| Rooms of Our Own |
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Published by The Gay and Lesbian Review Rooms of Our Own by Susan Gubar. University of Illinois Press. 223 pages, paperback $19.95. Susan Gubar is a Professor of English at Indiana University, the recipient of several awards for writing and scholarship, and among several other publications, the author of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, coauthored with Sandra Gilbert. Her latest book, Rooms of Our Own begins as homage to Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own. But in this case, a woman who is a first person narrator, examines more contemporary women’s issues as they relate to feminism, gender roles, literature, and education in the 21st century. She reflects on the feminist movement in the past fifty years, the costly and hard fought gains and the painful and humiliating losses. Women are no longer refused entrance to the libraries, universities, or tenure-track positions, but the “nugget of truth” our narrator offers is while opportunities for women have increased, women still play the domestic role (caring for children and later on elderly parents) and the stress from that predicament has been profound. Rooms of Our Own is structured in six chapters that attack different (yet related) issues while moving a plot that relies mostly on stream of consciousness narration along through an academic year. The problem with stream of consciousness, and the tone and phrases similar to Woolf’s original, are today’s readers, who will find this style slow and tedious. There are no chase scenes or sex scenes although readers will find an unsolved coed murder. However, the murdered coed is symbolic rather than mysterious. But for readers up to the task, the experience has rewards. In fact, you will want to buy this book—mark it up and reread it. Gubar takes us beyond the scope of Virginia Woolf’s argument that a woman needs a room of her own and 500 pounds a year to write. In fact, Gubar’s narrator, Mary Beton, shares a name with Woolf’s aunt who left her niece an inheritance. One may remember that, for Woolf, this legacy and the right to vote came at the same time, and of the two, money was far more important. Money is also pretty darned important to the women of today. As Gubar lures the reader into the workings of the university, she demonstrates that money, or lack of it, regulates what women can accomplish as far as scholarship and publication. Without money, her ability to write and publish is limited. The obstacle of getting the job has been replaced by the logistic problem of time to work, write, research, and publish enough to win tenure. What money buys the contemporary woman is help with the domestic responsibilities that undermine her work. Thus she has more time and energy to succeed. Moreover, women entered higher education at a time when our western culture has lessened the value of a liberal arts education. Our narrator claims that today we are in a “post literate” age. While grading essays, she asks herself, “. . . how much longer could I expect myself to pencil in corrections to sentences that committed atrocities beggaring description, even (as in this case) when composed by junior or senior English majors?” I particularly appreciated revelations about the state of education today: use and abuse of adjunct lecturers, ignorant and lazy students, and tenured faculty elitism. So while feminism is about all women, at the university academic professionals pride themselves on picking and choosing those deemed worthier than others. Our narrator describes a faculty luncheon: I recognized all my colleagues around the table and knew from years of experience what insipid cruelty most were capable of. . . . The assembly immediately suggested a barnyard or a wildlife sanctuary. For, gesticulating and swaying, eating and declaiming, coughing and wheezing, they resembled animals in a zoo. She offers the Giraffe historian, the Turtle of medieval mysticism, the Duck author of books on Italian film, as well as the Hippopotamus, the Kantian and the Lizard. Having attended some of those meetings, I found these analogies entertaining and on target. So where do women stand today? While the question is simple, the answer is complex. The older generation, battle scared and compromised, are confounded by the new guard. Because the old guard believed that new things must be better, they have forced their way into systems that abused them and marginalized their work. They did the crap jobs because for every “crap job” there were hundreds of women in line to take it away. The stress of this work and the conflict of their domestic role literally drove some of them to insanity or death. Yet Gubar’s narrator ends with some hope. The door has inched open and “the next generation must have a chance for something better.” Bio: Martha Miller is an author, a writing instructor, and a regular contributor to The G & L Review. See her website www.marthamiller.net.� |