Elizabeth Tasker and Frances Holt-Underwood: Where’s Waldina?

I am big on prefacing my statements, and I am going to do so here; these are the facts of the piece without any opinions from me. My opinions will be reserved for class discussion where I can defend myself without fear of being misunderstood.

The task of this piece is to provide an overview of feminist studies. The group of seven scholars attempted to examine 60 works and “rediscover” the female authors while maintaining an intimate participation in the process, rather than a neutral expression as is found in most historical composition.

The Tasker and Holt-Underwood begin their examination by focusing on the work of feminists in the 1970’s. The works they focus on present the idea that Western or masculine rhetoric is rooted in violent persuasion. The authors feel this trend toward violence helped to marginalized female voices. The authors go on to show that women writers in the 1980’s begin to build a foundation for feminist voice by “showing how nineteenth-century, female-authored texts contained thoughtful decisions about audience and persuasion.” This groundwork served as “a source to instruct contemporary feminist theory.” The 1990’s bring further solidification to the goal of many feminist writers to gain acceptance and validity through continued scholarship.

However, not all feminist writers embraced the quest for acceptance. Tasker and Holt-Underwood point out that Susan Biesecker attacked the then current trend which she felt was indiscriminately selecting woman writers to speak for all women and which also “reinforces elitist hierarchies, which cause the oppressed to remain silent.” Cambell retorted that any Biesecker’s attempts to rationalize the choice of one woman’s voice over another would further silence the female voice. I know I said that I would silence my opinion, but as most people know, I have a sickness. I can’t help but side with Biesecker in this debate. To choose voices without strong rational seems to me a poor choice of action; the rational could only solidify the validity of the works being promoted by feminists, and to avoid this, to me, invalidates the chosen works. Academia is elitist no matter what Cambell or anyone else thinks.

The rest of the paper goes on to examine several other areas that feminism made an impact, including cultural studies. Feminists also made various breakthroughs in methodology as well. Archival studies appeared to be the most significant because it allowed feminists, both male and female, to continue reclaiming “lost” writers and their works. The authors explain that the 21th Century continues as an open floodgate of both modern feminist works and other found works.