. This is the first distinction, which is simple, sensuous and insignificant: the male body lends credence to assertions, while the female takes it away. Once in a while, by an exceptional solidity (like that, say, of Gertrude Stein) the female body overcomes this disadvantage. Ordinarily, however, manful effects are a strategic error for the woman, tending to replace a meager intimidation of the audience by their simple amusement or even hostility. Obviously male figures vary as much as female figures. They are mutually affected by such problems as thick ankles, short necks, fat thighs, bellies and paunches. Male figures do not, however, SEEM to vary as much (or as disastrously) as female figures: for one thing, conventional modern male clothing is more evasive than conventional female clothing…” (Pg. 148)
For those interested in pre-feminist literary criticism (particularly of male/female stereotypes), this book will be of keen interest.
Author Mary Ellmann (1921-1989) wrote in the Preface to this 1968 book, “The general nature of this book was discussed in an interview conducted several months ago… It seems convenient now to reproduce the exchange as a reader’s guide to all that follows. It also seems convenient to abbreviate the Interviewer and my name as ‘I’ and ‘ME.’:
I: Could you explain why you are writing about women?... you were not prompted by feminism?
ME: Please.
I: Oh. Feminism is out isn’t it?
ME: Well, yes, in the way principles go all out before they’re practiced…
I: Then you do not have a female program of your own?
ME: No. No program…
I: [I]s your work concerned with the status of American women?... a good deal of work has been done on this subject. And it looks as though their status is slipping.
ME: I applaud this work. I deplore this slipping…
ME: There’s an enormous number of opinions about women, and I will admit I’m impressed by the regularity and the intensity with which they are expressed. Some are more plausible than others, but their plausibility or implausibility isn’t so much the point. It’s their REITERATION…
ME: People also say things like ‘Women have a natural capacity for self-sacrifice’ or ‘Women feel deeply.’ Either statement is possibly true, certainly tedious, and evidently irresistible…
ME: Opinions about women are about an eccentric phenomenon, which is felt to exert some obscure influence upon the center…
I: But then perhaps you’ll simply confess that men are more curious than women.
ME: That is a possibility men often raise. And perhaps they’re right. Historically, at any rate, there’s perhaps some correlation between authority and curiosity. As soon as something is controlled, it becomes a problem or a puzzle to the one who controls it…
I: But in the United States… you would like to put an end to tedious opinions about women?
ME: I’m not sure. Imagine the tedium WITHOUT them! Anyway, they’re not simply tedious. They’re often bold--- I mean in their flights beyond embarrassment…
ME: But since I am most interested in women as WORDS---as the words they pull out of mouths, I am not pretending to SOME detachment, some is real….
ME: One can imagine an impossibly different world, in which this kind of attention was diverted from women to some other phenomenon… A suspension of BELIEF, for a change. Or eight sexes instead of two---that would divide all available attention by four…
ME: But what if fixed attention and critical attention are the same?... Nothing can be looked at for very long, that’s why lovers fall asleep. And then so much attention is unloving all over. I am thinking of the kind of attention the English newspapers focus on the United States. Or the way people at the zoo stare at cobras or at the outrageous backsides of baboons.”
She observes, “It is not that male sexual histories, in themselves, are not potentially funny---even though they seem to be thought perceptibly less so than female sexual histories. It is rather that the literal fact of masculinity, unlike femininity, does not impose an erogenic form upon all aspects of the person’s career.” (Pg. 30-31)
She asserts, “for example, Flannery O’Connor is praised not only as a woman writer who writes as well as a man might wish to write, but also as a woman writer who succeeds in being less feminine than some men. She is less ‘girlish’ than Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams. In effect, once the critic’s attention is trained… upon the Female Temperament, he invariably sideswipes at effeminacy in the male as well. The basic distinction becomes nonliterary: it is … between the critic and other persons who seem to him, regrettably, less masculine than he is. The assumption of the piece is that no higher praise of a woman’s work exists than that such a critic should like it or think that other men will like it. The same ploy can also be executed in reverse. Norman Mailer, for example, is pleased to think that Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’ is a man’s book to read, a book which merely ‘puzzles’ women. Women cannot comprehend male books, men cannot tolerate female books. The working rule is simple, basic: there must always be two literatures like two public toilets, one for Men and one for Women.” (Pg. 32-33)
In her chapter entitled ‘Phallic Criticism,’ she comments on Norman Mailer’s book ‘Cannibals and Christians’: “The concept of femininity is static and resistant, that of masculinity at once dynamic and striving… it is difficult not only to pass a test [for ‘masculinity’] but to find a test to pass. Everything conspires to make occasions of courage, in the formal and stylized sense of such occasions in the past, hard to come by.” (Pg. 51-52)
She states, “religions must work like washing machines: men construct them and women run them. To found a religion is inventive, but to keep its rules is piety. At first glance, this piety seems at odds with the still stronger association of women with deceit. But the two are easily reconciled by an intermediary hypocrisy: it can be assumed that piety, like the courage of animals, is fiercely displayed without being truly felt. Henry Miller, for one, has functioned as an authority on this division between women’s professed and actual purposes. His protagonists take pleasure in sexual engagements with women who never cease to describe their sectarian chastity. So we are taught that impatience is honest and compunction pretentious. At any rate, the incongruity of deceit and piety represents only another of the necessary sacrifices of logic to contrast. When men are searching for truth, women are content with lies. But while men are searching for diversion or variety, women counter with their stultifying respect for immediate duty… Similarly, in social manners, the healthy vulgarity of men is constricted by anemic gentility of women.” (Pg. 93-94).
She suggests, “Changes in the condition of work, of payment and of social independence diminished the old availability of the servant, the old impunity of the master. And without them, there was no longer a foundation for the benevolence toward the servant which had always before finally prevailed. The sexual intersection of economic classes was modified: the woman became the mistress, the man the servant and the theme humiliation. The servant took the advantage, and the reader’s vicarious satisfaction was vindictive. The master had previously bent down to the servant, now the ‘proud and stiff’ mistress was BROUGHT down by the servant---as Lady Chatterley was dominated by her game-keeper and Miss Julie by her houseboy. (The emphasis on the polite titles of the women in contrast to their rude copulation is the same in both compositions.) Essentially, if women were not to play servants, others would play servants against them.” (Pg. 130)
She observes, “In intellectual matters, there are two distinctions between men and women, though only one of them applies uniformly and consistently to all participants. This is the first distinction, which is simple, sensuous and insignificant: the male body lends credence to assertions, while the female takes it away. Once in a while, by an exceptional solidity (like that, say, of Gertrude Stein) the female body overcomes this disadvantage. Ordinarily, however, manful effects are a strategic error for the woman, tending to replace a meager intimidation of the audience by their simple amusement or even hostility. Obviously male figures vary as much as female figures. They are mutually affected by such problems as thick ankles, short necks, fat thighs, bellies and paunches. Male figures do not, however, SEEM to vary as much (or as disastrously) as female figures: for one thing, conventional modern male clothing is more evasive than conventional female clothing…” (Pg. 148)
For those interested in pre-feminist literary criticism (particularly of male/female stereotypes), this book will be of keen interest.
March 18, 2025
Woman author just came to school and a certain boy behind me could only talk about wanting to do her. Sigh it's all too common
Read
June 30, 2017Sigh.
This sat on my bedside table for years. I finally picked it up and after a week of rough handling from my daily toting around, it fell in two. Then the 1968 cheap paperback divided itself in 3, and began threatening further separation with every page turn. And while it's not uninteresting to be "Thinking About Women" from a sixties point of view, I decided that I would rather go to the library and get another Miss Fisher mystery. Is that okay? I was never a lit crit kind of person anyway.
This sat on my bedside table for years. I finally picked it up and after a week of rough handling from my daily toting around, it fell in two. Then the 1968 cheap paperback divided itself in 3, and began threatening further separation with every page turn. And while it's not uninteresting to be "Thinking About Women" from a sixties point of view, I decided that I would rather go to the library and get another Miss Fisher mystery. Is that okay? I was never a lit crit kind of person anyway.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews