Reconceiving Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

While I was researching this essay, I came across a comment made by Sharon O’Brien, the feminist biographer of Willa Cather, which served to crystallize some of the concerns that have engendered my approach in what follows. In her Preface to Cather’s The Song of the Lark, O’Brien recalls: “When I was reading The Song of the Lark primarily from a feminist perspective … I was impressed by the respect and consideration Cather showed for Indian culture in the novel … . Now I find Lather’s, and Thea’s, treatment of the Indian woman and their pottery problematic” (xvi). Reading this, I was struck by O’Brien’s candor, and also by her initial assumption that feminist criticism excluded racial analysis. Certainly, O’Brien was not alone in this oversight, and the numerous scholars, who have argued for the centrality of race to feminism, forced the approach to (try to) come to terms with its white focus. Whether this short-sightedness has been overcome may be debatable, but it did lead me to ponder other issues that feminism had ignored or elided in its efforts to foreground the plight of women.