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HORTENSE J. SPILLERS (ESSAY DATE SPRING 1985)

SOURCE: Spillers, Hortense J. “‘An Order of Constancy’: Notes on Brooks and the Feminine.” In Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., pp. 244-71. New York: Meridian, 1990.

In the following essay, the original version of which was published in the spring 1985 issue of the Centennial Review, Spillers discusses feminist elements in Brooks’s work, maintaining that the worlds Brooks represents always include men.

The adopted procedure for this essay is neither fish nor fowl and, as such, breathes in the impure air of literary interpretation, verging on social theory. It assumes for the moment a sort of critically illegitimate stance—the literary text does point outside itself—in the primary interest of leading the reader back inside the universe of the apparently self-contained artifact. With some...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
4. General Commentary
   1. Hortense J. Spillers (Essay Date Spring 1985)
   2. Annie Perkins (Essay Date 2001)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Maud Martha
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Feminism
2. Gwendolyn Brooks
3. Women Poets