The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

George Eliot found the Romantic movement particularly dangerous to women. What elements of Romanticism benefit men more than women, and why might Eliot have found this imbalance so perilous?

Some feminists find that scholarly interpretations of the Bible reveal a sexist bent to Christianity, and yet others insist that gender equality is fundamental to the Christian belief system. Which point of view is correct, and why?

Acts of Freudian repression and other defense mechanisms are often unsuccessful. Select one woman writer mentioned in the text and identify one behavior or decision that can be explained in these psychological terms.

In several of the novels discussed in the text, role reversals take place between characters, and women suddenly take a position of power over men. Select one instance of a role reversal and analyze the changes in circumstance that enable the power dynamic to change.

Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning read and disapproved of Jane Austen. Why did these two writers dislike Austen, and do you agree with their reasoning? 

Sylvia Plath and her poetry are mentioned in several chapters of the text. What similarities do women writers of the 19th century have with Plath and her poetic voice and life story?

Christina Rossetti’s semi-autobiographical novella Maude reveals her “surrogate self.” If novelists and other writers must draw on their own lives when creating literature, how does semi-autobiography differ from fiction?

Literary tropes about physical and psychological illness abound in the works of literature discussed in the text. What myths and what realities about disease do these tropes purport?