SOURCE: Kauffman, Linda. Review of The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory, by Elaine Showalter. Signs 12, no. 2 (winter 1987): 405-09.

In the following excerpt, Kauffman offers a positive assessment of The New Feminist Criticism, but notes that the collection lacks any substantial analysis of film and French feminism.

The great danger to avoid is the self-isolating nature of critical discourse.

[Jean Starobinski]

“Literature” is what gets taught.

[Roland Barthes]

These four collections evoke distinct stages in the recent history of feminism: Women's Personal Narratives recalls the remarkable efficacy of grass-roots consciousness-raising in the early 1970s, and Elaine Showalter's introduction to The New Feminist Criticism reminds us that a female literary tradition was one of the hallmarks of feminist criticism in the late 1970s. Showalter argues that literary theory has always been a “zealously guarded bastion of male intellectual endeavor,” whereas “the success of feminist criticism has...