Kerfuffle over “domestic” women writers
The editors of a literary collection have stirred up a controversy by complaining that the women contributors’ work was “disappointingly domestic.”
In the introduction to the collection the authors write: “On the whole the submissions from women were disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking - as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell.”
This is perhaps not especially surprising from someone who wrote books called Corpsing and deadkingsongs.
And what does this have to do with Jane Austen, you may well be asking? Only that her name is always evoked as a female member of the literary canon. That in itself does not even really merit inclusion in this weblog; we really don’t link every single mention of Jane in the media that we find, believe us; there has to be something in a story of interest to other Austen fans, or something we can snark. 
However, a second article in the Guardian brought the kerfuffle into the realm of AustenBlog.
“Jane Austen said she wrote on ‘two inches of ivory’ - ie a small, detailed and largely domestic canvas. As I’m sure Ali Smith and Toby Litt themselves would say, there’s nothing wrong with ‘two inches of ivory’ as long as it’s ivory, not common-or-garden bone.”
Claire Armitstead, literary editor, the Guardian
We couldn’t have said it better.
