“Twenty Years on: A Literature of Their Own Revisited” (1998)

 As the title makes clear, the book was published in 1977 and it was the first of its kind to plot a literary history
of British women writers. The subtitle reads: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. The primary
focus of the book was to trace the female “subculture” in three historical phases: the ‘feminine’ period of
imitation and internalization—1840-1880; the ‘feminist’ period of advocacy and protest—from 1880-1920;
and the ‘female’ period of self-discovery and search for identity—1920 till present. Subsequently, she coined
a neologism—gynocriticism—for defining the three-fold phases of development in women’s writings.
 “Twenty years on” examines the reception of the book. Showalter makes an interesting observation: she says
that while men have been mostly respectful of her book, within feminist criticism, “the book has been both
imitated and reviled” (401). “Twenty years on” offers Showalter an opportunity to defend herself from the
charges made, which are listed below:
o That her “theoretical framework” was never made explicit. Primarily launched by Toril Moi in
Sexual/Textual Politics (1985), this became a standard argument for showing the inadequacies of the
Anglo-American tradition, a tradition which included Gilbert and Gubar’s Madwomen in the Attic
(1979).
o That she neglected writers before 1840. Pressed by Marilyn Butler, this charge was levelled against
her for the absence of the eighteenth century.
o The absence of race as a paradigm. Barbara Smith accused Showalter of race imperialism.
o That her historiography was “too canonical” and that she was unwilling to abandon the idea of
‘coherent’ history.
 How does she defend herself from these charges? She says: “For the I have been attacked past twenty years,
from virtually every point on the feminist hermeneutic circle, as separatist, careerist, theoretical, anti-
theoretical, racist, homophobic, politically collect, traditional and non-canonical critic.” (Showalter, 1998:
402). Showalter does not agree with any of the charges, and she offers the following:
o She opens her essay by giving a biography of her thesis and book and recalls the efforts she made to
plot the history of British writers. The account culminates in the publication history including the
information that the publisher had suggested the title, a fact that was misunderstood by many of her
critics who thought she had mutilated Woolf’s title (399-401).
o She defends herself from the charges made by Moi by saying that her concerns were “historical and
cultural” and she wished to explore the relations between “a dominant and muted culture”. She backs
her concerns by stating that these concerns were not philosophical or linguistic but “cultural
anthropology and social history” (p 404). She ends this first section of her essay by explaining why
she chose the term ‘gynocriticism’ in 1979 (p 404-405).
o She defends herself from the charge of overlooking the pre-1840 writers by saying that her interest lay
in “demystifying” the “greatness” that some women writers had been labelled with, and that she chose
1840 as the fit decade for emphasizing the “professionalism, marketing, and group awareness” of such
writers (406).
 o On the matter of race imperialism, without saying that she’s not guilty, she says that no one has quite
told her which black writer she had omitted in her study of nineteenth and early twentieth century
women’s writings (406).
o As far as the argument of being ‘too canonical’, Showalter argues that she remains committed to the
“idea of progress in English women’s writing if only in terms of range and freedom of expression”.
She refuses to eschew all literary models as ‘patriarchal’ as suggested by critics such as Ann Ardis
(407). She forcefully concludes this second section by stating that “After twenty-five years of feminist
criticism, I do not think feminists have exorcised all sense of literary hierarchies” (408).
 In this penultimate section Showalter addresses the criticism that was levelled at her for ignoring the 1890s
within the contemporary millennial concerns of the late 19 th century. She agrees that, today, as opposed to
when she wrote her book, she would give more attention to that “transitional” age given that more information
is available on writers of 1890s thanks to the work done by critics such as Rita Felski, Jane Eldridge Miller,
Margaret D. Stetz or Ann Ardis (408). Showalter says that during this transitional age/period
o women wrote “slim single volume/s” with the collapse of three-decker (409).
o Although she agrees with her assessment in A Literature of their Own that this “hay-day” was
pitifully brief, she expands on why the novel failed in the hands of post Victorian women writers
who could not negotiate the “truth dilemmas” of the period (409-410).
o Hence, she argues, that the best of British writing of this period was in the short story mode, a
form that helped describe the “struggles for new words and new forms” and she gives the example
of Sarah Grand’s “The Undefinable: A Fantasia” (410).
 In the short last section, Showalter addresses the 21 st century, from the lens of the late 1990s. Once again, she
stands by the concerns which she expressed in 1977, when she had cautioned that the room of one’s own
could well turn into a tomb if there’s “secession from male ‘power’, logic and violence”. At the same time,
looking at the hopes created by the ‘female tradition’, she feels that the logic of Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s
Sister” in A Room of One’s Own is no longer necessary as feminist history and criticism are no longer
dependent upon discovering the unique genius of an individual genius. Showalter celebrates the globalization
of feminist concerns, concerns which were first articulated in her book.

Overall assessment:

1. That the purpose of the writer is to defend her work which has been criticized. Since the book is not part of
required reading, the essay is self-referential; else, the reader must know the contents of A Literature of their
Own.
2. Even while one may agree that the 1980s and 1990s saw a vigorous debate on the merits/demerits of the book,
from today’s standpoint it is dated as the concerns of British women’s writing from 1840 till the middle of the
20th century are not the most important.
3. From a postcolonial point of view, unless the 19th century British writing is simultaneously placed within an
imperial context—an absence in Showalter’s book—the concerns raised are not relevant today.
4. The theoretical tools of subtculture and literary history are problematic as they can be deconstructed to show
the phallogentric tendencies evident in these theoretical tools.
5. The problem also lies in the cisgendering of the argument and theorizing.
6. Finally, even while we look for a stable transnational culture, Showalter seems unaware of the neo-imperialist
tendencies within globalization and how they can and do impact feminist studies.
7. It seems astonishing that as part of required feminist readings, we are left to quarrel with Showalter’s essay in
which she revisits her own work, a work that seems irrelevant at best and tedious at worst.