SOURCE: Todd, Jane Marie. Review of Sexual/Textual Politics, by Toril Moi. Comparative Literature 39, no. 4 (fall 1987): 364-66.

In the following review, Todd maintains that Sexual/Textual Politics succeeds in uncovering the theoretical assumptions of feminist theory, but finds some weaknesses in the second half of the book.

Published as part of the New Accents series, Sexual/Textual Politics presents itself as an introduction for the general reader to “the two main approaches to feminist literary theory, the Anglo-American and the French” (xiii). This is not quite an accurate picture, however. Although Moi does indeed discuss the major texts and authors of feminist criticism in the United States and French theoretical writings on woman in France, her book does not so much “introduce” an already-existing discipline or critical theory as argue for the pressing need for one. For, as Moi realizes, feminist literary theory does not yet exist, not...