Book dossier

White woman speaks with forked tongue

by Nicole Ward Jouve

The appraisals here of a broad range of women's writing suggests a different direction for feminist criticism, combining as it does intellectual debate and textual analysis with fictional example and autobiographical detail. In addressing the need for the critic to say "I" and to own judgements and statements instead of attributing these to an apparently impersonal third person, the author points up some of the shortcomings of much prevailing "feminist" analysis, challenging the foundations of the Anglo-American feminist idea. Purposely avoiding the "totalizing" effect of much academic criticism, the writer/critic finds a different format and methodology for her insights and observations on a range of writers, from Doris Lessing to Helene Cixous. Her analyses of the links between criticism and autobiography enable her to highlight the absurdity of attempting to write in the light of recent critical and scientific knowledge as if the self were a stable, unified construct.