Sandra M. Gilbert (born December 27, 1936) is an American
literary critic
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
and poet who has published in the fields of
feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to an ...
,
feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist ...
, and
psychoanalytic criticism
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.
Psychoanalytic reading has been practised since the early deve ...
. She is best known for her collaborative critical work with
Susan Gubar
Susan D. Gubar (born November 30, 1944) is an American author and distinguished Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University.
She is best known for co-authoring the landmark feminist literary study '' The Madwoman in t ...
, with whom she co-authored, among other works, ''
The Madwoman in the Attic
''The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination'' is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in which they examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Gilbert and Gubar draw their ...
'' (1979). ''Madwoman in the Attic'' is widely recognized as a text central to
second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains.
Wh ...
. She is Professor Emerita of English at the
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
.
She lives in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
, and lived, until 2008, in
Paris, France
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with
David Gale
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
, mathematician at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, until his death in 2008.
Academia
Gilbert received her
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
, her
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
from
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, and her
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
in
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1968. She has taught at
California State University, Hayward
California State University, East Bay (Cal State East Bay, CSU East Bay, or CSUEB) is a public university in Hayward, California. The university is part of the 23-campus California State University system and offers 136 undergraduate and 60 post ...
,
Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
,
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
,
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, and
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
. She held the C. Barnwell Straut Chair of English at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
from 1985 until 1989.
According to reports in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Gilbert, along with
Emory Elliott
Emory Bernard Elliott (October 30, 1942 – March 31, 2009) was an American professor of American literature at UC Riverside.
Elliott was known in particular for advocating the expansion of the literary canon to include a more diverse range o ...
,
Valerie Smith, and
Margaret Doody
Margaret Anne Doody (born September 21, 1939) is a Canadian author of historical detective fiction and feminist literary critic. She is professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, helped found the PhD in Literature Program at Notre D ...
all resigned from Princeton in 1989. The reports suggest that the four were unhappy with the leniency shown to
Thomas McFarland
Professor Thomas A. McFarland (1926-2011) was a literary critic who specialised in the literature of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was Murray Professor of Romantic English Literature at Princeton University.
McFarland established his reputation w ...
after he was accused of sexual misconduct. McFarland was initially put on a one-year suspension, but eventually took early retirement after these resignations and threats of student boycotts.
She was named the inaugural M. H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell University for spring 2007, and the Lurie Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at
San Jose State University
San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...
in 2009.
Awards
Gilbert was president of the
Modern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
in 1996. She has been a recipient of
Guggenheim,
Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to:
People with the name Rockefeller fa ...
,
NEH
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
, and
Soros Foundation
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a sta ...
fellowships and has held residencies at
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
, MacDowell, Bellagio, Camargo, and Bogliasco. In 1988 she was awarded a D. Litt. by
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...
. In 1990 she was a co-recipient (with
Karl Shapiro
Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000) was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945 for his collection ''V-Letter and Other Poems''. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to th ...
) of the International Poetry Forum's Charity Randall Award. More recently, she has won a Patterson Prize (for ''Ghost Volcano''), an
American Book Award
The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...
(for ''Kissing the Bread''), the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry (from the Italian-American Foundation), the Premio Lerici Pea awarded by the ''Liguri nel Mondo'' association, and several awards from ''Poetry'' magazine. In 2004 she was awarded the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa by the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
. In 2012, she and her longtime collaborator Susan Gubar were awarded the
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
The Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, established in 1981, is an annual literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle in honor of its first president, Ivan Sandrof. The award "is given to a person or institution who has, over ...
of the
National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization ( 501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...
. In 2017 she received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard University.
Collaboration with Susan Gubar
Gilbert and Gubar met in the early 1970s at
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
. In 1974, they collaborated to co-teach a course on literature in English by women; their lectures led to the manuscript for ''Madwoman in the Attic.'' They have continued to co-author and co-edit, and have been jointly awarded several academic distinctions. Notably, they were jointly named ''Ms.'' magazine's "Woman of the Year" in 1986 for their work as head editors of ''The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English''.
Because of the success of their joint publications, Gilbert and Gubar are often cited together in the fields of
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to an ...
and
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist ...
.
Feminist literary criticism and theory
Gilbert's critical and theoretical works, particularly those co-authored with Susan Gubar, are generally identified as texts within the realm of
second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains.
Wh ...
. As such, they represent part of a concerted effort to move beyond the simple assimilationist theories of
first-wave feminism
First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used s ...
, either by rejecting entirely the given, oppressive, patriarchal, male-dominated order of society, or by seeking to reform that order. Gilbert's texts, in turn, lay themselves open to many of the criticisms levelled by
third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
, or thinkers who regard patriarchy not as an integrated and foundational system, but a set of repeated practices which may vary over time and space.
Gilbert is often said to have found her theoretical roots in the earlier 1970s works of
Ellen Moers
Ellen Moers (1928–1979) was an American academic and literary scholar. She is best known for her pioneering contribution to gynocriticism, ''Literary Women'' (1976).
Feminist breakthrough
After two exact but conventional books (on the dandy an ...
and
Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocr ...
, as the basic premise of her thought is that women writers share a set of similar experiences and that male oppression or patriarchy is everywhere essentially the same.
"The Anxiety of Authorship"
In ''The Madwoman in the Attic'', Gilbert and Gubar take the Oedipal model of the
anxiety of influence Anxiety of Influence is a type of literary criticism established by Harold Bloom in 1973, in his book, '' The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry''. It refers to the psychological struggle of aspiring authors to overcome the anxiety posed by th ...
developed by literary critic
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
, centred around writers' Oedipal fear and jealousy for their perceived literary "fore-fathers", and adapt it to their own purposes as feminist critics. According to Bloom's theory, the developing writer must struggle to break free from his most immediate, direct influences, to form his own voice, and to break away from identification to find his own imaginative space. Gilbert and Gubar extend this male-oriented model to incorporate a female "Anxiety of Authorship",
[J. Childers ed., ''The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism'' (1995) p.14] whereby ''lack'' of predecessors makes the very act of writing problematic.
Where Bloom wonders how the male author can find a voice that is his own, Gilbert and Gubar – building on
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
's analysis of the "difficulty...that they had no tradition behind them" – emphasise the problem a woman writer may have in seeing herself as possessing a literary voice at all, given the absence of a maternal precursor. Where Bloom finds aggression and competition between male literary figures in terms of self-consciously feeling influenced and desiring to be influential, the "anxiety of authorship" identifies a "secret sisterhood" of role models within the Western tradition who show that women can write,
the recuperation of the tradition of which becomes a feminist project. However, these models too may be "infected" with a lack of confidence, and with internal contradiction of ambition, hampered by the culturally induced assumption of "the patriarchal authority of art."
In later works, the pair explore "the '
double bind
A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more reciprocally conflicting messages. In some scenarios (e.g. within families or romantic relationships) this can be emotionally distressing, creating ...
' of the woman poet...the contradictions between her vocation and her gender" (''Shakespeare's Sisters''), as well as the development (in the wake of
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, ''The ...
) of a new genre of 'mother poets'.
[C. Brennan ed., ''The Poetry of Sylvia Plath'' (2000) p. 51 and p. 99]
Critical works
*
* ''Acts of Attention: The Poems of D.H. Lawrence'' (Cornell University Press, 1972)
Co-authored with Susan Gubar
* ''A Guide to The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English'' (
W.W. Norton
W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly ''The Norton Ant ...
, 1985; revised second edition 1996)
* ''The War of the Words, Volume I of No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century'' (
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
, 1988)
* ''Sexchanges, Volume II of No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century'' (Yale University Press, 1989)
* ''Letters from the Front, Volume III of No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century'' (Yale University Press, 1994)
* ''Masterpiece Theatre: An Academic Melodrama'' (
Rutgers University Press
Rutgers University Press (RUP) is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in New Brunswick, New Jersey under the auspices of Rutgers University.
History
Rutgers University Press, a nonprofit academic publishing house operating in New B ...
, 1995)
* ''
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination'' (Yale University Press, 1979
Poetry
* ''In the Fourth World'' (
University of Alabama Press
The University of Alabama Press is a university press founded in 1945 and is the scholarly publishing arm of the University of Alabama. An editorial board composed of representatives from all doctoral degree granting public universities within Al ...
, 1979)
* ''The Summer Kitchen'' (Heyeck Press, 1983)
* ''Emily's Bread'' (W. W. Norton, 1984)
* ''Blood Pressure'' (W. W. Norton, 1989)
* ''Ghost Volcano'' (W. W. Norton, 1997)
* ''Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999'' (W. W. Norton, 2000)
* ''The Italian Collection'' (Depot Books, 2003)
* ''Belongings'' (W. W. Norton, 2006)
* ''Aftermath: Poems'' (W. W. Norton, 2011)
Non-fiction
* ''Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy'' (W. W. Norton, 1995)
* ''Death's Door: Modern Dying and The Ways We Grieve'' (W. W. Norton, 2006)
* ''Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions'' (W. W. Norton, 2011)
* ''The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity'' (W. W. Norton, 2014)
Other publications
Gilbert has edited a collection of elegies:
* ''Inventions of Farewell'' (W. W. Norton, 2001)
With Susan Gubar, she has edited several collections:
* ''Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets'' (
Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes 140 ...
, 1981)
* ''The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English'' (W.W. Norton, 1985, 1990, 1996, 2007)
* ''Women Poets'', Special Double Issue of Women's Studies (1980)
* ''The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic'' (Gordon and Breach, 1986)
With Susan Gubar and
Diana O'Hehir
Diana Farnham O'Hehir (May 23, 1922 – January 19, 2021) was a poet and writer of prose from northern California.
Biography
She was born in Lexington in 1922, though she moved to California with her father the next year.
She taught from 1961 ...
, she has edited a collection of poetry:
* ''MotherSongs: Poetry by, for, and about Mothers'' (W.W. Norton, 1995)
With
Wendy Barker
Wendy Barker (September 22, 1942 – March 11, 2023) was an American poet. She was Poet-in-Residence and the Pearl LeWinn Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she taught since 1982.
Biography
Barker was bor ...
, she has edited a collection of essays on the work of Ruth Stone:
* ''The House is Made of Poetry ''(Southern Illinois University Press, 1996)
Notes
References
* ''The Dictionary of Literary Biography'', vol. 120, ed. R.S. Gwynn (1992)
UCDavis Academic Profile* ''The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism'', ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)
* ''Making Feminist History: The Literary Scholarship of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar'', ed. William E. Cain (1994)
*
Toril Moi
Toril Moi (born 28 November 1953 in Farsund, Norway) is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Moi is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy, ...
, ''Sexual/Textual Politics'' (1985)
* "Interview with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar", ''Critical Texts'' 6.1, Elizabeth Rosdeitcher (1989)
"Literary critic Sandra Gilbert named M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor" ''Cornell Chronicle'' (17 October 2006)
External links
Gilbert's personal webpageUCDavis academic profile* Indiana University'
of Susan Gubar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilbert, Sandra
American academics of English literature
American literary critics
Women literary critics
Wesleyan University people
Cornell University alumni
New York University alumni
Columbia University alumni
Cornell University faculty
Williams College faculty
Stanford University Department of English faculty
Johns Hopkins University faculty
San Jose State University faculty
Princeton University faculty
Indiana University faculty
1936 births
Living people
University of California, Davis faculty
California State University, East Bay faculty
American feminist writers
Postmodern feminists
American writers of Italian descent
American Book Award winners
Members of the American Philosophical Society
American women critics
Presidents of the Modern Language Association