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

'Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar offer a bold new interpretation of the great 19th century women novelists, and in doing so they present the first persuasive case for the existence of a distinctly female imagination. Like gnostic heretics who claim to have found the secret code that unlocks the mysteries in old texts, the authors force us to take anew look at the grandes dames of English literature, and the result is that they will never seem quite the same again.' -Le Anne Schreiber, The New York Times Book Review