Convergences: Law, Literature, and Feminism

Abstract

One of us is a professor of law, the other a professor of literature, and both of us are professed feminists. To teach together, the obvious joint venture was feminism. Hence the title of a course: "Feminist Theory: Law and Literature" and our intensive study of the emerging field of "law and literature." But when we delved into the newly-minted discipline, we found to our dismay (and even, admitting, never-ending naiveté) that like both "law" and "literature," much of that hyphenated field examines a world in which white men attempt from a place of power to speak as if for us all. Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette has, for example, described law and literature classes given in thirty-eight law schools. Only one of the reading lists surveyed included "feminism" as a topic; most of the courses ignored women's voices altogether. Robin West and Judith Koffler have also provided excellent critiques and suggestions for work in the field of law and literature; their efforts have not until recently, however, specifically touched on the necessity for reading literary works that represent woman and her particular demands upon the law as seen in fiction.