The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination [Paperback]

Professor Sandra M. Gilbert (Author), Professor Susan Gubar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1980 | ISBN-10: 0300025963 | ISBN-13: 978-0300025965

This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual".

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A groundbreaking study of women writers." -- Martin Arnold, The New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Sandra M. Gilbert is professor of English at the University of California at Davis. Susan Gubar is professor of English and women's studies at Indiana University. They are the co-authors of the three-volume No Man's Land, also published by Yale University Press. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 733 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300025963
• ISBN-13: 978-0300025965
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,703,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow., November 23, 2010

By 

hezlj - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Nota Bene) (Paperback)

I took this book out of the library just over a month ago, in the hope of finding a few useful bits and bobs for an coursework essay on women in Victorian literature. Last year, I became vaguely aware that Gilbert and Gubar must be pretty influential, since so many other critics seemed to be referring to them, but I don't think any amount of recommendation could have prepared me to be quite so blown away.

This book went so far above and beyond my expectations that I'd bought my own copy and taken the library book back within a week. I pretty well devoured it, and had to make myself stop reading so that I didn't neglect writing the essay for which I'd obtained it.

It's a rare and magical thing when you discover a critic who not only writes a fascinating and compelling argument, but actually makes it readable and accessible. As to the reviewers who found it verbose and poorly written, Lord help you if you have to wade through anything of the usual density of pretentious academics. I often find reading critical material a pretty depressing experience for that reason, but Gilbert and Gubar managed somehow to make it all seem incredibly exciting.

Five stars also for sheer comprehensiveness - something on this scale must have taken a phenomenal amount of work. The book might present itself as an examination of nineteenth-century literature exclusively, but it definitely goes way beyond that, analysing the mythology that has been defining women in Western culture for centuries. I can, as a result, see myself returning to this again and again, both for university essays, and for my own personal benefit.

An absolute must-read for anyone remotely interested in feminist theory and/or the social functions of the myths and images that recur time and again in English literature.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Seminal Text in Gothic Scholarship, September 14, 2000

By 

Molly M. Wolf (Havertown PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Nota Bene) (Paperback)

What scholar of the Gothic, particularly the Female Gothic, could do without Madwoman?

Named for Bertha, the mad wife locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Gilbert and Gubar's work on nineteenth-century women writers and their texts is essential in this field.

Well written, insightful, imaginative, and authoritative, Madwomen in the Attic is, in my opinion, a seminal text in Gothic literary scholarship.

I highly recommend this book, and its companion book "No Mans Land."

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another gem., January 1, 2007

By 

Bruce Oksol "oksol" (San Antonio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Nota Bene) (Paperback)

Could this have been titled "The Misreading of 19th Century Female Novelists"? "The Madwoman" is not an easy read: it's an academic effort and a superb effort at that. But the casual bronteelioteyre fan will be lulled into a sense of familiarity -- "yes, I remember reading that" -- only to discover too late that he / she has completely missed the point of all those famous 19th century novels, at least from the perspective of these two clever, insightful, witty women who somehow came together to write perhaps the definitive feminist view of 19th century female novelists. Taking just one example out of hundreds: after reading their discussion of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey," I re-read the novel and couldn't stop laughing at this parody. Even more entertaining was the fact that so many critics panned "Northanger" when it came out, misreading that it was a parody of the entire genre of the romantic (with a small "r") novel of that era.

[Added later (November 11, 2008)]: this is one of the landmark books in "feminist studies." Whether one agrees with these authors, the fact is that any newer work on feminist studies will quote this book. Someone remarked that the authors are very verbose; they needed a better editor with a red pen, but that's fine. Sometimes it takes multiple explanations before the reader understands the concept. I find myself going back to this book often to look up a specific author / specific work. I continue to highly recommend it.