What are the political implications of a feminist critical practice? How do the problems of the literary text relate to the priorities and perspectives of feminist politics as a whole? This text addresses these fundamental questions

Introduction: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Feminist readings of Woolf; The rejection of Woolf; Rescuing Woolf for feminist politics: some points towards an alternative reading; PART I Anglo-American feminist criticism 1 Two feminist classics; Kate Millett; Mary Ellmann; 2 ‘Images of Women’ criticism; 3 Women writing and writing about women; Towards a woman-centred perspective; ‘Literary Women’; ‘A Literature of Their Own’; ‘The Madwoman in the Attic’; 4 Theoretical reflections; Annette Kolodny; Elaine Showalter; Myra Jehlen; PART II French feminist theory 5 From Simone de Beauvoir to Jacques Lacan; Simone de Beauvoir and Marxist feminism; French feminism after 1968; Jacques Lacan; 6 Hélène Cixous: an imaginary utopia; Patriarchal binary thought; Difference; Ecriture féminine 1) masculinity, femininity, bisexuality; The gift and the proper; Ecriture féminine 2) the source and the voice; Imaginary contradictions; Power, ideology, politics 7 Patriarchal reflections: Luce Irigaray’s looking-glass; Speculum; Specul(ariz)ation and mimeticism; Freud; Mysticism; The inexorable logic of the Same; Womanspeak: a tale told by an idiot? Idealism and ahistoricism 8 Marginality and subversion: Julia Kristeva; L’Etrangère; Kristeva and Anglo-American feminist linguistics; Sex differences in language use; Sexism in language; Language, femininity, revolution; The acquisition of language; Femininity as marginality; Feminism, Marxism, anarchism