SOURCE: “A Criticism of One's Own,” in New Republic, Vol. 194, No. 10, March 10, 1986, pp. 30–4.

In the following essay, Donoghue examines several feminist critics, and observes that feminist criticism is often reductionist and politically motivated. Donoghue maintains that The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women adversely affects feminist criticism because of Gubar and Gilbert's selection of works in the collection.

I have been reading a good deal of feminist criticism and scholarship. Not all of it—I am sure to have missed many books and essays I should have read. But I have made an attempt to see what has been happening in feminist criticism since 1970, when Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, the book usually taken as having started the feminist field by provoking sentiments and passions in its favor, was published. The main problem I have encountered is not the multiplicity of books and essays in the field. That is...