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[(essay date 11 February 1980) In the following review, Miner praises The Madwoman in the Attic for "uncovering a discernible female imagination."]
The grand success of this study is that it stimulates us to re-read those books by proper ladies from the 19th century. As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar reconsider each work, they introduce us to The Madwoman in the Attic, the author's double, hiding in the seams of her writing, reflecting her anxiety and rage.
Gilbert and Gubar shatter the images of Jane Austen as the timid parlor mouse, the Brontës as contented rural lasses. George Eliot as the ugly, mannish scourge: "... almost all...