Resumo de How To Suppress Women's Writing

This book is quite simply, indispensable for anyone who wonders why women have, except for the recent past, been almost totally absent from the creation of writing and literature. Ms. Russ is completely on target as she breaks the techniques for obliterating women writers and their contributions down into ploys that are as easily recognizable as they are usable to examine the experience of those who are outside the mainstream in relation to "the canon" those works that are commonly read and taught and have been written almost exclusively by men.

Ms. Russ begins with "Prohibitions," both formal and informal. The practical impossibility of a man, for instance working fourteen hour days in a coal mine (she also recognizes the informal prohibitions exerted by class) and then working on perfecting one's writing. The sheer drudgery of women whose roles were those of servants, mothers and other types of caregivers, and who fought to create literature in spite of it (George Sand, Rebecca Harding Davis, Tillie Olsen, etc). Naturally these types of prohibitions are still in effect today to a large extent because writing is seen as something that may be done after work, the preparation of making and serving dinners and other attentions to husbands and children have been discharged. The message that writing is not and should not be her primary concern comes through loud and clear.

In "Bad Faith," she writesof the use of logically fallacious arguments to ignore or misplace the contributions of writers outside the mainstream. That after one has been placed within a rubric, the writing can be dealt with by more or less saying, "Oh we know about that." and then not bothering to examine the writing any further.

In the chapter "Denial of Agency," we find old arguments that today are practically beyond belief. The idea that writing which appears significant cannot have been written by a woman, therefore it was written by a man! Or the assertion by a male writer that Emily Bronte started to write one book and finished another. Carol Ohmann summed up the argument thus, "Emily Bronte began writing 'Wuthering Heights,' but it finished itself." Ms. Russ sheds light on how this is accomplished in the other arts, painting for instance. A painting that was too good could never have been painted by a woman therefore it was attributed to a man.

In, "Pollution of Agency," we find arguments that to even examine certain subjects is unchaste, immoral and suspect for any woman. The equation of actresses with prostitutes for example. Or the prohibition, for young women or old, against exploring nudes in art. Therefore one pollutes certain arenas by simply existing there as a woman and remains forever suspect merely because of her gender.

The chapter, "The Double Standard of Content," shows how male values are elevated above women's, that Tolstoy could not even see some of the characters that a woman writer examined. "Those are not my values, therefore they have no value." seems to be the dominant method of devaluing, for example, the diaristic methods of Anais Nin among others.

"False Categorizing," deals with the rationalizations that produced the concepts of regionalism and genre. To be labeled a "regionalist," is to be denied broader examinations as to the writer's talent and intent. To be shunted aside and placed in a "genre," removing significant literary contributions on account of the race and gender and therefore changing the work from "serious," to "not serious."

In the chapter on "Isolation," Ms. Russ describes the practical dismemberment of women's writing by techniques such as leaving certain books out of print. The transformation of Elizabeth Barret Browning from poet to "devoted wife." Another woman, Queenie Leavis attempts to eviscerate Virginia Woolf's feminism by describing her as "not a mother," and "not a member of the working class. Thereby attempting to ignore her on-target observations of the minute details of society and thes it attempts to place on women.

As we come to "Anomalousness," we see how women are infrequently referenced in books of poetry, and their books not included in college English courses as ways of implying, by omission, that although there may have been "some" women writers, there were not many and their contributions were relatively insignificant. This chapter gets to the heart of how institutionalized misogyny works.

In "Lack of Models," Joanna Russ talks about the importance, especially to younger writers of the importance of knowing one does not have to live an isolated and loveless existence. She speaks of the difficulties of overcoming institutional prejudice and the importance of each generation's responsibility to create anew methods of revealing the literary contributions of women. It is doubly important for women writers to have other women writers to draw strength and inspirations from because of the intellectual guerilla warfare that institions have engendered.

As we come to "Responses," they are varied. If you believed someone who told you women don't write, you might not write. If someone says a book by a woman was actually written by a man, contradict and confront them. You might give in and write half-heartedly if you believed that men's writing is always superior to women's based simply on content. You might even claim not to be a woman. This chapter is disturbing for it's examination of the hopelessness which women's responses to criticism often engenders.

I will leave "Aesthetics," to the reader.

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