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`I am not a woman writer'

About women, literature and feminist theory today

Duke University, toril{at}duke.edu

This essay first tries to answer two questions: Why did the question of the woman writer disappear from the feminist theoretical agenda around 1990? Why do we need to reconsider it now? I then begin to develop a new analysis of the question of the woman writer by turning to the statement `I am not a woman writer'. By treating it as a speech act and analysing it in the light of Simone de Beauvoir's understanding of sexism, I show that it is a response to a particular kind of provocation, namely an attempt to force the woman writer to conform to some norm for femininity. I also show that Beauvoir's theory illuminates Virginia Woolf's strategies in A Room of One's Own before, finally, asking why we still should want women to write.

Key Words: J. L. Austin • Simone de Beauvoir • femininity • feminist literary criticism • literature • women writers • Virginia Woolf

Feminist Theory, Vol. 9, No. 3, 259-271 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1464700108095850


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