SOURCE: Lee, Hermione. “Rule-breakers Rule.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5132 (10 August 2001): 22.

In the following review, Lee commends Showalter's “energetic and opinionated” arguments in Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage.

“Life stories retain their power when theories fade.” So Elaine Showalter claims at the start of her book of energetic and opinionated “claiming”, [Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage,] turning her back on feminist literary criticism and social history in favour of a collection of potted biographies of notable women. These are not, as she explains, the standard high-achieving, exemplary success stories (her examples of that would be Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher). Nor are they necessarily women who defined themselves as feminists. The intention is to broaden the definition of feminism, to claim for it (whatever “it” is, under this rubric) a much more inclusive membership. These are women who, as Showalter puts it, have refused...