Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Sandra M. Gilbert
Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 363-366
Published by: University of Tulsa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464308 .
Accessed: 18/04/2011 02:36
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REVIEWS
TRADITION AND THE TALENTS OF WOMEN, edited by Florence
Howe. Urbana:Universityof Illinois Press, 1991. 379 pp. $44.95 cloth;
$17.50 paper.
As feministteacher,women'sstudiesscholar,groundbreakinganthologist,
English department administrator,mentor, friend, and role model, Mary
Anne Ferguson,now ProfessorEmeritusat the Universityof Massachusetts,
Boston, has for manyyearsbeen a major"motherof us all."I can remember
how excited and impressedI was in the mid-seventiesby the cogency of her
importantcollection Imagesof Womenin Literature,firstpublishedin 1973
and now in its fifth edition (1991). But I was equallymoved,when I learned
more abouther life, by the storyof her long struggleforprofessionalequality,
a tale-as FlorenceHoweputs it-of "literaland metaphysicaljourneys"that
she tells in an essay"ironicallycalled'A Success Story [?]"'(p. xv, n. 2).
A "facultywife"(assome of us havebeen deprecatinglycalled) andmother
of three, Fergusonembarkedon her academic career relatively late, then
found herself up against the tangle of "nepotism rules" and commuter
schedules that have increasinglyafflictedprofessionalcouples over the last
few decades.Her triumphoverbureaucraticobstacles,I mustconfess, meant
as much to me personallyas did her powerfuland incisive expose of the ways
in which "imagesof women"overthe centurieshavebeen on the whole more
hurtfulthan helpful, more debilitating than exhilarating.
Now, in honor of this nurturingfigure-whose own "image"is in fact an
inspiringone-Florence Howe has gathereda wide-ranginggroupof essays
on the talents and tradition(s) of women from the Renaissance to the
present. Sensibly organizedinto five coherent sections ("The'Cypher':A
Trope for Women Writers and Characters";"Autobiography:The Self as
Strategyfor Survival";"The Centrality of Marginality";"The Traditionof
Socially Engaged Literature";"Reprise:The TraditionRe-Visioned"),the
book coversauthorsand topics as variousas ElizabethCary and MeridelLe
Sueur,JaneAusten and MargaretWalker,gender politics/"geopolitics,"and
"women'stextile work."In doing so, while paying tribute to a founding
motherof feminist criticismand women'sstudies,this workgives us a pretty
accuratesense of where we have been, wherewe still (productively)are, and
where we may be going.
363
NOTES
1
JoyceCarolOates,"WhereAreYouGoing,WhereHaveYouBeen?"
Epoch,16,i
inEnglish,
ed.SandraM.GilbertandSusanGubar(NewYorkandLondon:Norton,
1985), pp. 2276-91.