Inventing Herself : Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage

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Summary: Personal and Political Feminism
Review: ....P>She is also the author and editor of a number of books. In March of 2001 her newest book, Inventing Herself : Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage was published, and it is also an examination of the personal and political realms of Feminism. In it, she illustrates the lives of some of her personal heroines, women who have lived from the 18th Century on and whom have contributed to women's rights. She starts out with Mary Wollstonecraft, whose revolutionary book Vindication on the Rights of Women was one of the first pieces of feminist writing, and ends with modern heroines like Hillary Clinton, Princess Diana, and Oprah Winfrey. With each woman's story, she not only shows what they did to change politics and society, but also how their personal lives had an effect on those of other women living during that time.

Elaine Showalter, whether writing about Janis Joplin or Germaine Greer, always draws similarities between the public importance and personal apprecation of feminism. It is obvious to the reader of her words that she has treasured feminism in her own life and wants to share it with others. Her book will inspire and motivate you....

Rating:
Summary: There's No "There" There
Review: If these are indeed biographies of feminist intellectual icons, you certainly wouldn't know it from this collection of shallow, rambling essays. After reading this book, I have no sense of these women as feminists or intellectuals, nor of their ambitions and accomplishments. However, I'm overly informed on other aspects: About 10% of each mini-biography is devoted to an overview of the subject's life. The other 90% deals with their looks, fashion choices and the cads and Ken-dolls they slept with. How disappointing that "Inventing Herself" seems to mean "Defining Herself Through Men."

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Summary: Compact , Creative Insight into Lives of Important Women
Review: In case you don't have the time to accomplish the very important task of reading every single book written by influential women, this book is a wonderful way to become at least familiar with their philosophy, and where they stood in the context of their times. The accounts are lively and readable, and can serve as a reference for later on you when you might have time to explore more deeply the writings of the individual women who interest you.

Rating:
Summary: There's No "There" There
Review: The one reason I got this book was because Chapter 14 was all about a hero of mine, Professor Camille Paglia whose works a dear man Dr Jonathan got me hooked on back in 1990. And since I was so damn impressed with the authors fair handed treatment of Prof Paglia I opted to not sulk, and go ahead and read the rest of the book and am glad I did.

And I must admit I was terribly impressed that the authors has longer than is usual, chapters and the book if shy 400 well written and attention holding prose and thoughts. With Chapters that range from Adventures in Womanhood; Amazonian Beginnings: Mary Wollstonecraft; Radiant Sovereign Self; Margaret Fuller; The New Woman: The Feminine Predicament; Transition Woman; A Feminist Tribe; Heterodoxy in Britain; The Dark Ladies of New York;Zenobia on the Hudson; The Lost Sex and the Second Sex; Simone de Beauvoir (a favorite of mine). Writing Well Is the Best Revenge; Susan Sontag; The Inner Revolution of the 1960's: Before the Revolution; Talkin' Bout My Generation; The 1970's; Divas: Germaine Greer and the Female Eunuch; Feminist Personae: Camille Paglia--Woman Alone; and the Epilogue: First Ladies: The Way We Live Now.

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Summary: Neither a feminist nor an intellectual work
Review: There's a great deal of entertaining gossip in Elaine Showalter's study of feminist intellectuals, but almost no thinking per se whatsoever: almost the entire book is a mélange of who wore what when and who slept with whom; it seems to reduce the works of many important feminist intellectuals (such as Susan Sontag) to little more than sex and shopping. While such important intellectual figures as Virginia Woolf and Judith Butler receive scant mention, there are pages galore about the contributions of such crucially important feminist thinkers as Camille Paglia, Oprah Winfrey, and that famed intellectual Princess Diana. (No doubt the author must thus be trying to tell us something about what she means both by "feminist" and "intellectual.")