Rejoinder to Recent Review in ELT

Book Reviews some readers may wonder why, for example, irony is necessarily better than cynicism. This is not a book for someone who disputes structuralism, or who wants a theoretical explanation or defense of it. It is a good example of narratology, and individual chapters offer a very strong sense of both the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach, but it is not likely to win converts to the faith. One might wish that Lothe dealt more with less mainstream critics or critical methods, or that he moved more of his summaries and references into footnotes. Yet other readers may find that his chapters on particular texts give one a good sense of the traditional reading of that story of novel. While I wouldn't say that this is an especially good introduction to Conrad scholarship, it is a good introduction to that (substantial) portion of Conrad scholarship which focuses on his narrative theories. Patricia Roberts University of North Carolina at Greensboro REJOINDER TO RECENT REVIEW IN ELT A FEW WORDS will suffice as a response to Keith Cushman's misleading review in 34:2 (1991), 245-48, of my book, D. H. Lawrence and the Phallic Imagination: Essays on Sexual Identity and Feminist Misreading (New York and London: St. Martin's and Macmillan, 1989). Cushman complains that the essays are "not much" altered from their original appearance in a variety of journals the previous decade; the simple fact, however, is that nearly half the book consists of new material, including substantial reorganization and augmentation in three chapters, with an interrelated dialectic about culture and criticism that was only implicit in the earlier article publications. Cushman also objects to my reference to Kate Millett's unfortunate attack on Lawrence, as he claims that the error of her way is by now well-established, and that current praise of her work by other feminist critics is relatively sparse. I have two suggestions. First, he could have addressed himself more directly to the particulars of my argument with Millett, as I define a range of misunderstanding by her not noted by other commentators; it is precisely in such heretofore unexamined contexts that Millett continues to have her advocates and disciples in contemporary criticism. Second, he could have looked again at the 509 ELT: Volume 34:4, 1991 "revisionist" feminist interest in her work emerging in England and France, initiated in the early 1980s by Hilary Simpson's study, D. H. Lawrence and Feminism, and embroidered lately by nostalgically supportive comments on Millett's criticism by a wide variety of prominent feminists, including Sandra Gilbert, whom Cushman is so intent on protecting in his review. As I clearly demonstrate in my book, Gilbert's generally sympathetic understanding of Lawrence is occasionally compromised by the manipulative passion of her reworking of his themes; her own adamant approval of Millett's characteristic misreading of "The Woman Who Rode Away" indicates that Cushman is unaware of notions of admiration and influence that still afflict feminist criticism, and that still receive inadequate counter-response from the academy. Cushman believes that my analysis of an unusual marriage theme in The Rainbow, and of Ursula's function as "female corrective" in Women in Love, is "not news"; yet as the related footnotes in my study document, it would be impossible for him to locate any comparable and integrated findings in Lawrencian scholarship on how the cautions of Lawrence's conservative ethics affect the visionary radicalism of his art and sexual doctrines. In addition, Cushman's sneering reference to my own consistent use of Mailer's supportive interpretation of Lawrence's achievement is offensive on two fronts: it ironically recapitulates the defensive shrillness that Lawrence and Mailer often encountered in reactions to their own work, and it in no way suggests the scope and significance of my argument about the similar metaphors and beliefs embraced by both writers. Finally, Cushman's sophomoric fear and warning that "seminal" is "a dangerous word" to use in certain contexts today bespeaks a critic's fashionable timidity that, quite frankly, may never be comfortable with any reading of Lawrence's "phallic imagination." Peter Balbert Trinity University ¿*> Books Received ï*> The Gissing Journal [formerly The...