Customer Reviews

Hamlet's Mother and Other Women

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I read this book many years ago. Every few months I find myself thinking about a point that she raised, whether about literature or about the lives of academic women or about strong women in the 20th century. Heilbrun is a woman of complex insights written in a clear and accessible style! A wonderful read for lovers of literature and for feminists, male and female, young and old.

In one of the several introductory notes to the sections of this collection, Carolyn Heilbrun recounts that when she delivered one speech at a convention in 1985, "I could not see the Southern gentleman on the platform behind me, but I was later told that if looks could kill I would have dropped dead on the spot." (Having been present at another of her speeches during the same decade, I can vouch that she doesn't embellish the reaction.) The essay, "What Was Penelope Unweaving?," uses the story of Odysseus's wife to enlarge on the idea that "women must make new fictions of their lives." By today's standards, Heilbrun's speech is so innocuous--not to mention perceptive and textually grounded--that the reaction of the "Southern gentleman" is itself a comment on how far literary criticism and social attitudes have progressed in the intervening quarter century.

One can be thankful that even many members of the Old Guard--those still living, anyway--now understand that resurrecting and discussing writing by and about women is not a threat to but an enhancement of literature. And Heilbrun was one of those teachers largely responsible for the change in mindset, more effective than most because she scorned the tempting quagmires of jargon and was famous for her plain speaking. Even when you might disagree with her conclusions, her arguments make you think of literature and culture in new ways. This collection, first published in 1990, gathers twenty-one selections, including several well-regarded and groundbreaking essays and a few obscure pieces that deserve to be more widely read.

Among the highlights are the title essay (published in 1957!) and the explorations of the works of various authors. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorites, someone I've read and reread, but the two essays here have made me rethink her oeuvre entirely. (The essay on Woolf and Joyce, written in 1982 for a never-published anthology, is a must-read.) Heilbrun also examines, in two pairs of essays, Vera Brittain and May Sarton, two authors I haven't yet read but now realize I must. Her essays on detective fiction (Heilbrun wrote several novels under the pseudonym Amanda Cross) didn't necessarily make me want to read more whodunits but were entertaining and witty nonetheless.

Heilbrun compares some of her traditionalist opponents to creationists who treat "texts" as "isolated and reified" scripture. What these essays show, and what Heilbrun's critics miss, was that she and her colleagues were helping to make literature not just a matter for academic turgidity but also an exciting venture for new readers. "The excitement," she concludes in a speech given to chairs of English departments, "lies in making that new generation familiar with our discoveries; in realizing that we have a chance both to read masterpieces . . . and yet bring to the classroom the sense of wanting to call up the author." Through examination of their texts, Heilbrun argues, the authors themselves are never more than a metaphorical phone call away.