phantom-thought

Jewett’s posthumous ‘dizzy ride on the roller coaster of critical politics’ offers a textbook case of the absurdities of ideological criticism in the late 20th century. One scholar convinced herself that the meandering structure of Jewett’s best-known work, ‘The Country of Pointed Firs’ (a lovely book, by the way), was intended to be a weblike, ‘feminine’ alternative to the oppressively ‘masculine’ convention in which a linear plot accelerates to a climax; a more circular story supposedly corresponds to the purportedly non-goal-oriented unfolding of women’s sexual response. This dubious sort of analogy is surprisingly popular among academic critics, despite the fact that the vast majority of women readers have always exhibited a hearty appetite for linear narratives — much as most women, when given a choice, would prefer to have that orgasm, thanks very much.