Key feminist texts for me to read and leave lying about the house for dd?

[HRHQueenElizabethII]

Spurred on by musings from another thread: I've read almost no feminist writings, and was one of those women in my early 20s who rejected the term; through not understanding it.

I've been extraordinarily lucky - I've had strong female role models, but find myself more feminist than them, and have married a man who's clearly a "natural" feminist - though he hasn't read the literature either. But so much of what I read and see makes me want to buy some key texts, past and current, so that dd will have access to them as she grows up, and so understand the contexts and conditions which will influence the choices she makes in the future, and those made by people she comes into contact with.

Anyone fancy giving me a reading list?

Literary criticism is NOT a work of art! Not a bit of it. You'll be claiming all sorts next if I let that one get past.

That's depressing and interesting Sibh. I'd be making them work against the grain too. Though perhaps if they are doing a journalism course, they are only interested in FACTS. . Perhaps it's what has brought them to Journalism that makes them think that way, rather than an indication of all 20 y-olds?

Some is, ahundredtimes. S/Z, for example. (Not strictly literary criticism, I grant you. But certainly a book about a book...).

to return to your initial point, Robes,

"Most of the observations are special cases of more general truths about society, power, morality"

you forget that feminist literature, literary criticism, and feminist political theory had a distinct political goal, which was to give name to the inchoate experiences of generations of women, and empower them.

So - even if there were no other point, which I'd dispute - "feminist literature" has that weighty goal behind it.

Good literature, journalism and lit crit all use language artfully though.

And even bad examples of the above always serve to endorse or dislodge the cultural assumptions a reader brings with them when they start to read.

I need those journalism students to understand the power and responsibility involved in wielding words, so that when my DD1 reads their 'lifestyle' columns in the paper a few years down the line, they are not peddling patriarchy either consciously or unconsciously ...

ALSO might I remind you all that the OP is concerned with key feminist TEXTS not key feminist fictions ..

I must confess that I haven't read any fem lit crit since the age of 20, but I'm glad it exists, and if we are talking about texts having political value (which we were! No-one mentioned their claim to art until, like, just now!) then they can be quite as valuable as primary texts blah blah

I love Mumsnet

Thank you so much, everybody. Lots and lots of food for thought. Perhaps I should save this thread for dd!

Off to bed, anyway. Night!

Giving Voice.

Pen, sorry - what is S/Z?

This reminds me of once handing in a, I thought, really v. good essay on Blake and my lecturer saying, 'I see you followed the Jungian critical path here?' and I said, 'I did?' and he said, 'yes, next time you must explore with Marx' and I said, 'Okay.' Then I went and wrote some poems instead.

sorry, I said literature-reading a work of art. That's wrong of course. I should have just said it is creative, beuatiful, incapable of being fully accounted for reductively etc. Has that in common with a work of art/literature. Not art though bcs not skilled.

Yes Sibh - you so do. Go to it!

And - --- AAAND - it was in the context of useful thingies for a young woman..

What is the best one SHORT brilliant inspiring piece of lit crit in the English language?

S/Z

Night all.

Off to watch Smack the Pony [apt] on 4oD.

yes, bat, re giving a name to the inchoate. That v important.

(My name is Robespierre and I am inchoate.)

Haven't read whole thread but well done HRH for a fabulous discussion. I'm watching this thread so I can educate myself later - have shamefully read very few of the recommended books. Maybe that's why I still bring DH his pipe and warmed slippers with his evening mug of cocoa...

It's a very long thread. Has anyone suggested Trinny and Suzannah's What Your Clothes Say About You?

Well, golly Pen if that's art then we need a whole new thread:

What is Art?

On the basis of the Wiki entry, I think I'd dispute it. I'd have to read it first perhaps. It seems to be a key text on how to view art, rather than being art itself?

Actually maybe critical theory and criticism is a science?

Okay so what wanker is foolish/brave enough to start the 'what is art? thread...

(Hold on. Let's make this interesting )

...and get it into the Talk Roundup or even better the hot topics box thing on the chat page "Art - or culturally-constituted? The Mumsnet Jury decides".

It is one of the Scientific Arts 100x.

Not me! I'm too arty. I couldn't possibly commit decide.

Oh lovely a scientific art! Are there also artful sciences? I want to do one if there is. I always though biology quite artful.

artful sciences here

You could offer a joint major with separatist feminist crit?

Ok - I'll pass on defining art for tonight.

But, you could buy the Broadview edition of Jane Eyre and read the book. Then look at the essays after, and the documents produced at the same time as the novel retrieved for you by those arty-sciencey lit-critters.

The essays would take a fantastic novel and show how that fizzy feeling people were talking about earlier would have been generated for the novel's first readers by alchemical reactions between fiction, popular truths and other ideas out there around them.

That discussion would lead you by one route or another to Mary Wollstonecraft and her Vindication of the Rights of Woman which is a political essay.

When Jane Eyre stands at her window and surveys her position ( in the novel, and as a woman in her society) she almost quotes a passage from Vindications. Bronte is in dialogue with, and inspired by Wollstonecraft.

Then you could read Wollstonecraft's novel Maria which is a thinly-novelised version of her essay.

Bronte's novel has had the most influence, because literature fizzes more brightly and accessibly than thinkpieces often do, but the relationships here are dynamic and productive, not competitive.

I'm now boring myself.
Who's manning the barricades of the war of independence on the night-timd shift?

bravo sibh.