y has looked at the problem of defining a feminist literary criticism. She makes the following initial observation:
Those scholars and critics concerned with female authors . . . have looked at the recent outpouring of womenÆs materials in order to see if they might discern there some unique ôfeminine modeö or, as Virginia Woolf had assumed, the emergence of a feminine style expressive of a unique female ômind.ö
The major assumption behind this kind of criticism . . . [is] that there is something unique about womenÆs writing. But just wherein that alleged uniqueness lies has, to date, been only crudely approximated, labeled variously as the product of womenÆs unique biology, her ôfeminine consciousness,ö or her peculiar relationship to a social order in the face of which she is always something ôalienö or ôotherö; sometimes the three are compounded in unclear and often confusing ways. As a result, those studies which purport to label a unique ômodeö or ôstyleö and to suggest, also, some deep underlying source, often fail to
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