Feminist Reading(s) and reading into feminist theory

Abstract

Let me confess in the beginning that I am a latecomer to the field of feminist literary criticism. Having left academia (or, more accurately, never really becoming part of it-the position I got two years after receiving my Ph.D. was one of raising two children), I was introduced to feminist criticism in the mid-1980s, a few years after I wrote the introduction to This Kind of Woman on which the review “Reading Women's Texts” concentrates. I have found feminist literary criticism intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. I found the intellectual stimulation similar to what I had experienced after being introduced to the theories of Freud and Erikson. Indeed, my basic framework for understanding human behavior is colored by those theories I have learned earlier. I am quite willing, however, to apply new theories that would work against the old ones as long as such applications open up new terrain in literary interpretation. On the other hand, it is not a good practice with literary criticism to place a theory ahead of works and to try to force a theoretical position on them. In this response to the review I will therefore try to defend my position without rejecting the notion that there are new worthwhile readings of the stories, that is, that some corrections and modifications of the original reading may be possible and desirable.