SOURCE: "Formal Strategies in a Female Narrative Tradition: The Case of Swann: A Mystery," in Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women, State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 19-32.

In the following essay, Sweeney argues that in Swann, Shields focuses on the meaning and ambiguity of feminist literature.

My department, like many others, is debating how best to incorporate minority authors, marginalized texts, and unconventional genres into the canon—into the canon, that is, which we teach our sophomore majors in a two-semester course entitled "Traditions of English Literature." At a departmental discussion on whether to include Adrienne Rich in this syllabus, one of my colleagues, a narrative theorist and stalwart formalist, said he would gladly teach Rich's poetry in the context of her feminism—but only if he was persuaded that her feminism was expressed in the form as well as the content...