SOURCE: “Those Proper Ladies Writing in the Attic,” in Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 72, No. 54, February 11, 1980, p. B12.

In the following review, Miner praises The Madwoman in the Attic for “uncovering a discernible female imagination.”

The grand success of this study is that it stimulates us to re-read those books by proper ladies from the 19th century. As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar reconsider each work, they introduce us to The Madwoman in the Attic, the author's double, hiding in the seams of her writing, reflecting her anxiety and rage.

Gilbert and Gubar shatter the images of Jane Austen as the timid parlor mouse, the Brontës as contented rural lasses. George Eliot as the ugly, mannish scourge: “… almost all late 18th and 19th century women writers from Maria Edgeworth in ‘Castle Rackrent’ to Charlotte Brontë in ‘Jane Eyre.’ Emily Brontë in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ and George Eliot in...