SOURCE: “Altering the Critical Landscape,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring, 1995, pp. 30–31.

In the following essay surveying Gubar and Gilbert's work in The Madwoman in the Attic and the three volumes of No Man's Land, Rubenstein lauds the studies, calling them a “landmark of feminist literary criticism.”

Sometimes it seems as if Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have read every significant text of fiction, poetry, and drama (as well as a few less significant ones) authored by a woman. In their ambitious and influential project of reconsidering the literary writing of women over two centuries, Gilbert and Gubar have fundamentally altered the critical landscape and assumptions about women's writing. The four-volume work that has resulted from their remarkable collaboration over nearly two decades has earned its place as a landmark of feminist literary criticism—indeed, of literary scholarship—produced during our era.

In the first volume, The Madwoman...