The third essay

A Response to Fredrick Crews

Through reading Martha Woodmanses essay entitled A response to Fredick Crews, it became clear to me that I would have to thoroughly read over this essay to fully grasp the ideas that are being portrayed in the essay. After reading this essay I began to understand Woodmanses point. In this essay Woodmanse’s begins by analyzing Crews` view of two other critics. Woodmanses` main point is that the meaning of any writing is up for debate, because when we read a text, we always bring our own experiences to the text and for this reason we can never fully understand a text from an unbiased perspective.

She also writes that anytime you look at writing through the lenses of gender analysis, this will also change a person’s view because they are more aware of that issue, so they will naturally notice it more when they have been taught to look for it. This is clear when she writes, “one of the major ‘empirical facts’ that Crews seems to ignore is the fact that texts very often have effects that are different from the purposes for which they were intended” (Woodmanse 518). In other words, an author can write something and mean a specific thing, while other may come along and translate the text in a way that is not how the other intended it to be.

Crews writes that “his assessment of two recent feminist considerations of Huckleberry Finn by calling for “empirical accountability in literary study (Crews 516). This means that he wants evidence that is testable using experimentation. In response to Crews, Woodmanse writes, “for Crews gender analysis of the novel is viable only when it proceeds empirically rather than aprioristically.” This means that Crews wants evidence that is testable using experiment and observation, rather then a belief that is based on prior reasoning or principles. He wants direct proof about what people are saying rather then just a thought. He wants aprioristic proof,

Crew’s writes that Jehlen is using her own political agenda. In response to Jehlen Crews writes, “…she turns this product of the “relatively benighted 1880s” into a realization of her own feminist agenda” (Crews 517). Crews feels that Jehlen is simply putting her agenda into the reading, and reading it from that perspective. Although Jehlen writes that “…Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a man`s book about a boy, and just as likely an object of gender critism as writing by or about women” (Jehlen 499). This means that anything that is written is likely to be judged for some aspect of it, whether this be writing

According to Crews, “Jehlen has had to distort all manner of literary fact”. This means that Jehlen is messing with all literary fact to prove her point. I think that Jehlen`s main point is that when we look at literary work through the eyes of gender, we begin to be opened up to new ideas that we might have never thought about before. Woodmanse goes on to say there is an example of this when Jehlen discusses Judith Loftus. While discussing a scene, where she writes, “…the fact that the accepted definition of males and females in our culture are products of social conditioning rather than reflections of the way boys and girls “really are” (Jehlnen 517).

Looking ahead to another literary criticism, I am curious as to what another author would say about these three authors. In my opinion, Jehlen and Woodmanse seem to be saying similar ideas. All that is being done with this is essay is Woodmanse commenting on other authors, and then coming in with her own opinion. I feel as though this is done to help strengthen her point, by reflecting on what others have said previous to her. One of my questions to Woodmanse would be, do you agree or disagree with Jehlen? I think that that would be my most important question.