Mainstreaming Women Writers (1991)

The idea for the title of this discussion paper comes from that of a recent British account of women's writing: Into the Mainstream. How Feminism Has Changed Writing, by Nicci Gerrard. A literary journalist and co-editor of the now deceased feminist reviews magazine, Review (1985-87), Gerrard argues that feminist literature in the 1980s is no longer marginalised, having become a part of the mainstream of publishing. She argues further that this 1980s work is of greater literary value than what she sees as its marginal 1960s precursors.To some extent Gerrard poses the question of whether this putatively mainstream women's work is selling, or selling out, although that formulation is not very satisfactory. Throughout she operates from a number of unexamined assumptions, including what the distinctions might be between feminist and women's writing, as well as among various forms of feminism. This assists in the rather bizarre phenomenon of Into the Mainstream itself somehow speaking from an assumed mainstream critical position to the extent that it is not clear what its own feminist purpose might be, that is, in the now apparently old-fashioned or marginal sense of an activist political orientation.(1)There are problems too with the term `mainstream,' one being the unadmitted but more interesting drug analogy of a similar word, `mainlining' or shooting up, which has more revolutionary implications of outlawed texts infiltrating and eventually overthrowing the host literary establishment which, it turns out, can't get enough of them.Gerrard prefers an only apparently more natural analogy of texts as tributary streams flowing to the larger river, or centre, if they're any good. Others presumably stagnate in marshes and bywaters; in Australia perhaps rather like falling, or jumping, into a billabong, an isolated end which it seems these texts deserve (together with their similarly isolated subcultural readers). But did she fall, or was she pushed, we might wonder. A too simple opposition of centre versus margin is in evidence, as if literary mainstream and billabong are always readily identifiable, mutually exclusive concepts, and not themselves illusions. Gerrard discusses the problem thus:...some ages seem to throw up an extraordinary number of writers of stature by somehow providing fertile soil for the creative imagination. Two decades have passed since the rebirth of the women's movement. Just as feminism has come of age, so too has the writing that grew up under its wing. Feminist literature has entered the mainstream of the 1980s. Entering the mainstream holds a host of opposing interpretations: selling, or selling out; gaining access, or losing substance; making more money, or taking fewer risks; becoming part of the larger world, or relinquishing the female world. It is `coping practically and courageously' with the world in which we live, and it is weakly swimming with the tide. It implies success to some and failure to others. Like all main streams, the waters are impure - and some women may long to return to the tributary days. But it is futile to feel nostalgic regret for the dramatic certainties of feminism's beginning. We have to live in today's muddy anxieties. (2)(2)The metaphor of flowing into the mainstream as `growing up,' which also means that earlier writing is seen as rebellious in an immature, quasi-adolescent sense, is itself part of the language of establishment co-option of selected liberal aspects of feminist discourses. It is not `natural' to swim against the current. As well, whose interests are served by times past being seen as simpler than the present? `Growing up' or `coming of age' as a metaphor for discouraging subversion is common wherever national unity is required, from ahistorical analyses of the Anzac landing to the Brisbane Expo to the Bicentenary: what is relatively new is their feminist appropriation. Admittedly in a celebratory sense, the inaugural 1989 Australian Feminist Book Fortnight featured the slogan, Women's Writing Comes of Age, but the connotations of abandoning an earlier youthful excess are nevertheless unfortunate. …