began to see who she was as I began to see the world that had
formed her. I came to her no longer pitying the poverty of her
intellect, but astounded by the quality of her intelligence. I
came to her no longer convinced of her stupidity and triviality, but astonished by the quality of her strength. I came to her, no longer self-righteous and superior, but as a sister, another woman whose life, but for the grace of a feminist father and the new common struggle of my feminist sisters, would
have repeated hers— and when I say “repeated hers” I mean,
been predetermined as hers was predetermined. I came to her,
no longer ashamed of what she lacked, but deeply proud of
what she had achieved— indeed, I came to recognize that my
mother was proud, strong, and honest. By the time I was
twenty-six I had seen enough of the world and its troubles to
know that pride, strength, and integrity were virtues to honor.
And because I addressed her in a new way she came to meet
me, and now, whatever our difficulties, and they are not so
many, she is my mother, and I am her daughter, and we are
sisters.
You asked me to talk about feminism and art, is there a
feminist art, and if so, what is it. For however long writers
have written, until today, there has been masculinist art— art
that serves men in a world made by men. That art has degraded women. It has, almost without exception, characterized us as maimed beings, impoverished sensibilities, trivial people with trivial concerns. It has, almost without exception,
been saturated with a misogyny so profound, a misogyny that
was in fact its world view, that almost all of us, until today,
have thought, that is what the world is, that is how women
are.
I ask myself, what did I learn from all those books I read as
I was growing up? Did I learn anything real or true about
women? Did I learn anything real or true about centuries of
women and what they lived? Did those books illuminate my
life, or life itself, in any useful, or profound, or generous, or
rich, or textured, or real way? I do not think so. I think that
that art, those books, would have robbed me of my life as the
world they served robbed my mother of hers.
Theodore Roethke, a great poet we are told, a poet of the
male condition I would insist, wrote:
Two of the charges most frequently levelled against poetry by
women are lack of range—in subject matter, in emotional tone—
and lack of a sense of humor. And one could, in individual instances among writers of real talent, add other aesthetic and moral shortcomings: the spinning-out; the embroidering of trivial themes; a concern with the mere surfaces of life—that special province of the feminine talent in prose—hiding from the real agonies of the spirit; refusing to face up to what existence is;
lyric or religious posturing; running between the boudoir and the
altar, stamping a tiny foot against God; or lapsing into a sententiousness that implies the author has re- invented integrity; carrying on excessively about Fate, about time; lamenting the lot of woman. . . and so on. 2
What characterizes masculinist art, and the men who make it,
is misogyny— and in the face of that misogyny, someone had
better reinvent integrity.
