Notes on Gilbert and Gubar
Spaull
- How do G&G use psychological
concepts
- as metaphors to describe women's
creative processes
- tend to twist them to suit
- What is Harold Bloom's theory and how
do they use/ change it?
- anxiety of influence --> anxiety
of authorship (in the 19thC)
- anxiety of influence:: male writers are
always in competition with their precursor/ father-figures.
Literature is a sort of Oedipal complex where
male writers battle with their fathers for power and access to the Muse.
- So Bloom's theory repeats the same
problems for women as Freud's theory
- Raises questions about how the
female writer relate to both male and female precursors.
- female version of anxiety of influecne is anxiety over whether she can write or
not--> anxiety of authorship
- In 19thC, women writers generally
have positive, maternal relationship with female precursors
- What are the major archetypes about
women writers that G&G identify?
- Pressure to be perfect creates a
dichotomy of images-- Angel on the surface, monster, hidden
- Images of doubles, women with split
personalities, shadow selves,
- Madwoman in the attic
- How do women writers use and change
these archetypes?
- How do G&G see women's boodies implicated in writing?
- What is the point of the Dinesan story as Gubar
explicates it?
- How does "the Yellow
Wallpaper" dramatize G&G's theories
about women's writing?
-
Gilbert and Gubar, "Infection in the Sentence" Chapter 2 of The Madwoman in the Attic
- What are some of the questions raised
by Bloom's theory of influence when applied to women writers?
- How do 19th and 20th centrury women authors react differently to literary
influence?
-