Study Questions for Gilbert and Gubar, from "Infection in the Sentence" 

1. What historical conditions do the “vexing polarities of angel and monster” reflect?

2. What are the basic questions feminist literary criticism must answer?

3. What were the two alternatives for women writers?

4. What do Gilbert and Gubar mean by “submerged” or “hidden” meanings?  By the “oddity” of some women’s writing?  What does the metaphor of the palimpsest suggest?

5. What parallel to the male-female relationship do Gilbert and Gubar note and whom do they cite?

6. How does the female predicament differ from the traditional male “anxiety of influence” addressed by Bloom?

7. What do they argue is the recurring concealed plot of 19th-century literature by women?
   Discuss the ways in which women writers tended to manifest this plot.

8. What do they mean by female schizophrenia in this context? What does this language suggest?

9. Summarize the example from Anne Brontë.

10. What do they note about the particular use of spatial imagery in literature by women?
    How does it differ from similar imagery in male literature?

11. Summarize the example from Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

12. Are there limitations or blind spots to Gilbert and Gubar’s way of reading 19th-century women’s writing?

13. How might their approach work with other eras and types of literature?

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