SOURCE: “An Interview with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar,” in Critical Texts: A Review of Theory and Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1989, pp. 17–38.

In the following interview conducted by Rosdeitcher, Gubar and Gilbert discuss a variety of topics such as their work, women writers, feminist criticism, their critics, and their writing partnership.

[Rosdeitcher:] I'd like to begin with a discussion of The Madwoman in the Attic, which has come to be regarded as one of the founding texts of American feminist criticism. What did you feel were the most pressing issues it raised at the time of its publication?

[Gubar:] Well, Sandra and I began thinking about The Madwoman in 1974, and as we were working on it a generation of feminist literary critics had begun to emerge, working primarily on issues of images of women in male literature and then on the recovery of the neglected or misread female...