LETTER TO THE EDITORS

Spring 1999
Volume 25, Number 3

To the Editors:

Because I've been told that some readers have misunderstood footnote 1 of Susan Gubar's lively and incisive "What Ails Feminist Criticism?" (Critical Inquiry 24 [Summer 1998]: 878-902) I would like to make it very clear that I am not among those "politically savvy academicians" who would urge her "to cease and desist from such speculations." She "risk[ed] these thoughts on [her] own behalf only--not with the usual G & G trademark" because this fine work is part of a project she has undertaken on her own, rather than in a collaborative context (p. 879 n. 1). Under the "G & G trademark," however, we have often published equally risky material (for example, in the introduction to our coauthored Masterpiece Theatre: An Academic Melodrama), or so I like to think. In any case, I applaud the feisty speculations in which she has engaged here and look forward to reading more of them. Both inside and outside the academy, feminist thinking can only be strengthened when its central tenets are scrupulously examined and rigorously debated, as they are in this timely essay.

Sandra M. Gilbert
Department of English
University of California, Davis