Feminist Literary Criticism

In her book Writing Women’s Literary History, Margaret J. M. Ezell discusses, among other topics, the aspects and effects of literary criticism upon women’s literature. With the large and obvious exception of Virginia Woolf, about whom, it should be conceded, Ezell devoted more than a chapter of discussion, Ezell spends a great deal of her book discussing the myriad ways that men and their actions and opinions shaped the development of women’s literature. In particular, in her discussions of the effects of Victorian era literary criticism, every critic referred to by name was male. One is thus led to wonder, what about female literary critics? The criticisms by George Eliot, who is one of the most famous, and perhaps one of the only female …show more content…
According to Ezell, “in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [women] were certainly accused of writing bad verse, but they were also considered capable of writing good” (102). This perspective could just as easily be a description of the perspective of Eliot’s critical essays, for she too certainly accused women of her own time of writing bad literature, but also considered them to be capable of writing good, even exceptional works. For example, within the “Silly Novels” essay, Eliot both extensively criticizes the types of women’s writing that she considers inferior, as well as praises the writings of other women, specifically citing the “excellence [of] Currer Bell and Mrs. Gaskell” as epitomes of literary quality (1367). Even today, those Victorian women, more commonly referred to as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, are still considered to be superior novelists, so to claim that these women are “capable of writing good” would be an understatement. As for accusing women of writing bad literature, Eliot applies the mercilessness of Victorian era literary criticism to her Romantic-like focus of assessing literary quality—as opposed to a focus on moral character— to an extent that merely calling the critiqued works “bad” would be considered gentle by comparison. A particular concern for her was, as described by James D. Rust, that the “popular novels of the day repeated a succession of worn-out plots with stereotyped characters” (169). To her, this lack of originality and creativity in women’s literature was a defining characteristic of the “silly novels” that she found so irksome, and she spends a considerable portion of “Silly Novels” mocking the lack of uniqueness of such overused characters and plot points. Other grievances that Eliot critically attacks include what she perceives to be the silly