Liberating the western canon

The Telegraph has an obituary of Sandra M. Gilbert.

Sandra Gilbert, who has died aged 87, was a writer and poet best known as the co-author, with Susan Gubar, of The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), a polemical analysis of the works of Victorian women writers now regarded as a classic work of “second-wave” feminist literary criticism.

Their 700-page study took Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre – with its passionate but repressed heroine and imprisoned double, Bertha Mason, the mad first wife of Mr Rochester locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall – to be representative of the struggles of Victorian women writers against male oppression and “social and literary confinement”.

“In projecting their anger and disease into dreadful figures,” they argued, “creating dark doubles for themselves and their heroines, women writers are both identifying with and revising the self-definitions patriarchal culture has imposed on them.”

Raging Bertha Mason, with her animal passions, is Jane’s – and Charlotte Brontë’s – real self, and the authors went on to identify a distinctive “female literary tradition” in which authors such as the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley, George Eliot and Jane Austen left traces of rage and revolt against the “patriarchy” all over their works. It was just necessary to know how to read them. [...]

They caught a wave of feminism that was already was beginning to wash into publishing and literary criticism. In Britain Virago was exploring forgotten writers such as Dorothy Richardson and May Sinclair. Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of their Own was published in 1977. But it was Gilbert and Gubar’s spirited fusion of feminism, psychoanalysis and literature that struck the loudest chord in English departments, and academics and students were soon busily subjecting works by male as well as female authors to feminist deconstruction, and working to reclaim significant but forgotten works by female authors.

“The western canon was not liberated overnight, but Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar certainly stuck a wedge firmly into the frat house door when they wrote The Madwoman in the Attic,” said the critic Maureen Corrigan in 2013.

She was born Sandra Ellen Mortola to a Sicilian immigrant mother and Russian immigrant father in New York on December 27 1936 and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. She was, she recalled, “a child who loved to read, but I never considered myself especially scholarly. I adored kids’ books – the Bobbsey Twins series (who has heard of those today?), Nancy Drew – and, more grown-up I guess, Little Women and Jane Eyre.”

VIP lists '19 books we can’t wait to read in 2025' and one of them is

The Favourites – Layne Fargo

This is an epic love story that reimagines the tempestuous romance of Wuthering Heights in the sparkling, savage world of elite figure skating.

Perfect for lovers of Daisy Jones and The Six, we follow Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha.

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. (Bronwyn O'Neill)

RTÉ has selected 'the 5 worst boyfriends in fiction' including both

Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff is the absolute worst. Yes, he has an intense relationship with Cathy but, after overhearing Catherine tell Nelly that she plans to marry their rich neighbour, Edgar Linton, Heathcliff runs away instead of speaking with Catherine. Upon his return several years later, he dedicates his life to destroying the lives of those around him primarily because he didn’t get the girl. And for those who still think that he’s just misunderstood, never forget that his wedding present to his wife Isabella was to murder her dog.

Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

When they first meet, Rochester pointedly treats Jane as an equal rather than her employer. However, this is undermined by his behaviour towards Jane when his aristocratic houseguests come to visit. After intentionally hurting Jane by feigning an interest in marrying Blanche Ingram, Rochester eventually declares his love and proposes to Jane. The problem? He’s already married, and his wife is locked up in his attic.

To make matters worse, when his lies become apparent, he tries to convince Jane to abscond to Europe with him knowing that this would destroy Jane’s reputation thereby preventing her from ever finding employment or a respectable husband. In this era, the loss of both of these options would leave Jane destitute if dumped by Rochester. (Maria Butler)

Surely Arthur Huntingdon from Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall should be there? Out of all three, he's the one with no redeeming qualities.