Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage.(Review) (book review)

Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage, by Elaine Showalter.

Scribner, 384 pages, $27.50.

"This morning perhaps I may feel like a male; let me act like one. This afternoon I may feel like a female; let me act like one. At midday or at midnight, I may feel sexless; let me therefore act sexlessly.... It is such a confounded bore to have to act one part endlessly" Who is speaking here? This year's postmodern gender theorist or performance artist? No, it is the voice of Elsie Clews Parsons, writing in 1913.

Parsons was a privileged child of ...