Literature after Feminism

by Rita Felski

Recent commentators have portrayed feminist critics as grim-faced ideologues who are destroying the study of literature. Feminists, they claim, reduce art to politics and are hostile to any form of aesthetic pleasure. Literature after Feminism is the first work to comprehensively rebut such caricatures, while also offering a clear-eyed assessment of the relative merits of various feminist approaches to literature.

Spelling out her main arguments clearly and succinctly, Rita Felski explains how feminism has changed the ways people read and think about literature. She organizes her book around four key questions: Do women and men read differently? How have feminist critics imagined the female author? What does plot have to do with gender? And what do feminists have to say about the relationship between literary and political value? Interweaving incisive commentary with literary examples, Felski advocates a double critical vision that can do justice to the social and political meanings of literature without dismissing or scanting the aesthetic.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Academic, School

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Rita Felski is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and editor of New Literary History. Felski is a prominent scholar in the fields of aesthetics and literary theory, feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, and cultural studies.

Felski received an honors degree in French and German literature from Cambridge University and her PhD from the Department of German at Monash University in Australia. Before coming to the University of Virginia in 1994, she taught in the Program for English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University in Perth. She served as Chair of the Comparative Literature Program at Virginia from 2004 to 2008.

From 2003-2007 Felski served as U.S. editor of Feminist Theory. She has also served on the editorial boards of Modernism/Modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, Criticism, and Echo: A Music-Centered Journal. Her work has been translated into Korean, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feminist criticism, at its best, continues this opening up of new terrain, this enlargement of our horizons. Literature after feminism is an expanded field, not a diminished one.

I loved this book. It's so sensible and Felski keeps opposing either/or arguments, which is something with which I identify very strongly. It's very readable and Felski mentions a wealth of sources and ugh. It's great. [The gushing ends here]

I did have a bit of qualm with her usage of the term "Third World literature". I also think the whole concept of gender could have been questioned much more, but then again I also feel that this book needed to exist so that we could move beyond its conceptions of gender, masculinity and femininity. A wonderful review of feminist literary criticism up to 2003 (and it doesn't feel really outdated yet in 2014/many of its subjects are still super relevant).

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big slay, Rita! This is a wonderful overview to understand what feminist literary criticism does without being boring at all.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Rita Felski. I am absolutely giddy that she alluded to Educating Rita, a play I directed in college, extensively in the last chapter of the book when she discusses literary value and that she spent a great deal of time analyzing Margaret Atwood books that I love in her chapter on plots.

But even more than these overlaps with my personal tastes, I am impressed with the book because of her finely chiseled prose style -- never a word out of place -- her balanced assessments, and strong chapter structures. I think I would hand this book to any incoming doctoral student who wanted to work on feminist criticism, and I would certainly give it to an interested undergraduate or even non-academic who wanted to know what kinds of things feminist criticism can do, what kinds of perspectives (whether warring, coinciding, or utterly diverging) feminist scholars bring to texts. She also does a wonderful job addressing popular (and scholarly!) misconceptions about feminist criticism. The litany of insults that have been thrown at feminist criticism makes the opening paragraph of her book crackle with energy and amusement, as well as providing a tacit explanation for why such an explanatory volume is necessary.

Felski's bibliography and notes give a fabulous list of sources to raid. This book doesn't offer a presiding argument -- more of a presiding appreciation for the work that feminist thought does in the classroom, in the canon, and in scholarship. Some of her concepts were also helpful building blocks for thinking about criticism; for example, the idea of the allegory of the woman writer -- that these models of authorship do not define women writers exclusively but often function as presiding metaphors in studies of women's literary history. Felski is also given to sly deflations of popular metaphors or trends. She's also generous to scholars doing work that she finds interesting, and she offers compelling reasons to pursue the areas of inquiry she does find interesting.

A readable, teacherly book detailing the pleasures (and sometimes pitfalls!) of feminist literary criticism while offering many pleasures of its own. One of my favorite lines: "Woolf, it turns out, may be as intent on fragmenting unions as she is on unifying fragments."

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the best academic books I've ever read! Felski's writing was witty, accessible, clear and coherent. I especially loved the chapter about "Values" and how aesthetic appreciation is always linked to social class and access to education. According to Felski there is no natural way of "loving literature". If by literature we mean the standard pantheon of the greats, then most "ordinary" people fall into the category of baffled and ignorant.

Felski explained how those who value Shakespeare and Dickens have learned to do so. This usually means either growing up in a household where reading and talking about books (not watching TV) is taken for granted or taking literature classes in college. This is not something the majority of us does. (p. 135). Therefor the distinction of (literature) taste is based on class, status and education.

I find it interesting and troubling that the definition of "good literature" is still so dominated by masculine values as irony and understatement rather than emotion and melodrama, solitude and existential angst rather than domesticity and female friendships. Even here we can see the women's exclusion from (white) male power, especially in the Western world. Where are the female counterparts of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Camus, Orwell and Joyce?

So from now on, I recommend you that the next time you choose a new book, to choose a book written by a (non-Western) female author.

[Just This · Rating 4 out of 5]

lucid, readable & thought-provoking investigation into feminist literary criticism

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book this much. I thought it was going to be a little feminazi, but her opinions were always very sensible and well-argued. Overall, pretty enjoyable.

[Trilby O'Farrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, accessible introduction to feminist literary theory and criticism.

[Jennifer Standlee]

Partially read, fall 2019

[Elie · Rating 4 out of 5]

surprisingly intersectional but meandering without taking any definitive positions in the effort to be explanatory

3.5 rounded up

[Ben Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felski's book is engagingly readable and provides another much needed contribution to literary criticism that steers a middle ground between, on the one hand, practical and theoretical insights and, on the other, between the sociopolitical and purely aesthetic significance of literary art. She summarises and defends the history of feminist criticism from reactionary charges that it has 'sucked the life' from literary studies by focussing solely on the sociopolitical, while also challenging those aspects of feminist literary thought which Felski believes are unsustainable - such as the conflation of rightful skepticism about 'universals' with an unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious fact "that art does speak across social boundaries."

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent summary of feminist criticism and theory. Accessible enough for those who aren't literary experts and would like an overview.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite what my classmates said, I actually kind of enjoyed this book. It's a good introductory critical text.

[Raisu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to passionately disagree with some parts of this book, but that doesn't make me love it any less.

[Felicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of the literary theories of the past that pertain to feminism and female writings. It is a bit dry, though.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably sensible and clear. Read it when it came out and just re-read it and was impressed with its freshness.