From Publishers Weekly
Gubar and Sandra M. Gilbert revolutionized feminist literary criticism with their 1979
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. This memoir crossed with cultural criticism, written in the style of Virginia Woolf's foundational feminist manifesto,
A Room of One's Own, is a valiant attempt to wed the personal and political with playful literary imitation. Using not only Woolf's structure but also her tone and language, Gubar guides the reader through an academic year (she teaches at Indiana University) as she reflects on the state of present-day feminist politics. She covers the expected topics—the place of postmodern theory in the academy, how race is now discussed in feminist literary criticism. But Gubar's slavish imitation of Woolf's style ("Imponderables that profound indubitably require dawdling, I mused, glancing out the window....") simply inhibits clear locution. A deeper problem is that Gubar's often smart insights are buried in the indirect, even rambling, style. For example, in an analysis of the dynamics at a fellowship-granting meeting, Gubar describes all of the participants as barnyard animals, but the whimsy fails, detracting from Gubar's important points. Gubar is a vital voice on academic feminist concerns, but most of this volume fails in both its literary conceit and as a coherent argument.
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Review
This is the latest endeavor by award-winning literary critic Gubar (English, Indiana Univ.), who has numerous works of theory, criticism, and literature to her name, most recently, an annotated edition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Gubar's allusions to that book are more than titular. This experimental narrative criticism is an astute feminist revision of Woolf's title that reflects contemporary academic moods and mores. It builds on a year in the life of an on-campus professor and beyond. Gubar's attention to descriptive and explicative detail doesn't falter. Characterizations are meticulous yet humorous and emphatically drive home critical points about changes and advancements in feminism. Highly recommended for all academic libraries and women's studies collections. --Library Journal
"Spoken from the heart, Rooms of Our Own provides a powerful antidote to the pessimism so often expressed about 'feminism' or 'the women's movement' or younger women's seeming lack of interest in battles that still need to be fought. Gubar, one of the foremost pioneers, addresses these issues with elegance and wit, elucidating the multiple currents swirling around gender studies and social activism today and illustrating why they still profoundly matter. Rooms of Our Own speaks as much to the students she so lovingly depicts as to those of us who teach them."
-- Brenda R. Silver, Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor, Dartmouth College
"If there is a young scholar, somewhere, who does not know Susan Gubar's work, or the history of feminist thought, Rooms of Our Own would make an excellent gift. Indeed, the book itself reads as a kind of gift: a gift to feminist scholars, to university communities, and to the reader rooted among either of these. Which is to say, this book is a gift to the people and institutions its author has lived among with such brilliance and wit for the past four decades as one of our most influential feminist literary critics."--Women's Studies Quarterly
