• Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 Black Culture/White Teacher (1970); Chapter 2 “Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Thy Neighbor’s Servants”: Women’s Liberation and Black Civil Rights 1971; Chapter 3 What Matter Mind: A Theory About the Practice of Women’s Studies (1973); Chapter 4 The Androgyne and the Homosexual (1974); Chapter 5 On Work (1977); My thanks to Kim Townsend for his comments on these paragraphs; Chapter 6 Tillie Olsen: Witness as Servant (1977); Some of my ideas about Tillie Olsen were published in “Three Women Work It Out,”; Nation; , 219, 18, (November 30, 1974), 1565–6. A version of this paper was read at the Rutgers Interdisciplinary Conference on Politics and Literature, March, 1977; Chapter 7 Shakespeare and the Soil of Rape (1980); An earlier version of this essay was presented at the International Shakespeare Association Congress, April 20, 1976, Washington, D.C. The author is grateful to Allison Heisch and Carol T. Neely for their helpful comments; Chapter 8 Ad/d Feminam: Women, Literature and Society (1980); A version of this essay was given at Princeton University in November 1978 at a seminar sponsored by the Council of the Humanities; Chapter 9 Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English (1981); Early versions of this paper were read at Brown University, Hampshire College, the Columbia University Seminar on Women in Society, and the Modern Language Association. I am grateful to Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Wood, and Elizabeth Abel for their comments; Chapter 10 The Company of Children (1982); Chapter 11 Feminism and Feminist Criticism (1983); Chapter 12 The Female Sociograph: The Theater of Virginia Woolf’s Letters (1984); Versions of this paper were read at the Modern Language Association, Annual Meeting, December 1978, and at Hobart and William Smith colleges, May 1983. I am grateful to Louise K. Horowitz for sharing work on French criticism about letter-writing with me; to Elizabeth Wood for her comments; and to the body of Woolf criticism for its instructiveness; Chapter 13 Adrienne Rich and Feminist/Lesbian Poetry (1985); Chapter 14 Female Insubordination and the Text (1986); Chapter 15 A Welcome Treaty: The Humanities in Everyday Life (1986); I wish to thank the Council of Chief State School Officers for inviting me to give one version of this paper in April, 1984, and the Society for the Humanities of Cornell University, and its director, Jonathan Culler, for inviting me to give another in October, 1984. I a grateful to my fellow panelists at Cornell for their attention and comments: Robert Harris, Richard Lanham, Geoffrey Marshall, and Mary Beth Norton; Chapter 16 Nancy Reagan Wears a Hat: Feminism and Its Cultural Consensus (1987); I gave earlier versions of this paper at the Barnard College Scholar and the Feminist Conference, March 1986; the fourteenth annual University of Alabama Symposium on English and American Literature, October 1986; and the Seminar on Sex, Gender, and Consumerism, New York University Institute for the Humanities, October 1986. My thanks to the participants in those events for their responses, and to Elizabeth Meese, Alice Parker, and Elizabeth HeIsinger for their comments. A companion essay, “Woolf’s; Room; , Our Project: Feminist Criticism Today,” will appear in; Frontiers of Criticism; , ed. Ralph Cohen, forthcoming.;

"Few critics have been more inventive than Stimpson. She marshals her thoughts coolly, with erudition and poise; underneath is anger at the oppression she documents and a will to remake the culture that feeds on these injustices." – Voice Literary Supplement"A distinct personal response colors these probing inquiries into what and how and why women write, the meaning of their lives and work, the pitfalls of their struggles." – New York Times Book Review"Catharine Stimpson’s essays in literary criticism, feminist theory, race relations are sparkling, erudite, witty and always challenging – a joy to read." – Gerda Lerner"Lively and lucid – often, indeed, electrically witty – these essays will be of compelling interest to a wide range of readers inside and outside the academy." – Sandra M. Gilbert "I learned more from 17 years’ worth of Stimpson’s essays than from living these last 17 years in the middle of the women’s movement. This volume is feminist analysis at its distilled, brilliant best" – Letty Cottin Pogrebin