December 30, 2011
"I think of Bertha’s violence as part of a genealogy of feminist rage – from Valerie Solanas (“If SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade”) to Lorena Bobbit – and Jane, too, another woman who refuses to be silent and disappear. Re-reading Jane Eyre after all this time, I’m reminded of a bitchy thing Susan Sontag once said about Adrienne Rich, calling her a “phenomenologist of anger.” That was in 1975, in the New York Review of Books, two years after Rich published “Jane Eyre: The Temptation of a Motherless Woman” in Ms. Magazine. Sontag resented Rich’s overvaluation of emotion, and of course, her explicit feminism.” Sontag also famously said: “Like all capital moral truths, feminism is a bit simple minded."

—

WHATEVER JEANNE: Bertha and Jane, feminist frenemies

 

10:05pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71EyE1hs-t
(Notes: 17)
  
  1. mikkipedia reblogged this from whateverjeanne
  2. karaj reblogged this from whateverjeanne and added:
    jeanne and marisa are reading about jane eyre at mikkis event tonight. (ps. i agree with susan sontag. also, i think...
  3. whateverjeanne posted this