Three Feminist Interventions

Abstract

Three Feminist Interventions Esther M. Lopez Avril, Chloé . The Feminist Utopian Novels of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Themes of Sexuality, Marriage, and Motherhood. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. viii + 199 pp. $109.95. Cook, Sylvia Jenkins . Working Women, Literary Ladies: The Industrial Revolution and Female Aspiration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 292 pp. $24.95. Fishkin, Shelley Fisher . Feminist Engagements: Forays into American Literature and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 279 pp. $28.00 Each of the texts under review here contributes to feminist scholarship in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature by calling attention to understudied texts and by explaining why the concerns raised by the writers they examine are still relevant. All three studies are historically grounded, and each is centrally concerned with the way that women's bodily experience relates to gender and class expectations. In The Feminist Utopian Novels of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Themes of Sexuality, Marriage, and Motherhood, Chloé Avril explains why Gilman's views on sexuality, marriage, and motherhood, as presented in her utopian novels, still have much to offer today's feminists. In Working Women, Literary Ladies: The Industrial Revolution and Female Aspiration, Sylvia Jenkins Cook compares self-produced representations of white working-class women in literature to those by middle-class writers. [End Page 363] Spanning the early nineteenth to twentieth centuries, this study traces working-class women's response to economic independence and their efforts to define their own physical and spiritual roles, thereby demonstrating the impact these women had on each other and society in general. Shelley Fisher Fishkin's Feminist Engagements: Forays into American Literature and Culture is an engaging demonstration of why "the personal is political." It collects a series of essays, many of which were originally published in other collections or presented at conferences between 1990 and 2004, that explore how writers from the nineteenth through the twentieth century have challenged existing literary and social conventions, thereby paving the way for positive social change. One such writer was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the subject of Avril's study and the focus of two essays in Fishkin's collection. Avril's study contributes to Gilman scholarship by focusing on the utopian novels that, with the exception of Herland (1915), have received little critical attention, and Avril explicates how they illustrate the social and political views Gilman championed in her nonfiction. After an introductory chapter that explains why the utopian novel is appropriate for Gilman's reformist purpose, Avril devotes a chapter to each theme she studies, and the connections she draws between Gilman's views and those of contemporary feminists are intriguing. However, her argument that Gilman's thinking regarding sexuality, marriage, and motherhood was often more radical than is commonly thought sometimes suffers because she does not sufficiently engage contemporary criticism of Gilman's racism and heterosexism. Avril's second chapter, "Sexuality," effectively advances her claim that Gilman was a more radical thinker than currently believed. Avril finds three areas where Gilman's views on sexuality continue to have relevance for contemporary feminists. Firstly, there is the idea that sexual liberation does not automatically result in social and political liberation; secondly, there is the idea that society still views sexual instincts as drives that must be indulged, and indulged in a heterosexual way; and finally, and most importantly, the idea that the power structure of sexual relations that Gilman critiques remains largely unchanged. Avril reads Gilman's utopian novels against second wave and modern feminist discourse as well as modern sociological studies of women's sexuality to help explicate Gilman's political views and establish their contemporary relevance. Avril distinguishes between "sex," which she defines as "the sexual act," and sexuality, which she defines as "the cultural and ideological way in which we experience and make sense of our intimately physical and emotional lives" (42). Avril does not propose using Gilman's views on sexuality, as represented in her theoretical writings and utopian novels, as a blueprint for how feminists today can solve these issues; instead, feminists may benefit from "understand[ing] the premises on which she based her analysis of (hetero)sexuality" (40-41). The "(hetero)" is important here, because although Avril advocates feminist critiques...