Lit Theory - Gilbert - The Madwoman in the Attic

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

1.     The Madwoman in the Attic.

a.     What does it mean to be a woman writer in a patriarchal society?

                                               i.     How does a woman view the world when the aspects are voiced and defined by men.

b.     Writers inherit genres, styles, and metaphors from their predecessors.

                                               i.     Bloom’s Theory - Anxiety of influence: The fear that the writer is not the creator and the works of their predecessors overtake their work.

                                             ii.     To overcome, the writer must somehow invalidate the predecessors.

c.     Western literary history is overwhelmingly male.

d.     Bloom’s theory is a way to analyze male poetics.

                                               i.     It can also help distinguish the anxieties and achievements of female writers from those of the male writers.

e.     Women must confront precursors as male and as significantly different from themselves.

                                               i.     Male authors exercise patriarchal authority over women.

                                             ii.     They use extreme stereotypes.

                                            iii.     Women authors have to redefine themselves in the eyes as society as well.

                                            iv.     Women are not only competing against the male past, but also of the way society looks at woman authors.

f.      Many afflictions are the result of patriarchal society.

                                               i.     Many afflictions were attributed as women’s diseases primarily linked to the reproductive system.

                                             ii.     Education stunted growth of young girls.  Education in renunciation is the opposite of the traits of humans.

                                            iii.     Girls learn anxiety when learning about being beautiful object and may loath herself.

                                            iv.     Development of pathological fears of open spaces for those conditioned to privacy and domesticity.

                                             v.     Upper and upper middle class women were groomed to be frail in the 18^th century.

g.     Madness is associated with female art.

                                               i.     Created a rift between creativity and femininity.

                                             ii.     “Infection in the sentence breeds.”

h.     Women have “Female Power” handed down which is their matrilineal heritage of literary strength.

                                               i.     There is a need for women to find and remember their distinctive female power inherited from their foremothers.

Works Cited

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1923-1938. Print.