SOURCE: Gring-Pemble, Lisa M., and Diane M. Blair. “Best-Selling Feminisms: The Rhetorical Production of Popular Press Feminists' Romantic Quest.” Communication Quarterly 48, no. 4 (fall 2000): 360-79.

[In the following review, Gring-Pemble and Blair argue that writings by “popular press feminists” such as Sommers “derive their powerful appeal from assuming the form of archetypal romantic quest narratives,” which ultimately “limit possibilities for critical assessments as well as honest debate and exchange.”]

On the open highway, battling stormy nature and dodging mammoth eighteen-wheelers (today's piratical tramp freighters), woman has never been more mobile, more capable of the archetypal journey of the heroic quest, a traditionally masculine myth.

(Paglia xi)

In Vamps and Tramps, Camille Paglia provocatively casts women as self-sufficient individuals on a quest to recover feminism's true nature from academic distortion. Paglia's book represents just one of several national, best-selling, “feminist” books published in the past decade, including Rene Denfield's The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order, Katie Roiphe's The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus, Christina Hoff Sommers' Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, and Naomi Wolf's Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century. Together, these “popular press feminists”¹ have levied a powerful critique of academic feminism and offered a new vision grounded in a “purer” feminism from the past. In so doing, since the mid-1990s, they have received significant media attention, gracing the front pages of popular media and igniting a flood of public commentary.² Organizations such as the Women's Freedom Network, the Independent Women's Forum, and the Network for Empowering Women, testify to the widespread appeal of these articulations of a “new feminism.”

Despite considerable media praise of these “popular feminisms,” several scholars and theorists have sought to expose the flaws in their arguments and refute the limits of these popular press feminists' works.³ For example, feminist theorist Patricia McDermott argues that such books generally “promote a version of women's studies that trivializes feminist analyses of power, undermines attempts to effect social change, and casts feminism as a hegemonic bully on American campuses” (1995, 671). Nevertheless, Pulitzer Prize winning author Susan Faludi notes that, despite persistent challenges to their works, these authors have gained legitimacy in the popular press to the extent that they are often the first contacted by journalists looking for a feminist perspective on an issue (1995, 37).

In this essay, we argue that the power of these popular-press feminist texts does not reside in the form of traditional arguments; rather, the power of these texts comes from the story that the authors tell. In other words, although Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers engage in traditional argumentative strategies to create an understanding of the women's movement, they rely predominantly on story-telling as a persuasive vehicle. Beginning from the assumption that the narratives people tell profoundly shape the reality people come to know and share with others, we focus our analysis on the narratives in these books to understand the ways in which the discourses produce and revise the meaning of feminism. We treat the rhetorical strategies embedded in these texts as action—the narratives create an image of feminists, implicitly ask readers to adopt a particular attitude toward certain types of feminism, and urge readers to act in accordance with their attitudes.

Throughout this paper, we explain how these texts derive their powerful appeal from assuming the form of an archetypal romantic quest narrative—a compelling story that engages the audience in a heroic struggle along with the authors (feminism's true heirs) against a formidable enemy (academic feminists). More specifically, each author adroitly weaves powerful depictions of themselves, academic feminists, and feminism into the context of a quest narrative form.⁴ Our analysis contributes to work in the communication discipline on narrative, particularly the theoretical inquiry of Walter Fisher, which suggests that narratives in discourse sustain multiple meanings and empower audiences to arrive at independent conclusions. After reviewing these texts, however, we argue that some narrative forms (e.g., the quest narrative) are less liberating, especially when combined with rhetorical depictions⁵ of heroes and villains that limit responses even further. In other words, when coupled together, the narrative form sets up rigid dichotomies between heroes and villains and creates double binds that limit possibilities for critical assessment of the work as well as honest debate and exchange.

Making our argument involves four main steps. First, we outline the rationale and theoretical framework that informs this study, including the narrative paradigm and the literary form of the quest narrative. Next, we trace the rhetorical development of the three texts, with particular attention to character depictions and plot lines. Third, we discuss the theoretical implications of this analysis for our understanding of narrative theory. Finally, we suggest productive ways that academic feminists might respond to the powerful narratives of these popular press feminists.

POPULAR PRESS FEMINISTS

While many of the contemporary popular press feminist authors have received significant media exposure, we have decided to focus our analysis on three texts (Paglia's Vamps and Tramps, Roiphe's The Morning After, and Sommers' Who Stole Feminism?) for three main reasons. First, as already discussed, these three texts have received overwhelming media attention and enjoyed considerable public success. Second, all three authors identify each other as part of a similar project. For instance, Paglia commends Sommers for her use of “ingenious detective work to unmask the shocking fraud and propaganda of establishment feminism” (1994, xvi). Sommers cites both Paglia and Roiphe to support her arguments about date-rape and self-esteem. Sommers also identifies these authors as part of a group of protesters “outside the academy” who are not afraid to speak the truth and “who are not fazed by being denounced as traitors and backlashers” (1995, 274-75). In the introduction to her paperback edition, Roiphe credits Paglia with being the “lone dissenting voice” in a “cultural discussion” that “was not really a discussion at all” (1994, xxii).

Finally, all three texts forward arguments that are highly critical of women's studies programs in the academy and current proponents of the feminist movement. In these texts, the authors cast academic feminists as an elitist and out-of-touch autocracy who stifle dissenting voices. They argue that feminists propagate falsehoods and exaggerations about women's condition in society, feminists are paranoid and imagine all women as helpless victims, and feminists are repressed—sexually, emotionally, and intellectually. Such condemning depictions demand a response from feminists within the academy.

Given the success of these popular press feminist voices both in attracting the media's attention and subsequently the larger public's interest, we believe that the phenomenon of these texts requires critical attention. In addition to their overall widespread success as feminist spokespersons, these popular press feminists and their works merit study because they draw upon popular cultural beliefs and values such as individualism, personal responsibility and choice, and equal treatment of all people regardless of race, class, or sexual orientation (Wood 1996, 171-73). As a result, the arguments of these texts not only appeal to the general public, but also connect with a larger controversial debate among academics, journalists, and popular authors over cultural literacy, multiculturalism, and political correctness.

This context witnessed the rise of the Christian Right in politics and the waging of culture wars on college campuses, press headlines, and court systems (Bender and Leone 1994; Bloom 1994; Diamond 1995; D'Souza 1991; D'Souza 1995; Limbaugh 1992). As is evident in the popular press feminist books, arguments over cultural literacy, political correctness, and multi-culturalism embody characterizations of academic elites as out of touch with the educational needs of American children, as a new contingency of thought police “engaged in a project of ideological consciousness-raising,” and as the “latest enemy of the vitality of classic texts” (Hirsch 1988; D'Souza 1994, 87; Bloom 20). This larger discursive context of “cultural backlash” paved the way for Paglia, Roiphe and Sommer's claims and added power and legitimacy to their rhetorical visions.

THE QUEST NARRATIVE IN CONTEXT: THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF FISHER AND FRYE

Several communication and literary scholars have investigated the role of narratives in persuasive discourse. The works of Walter Fisher and Northrop Frye are especially germane to this project. Interested in the force of narratives and the way that stories work rhetorically to shape people's understanding of the world, Walter Fisher developed the narrative paradigm. For Fisher, the narrative paradigm offers a more comprehensive and heuristic way of understanding human communication. Fisher argues that humans are fundamentally storytellers and that “symbols are created and communicated ultimately as stories meant to give order to human experience and to induce others to dwell in them to establish ways of living in common, in communities in which there is sanction for the story that constitutes one's life” (1984, 6).

Embedded in Fisher's perspective is the assumption that the narrativity of public discourse empowers audiences to evaluate stories, arguments, and claims without the aid of technical experts or formal training in logic. In fact, Fisher claims that the narrative paradigm “engenders critical self-awareness and conscious choice” (1985, 349). In contrast to Fisher's assertions, however, our analysis of the popular press feminist narratives challenges our faith in the liberatory function of narratives in public discourse. We believe Fisher's insistence upon audiences' ability to judge a text critically downplays the power of discourse to shape and position audiences' understanding of their world in particular ways. Specifically, the structural logic of some narratives can limit an audiences' ability to assess those narratives critically.

One example of a powerful narrative form that does constrain an audience's ability to evaluate narratives is the romantic quest narrative. In his Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye develops an extensive description of the mythic form known as the romantic quest. The quest story typically describes the adventures of a hero, who on a noble quest for a special object or person, encounters and defeats an evil villain. Frye explains that the romantic quest “has three main stages: the stage of the perilous journey and the preliminary minor adventures; the crucial struggle, usually some kind of battle in which either the hero or his foe, or both, must die; and the exaltation of the hero” (1957, 187). Throughout the quest story, the hero frequently calls for a return to “some kind of imaginative golden age in time and space” (186). Because the quest almost always involves conflict between two central characters—a protagonist (hero) and an antagonist (enemy)—the hero is virtually guaranteed that she will encounter opposition on her quest. Frye notes that the protagonist and antagonist often assume mythic qualities—“attributes of divinity” designated to the hero while the enemy takes on “demonic mythical qualities” (187). Ultimately, the quest story culminates in a battle in which the hero overthrows the enemy and the golden era is restored to renewed heights.

Importantly, the quest narrative is prevalent in mainstream American popular culture. Romantic quests undergird soap operas (e.g. Days of Our Lives), religious stories (e.g. David and Goliath), popular movies (e.g. The Star Wars Trilogy), myths (e.g. Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece), fairy tales (e.g. Cinderella), news spectacles (e.g. Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings), and popular television story plots (e.g. Law and Order). Each story features an underdog or a common person fighting against a powerful destructive force in order to restore a flawed and imperfect situation to its harmonious ideal. The good-evil dichotomies present in the quest story are rooted in many Western cultural systems. Legal codes (innocence or guilt), some religions (saint or sinner), and economic principles (bear or bull market), sustain themselves through similar dualistic thinking.

The power of this culturally familiar quest narrative form to circumscribe possible audience interpretations is best captured by Burke's definition of form as the “arousing and fulfillment of desires” (1968, 124). The quest narrative actively engages an audience by creating needs and desires and then gratifying and satisfying those needs and desires. Consequently, the form itself dictates the outcome of the story, effectively reducing an audience's ability to critically assess the narrative and envision alternative outcomes. Even Fisher acknowledges that “the most compelling, persuasive stories are mythic in form” (1984, 16). As is evident in the following analysis, the structural logic of the quest narrative form complete with powerful characterizations of heroes, villains, and impending battles limits an audience's ability to test the rationality of the narrative and position itself within the narrative critically.

THE QUEST NARRATIVE FORM OF PAGLIA, ROIPHE, AND SOMMERS

DEPICTIONS OF THE AUTHORS

In their narratives Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers present themselves as heroes by juxtaposing themselves with the villains, academic feminists. All three writers discursively construct themselves as personally concerned with reclaiming the heart of the women's movement from its present state of corruption. In addition, the authors describe themselves as independent, rational, and scholarly in their intellectual endeavors.

First, all three authors demonstrate their investment in re-claiming the woman's movement from elitist, self-motivated, academic feminists who have co-opted or stolen the movement and perverted its true goals. For instance, Sommers distinguishes between two types of feminists: the equity feminists and the gender feminists. Sommers sees herself as an equity feminist and she argues that “The gender feminists have stolen ‘feminism’ from a mainstream that had never acknowledged their leadership.” She goes on to declare that “I have been moved to write this book because I am a feminist who does not like what feminism has become” (1995, 18).⁶

Similarly, Roiphe begins her book by explaining that she comes from a family that believed in the women's movement and that encouraged her and her sisters to speak up and have opinions. In fact, she reveals that her mother would not let her watch the Brady Bunch because it was sexist, and her father sent her to an all-girls school because “he wanted his daughters to learn to speak their mind” (1994, 4). As a product of a feminist household, Roiphe declares she was surprised and bewildered by her introduction to feminism in the academy. She states, “The feminism around me in the classrooms, conversations, and student journals was not the feminism I grew up with. … All of a sudden feminism meant being angry about men looking at you in the street and writing about ‘the colonialist appropriation of the female discourse’” (4-5). Shocked at what feminism has become, Roiphe vows to reclaim the feminism of her youth.

Paglia expresses similar dismay over the current state of feminism. Because she believes that academic feminists have misappropriated feminism, Paglia claims for herself a role as “militant reformer of feminism and academe” whose primary vehicle of reform is the “Sixties design of protest and opposition” (1994, xvi). Paglia further argues that she wants to “revamp” feminism and she portrays herself as a leader of the resistance against inauthentic feminism. For example, she contends “I am arming the rebels” and she also states that her work provides “a set of can openers by which dissenters can pry open the solipsistically sealed discourse of poststructuralism. I seek no followers. I am an irascible Aries warrior …” (xvii). Like Sommers and Roiphe, Paglia also proclaims her commitment to recover feminism's lost roots. Further, while Paglia denies that she seeks followers, she nevertheless devotes considerable energy to recruiting adherents through articulating her views in the popular press and persuading readers to follow her lead in salvaging feminism.

Second, all three authors highlight their nature as independent thinkers in contrast to the groupthink and uncritical mentality of academic feminists. The authors distinguish themselves by claiming responsibility for breaking new ground and staking intellectual claims even when doing so is unpopular. For instance, in the preface to her book, Sommers seeks to demonstrate her ability to question and verify the statistics and results of feminist studies. She claims she has a healthy skepticism of feminist methodologies and is willing to adopt a critical stance for the sake of “Truth.” Likewise, Roiphe notes that she is “writing against the grain” of current feminist thinking (1995, xiv). Throughout The Morning After, Roiphe suggests that she is a dissenter in an environment of fear and mass thinking. She further claims that she is fighting against an “Orwellian” culture that has “become astonishingly intolerant of dissent” (1994, xvii, xviii). Accusing academic feminists of publishing the startling results of a flawed study on rape on university campuses, Roiphe characterizes herself as the lone skeptic:

I remember standing outside the dining hall in college looking at a purple poster with this statistic written in bold letters. It didn't seem right. … If I was really standing in the middle of an epidemic, a crisis, if 25 percent of my female friends were really being raped, wouldn't I know it?

(51-52)

Also highly individualistic, Paglia depicts herself as a libertarian sixties rebel, a champion of diversity and a pagan outcast who is sexually free, original, and spontaneous. “My highest ideals are free speech and free thought,” she proclaims as she assumes the persona of a “streetwalker,” “a prowler and predator, self-directed and no one's victim” (1994, x, xvi). Clearly, all three authors depict themselves as independent “outlaw” scholars. In so doing, they invite audience members to embody such a position, and like the authors, assume the persona of a free-thinking hero.

In addition to their courageous and independent nature, these authors claim adherence to a rigorous program of intellectual scholarship marked by science and objectivity as they quest after “Truth.” Sommers portrays herself as reasonable and rational, motivated by a search for “Truth” in contrast to the gender feminists who are politically motivated. Sommers charges revisionist feminists, in their effort to reclaim women's artwork, with using remedial standards that result in their erroneously equating the inferior artistry of quilts to the canvases of Titian and Rembrandt. She argues that true feminists must reject as “unworthy” the revisionist stance's goal to “rewrite the historical record or to change the standards of artistic excellence to put women's art on a par with the highest classic achievements” (1995, 63). Throughout her book, Sommers continues to bemoan the harm done to “Truth” and knowledge by politically motivated attempts at scholarship. She argues that gender feminists' critiques of science's “methodology, its rules of evidence, its concern for empirical grounding [and] its ideal of objectivity … are a distinct embarrassment and a threat to any woman with aspirations to do real science” (71). In contrast to these “false” feminists, Sommers claims to enact a truth-based research approach grounded in material conditions. For example, she begins her chapter on rape research inquiring:

How can one quantify the sense of deep violation behind the [rape] statistics? Terms like incidence and prevalence are statistical jargon; once we use them, we necessarily abstract ourselves from the misery. Yet, it remains clear that to arrive at intelligent policies and strategies to decrease the occurrence of rape, we have no alternative but to gather and analyze data, and to do so does not make us callous. Truth is no enemy to compassion, and falsehood is no friend.

(209)

In this passage Sommers reinforces the notion that a person's politics should not be a part of empirical investigations, and she implies that any perspective that is not detached and objective taints the data and produces false knowledge that is ultimately harmful to those it seeks to help. Instead, she suggests that her scientific and rational approach to rape research is the only way to create a responsible and accurate political agenda.

Roiphe also contrasts her reasonableness to the politically motivated academic feminists, who are unable to distinguish between fact and fiction. For instance in her critique of Andrea Dworkin's work on gender violence, Roiphe argues that

The idea that men are safe and women are not, that danger is a gender issue, springs from something other than fact. Fear is not exclusively female. Although Andrea Dworkin doesn't seem to think so, Little Red Riding Hood is just a fairy tale, and whatever big bad wolves are out there are out to get all of us, flesh and blood, male or female.

(1994, 47-48)

According to Roiphe, her independent thinking and rational scholarship provide her with insights into contemporary issues that academic feminists miss because of their political, biased, and unscholarly approach to knowledge. Going further, Roiphe argues that academic feminists are blind to the fact that their focus on the danger and violence associated with sex reinforces age-old sexism. She claims that in “institutionalizing the assumption that rape is universally life-threatening, feminists are institutionalizing female weakness” (74).

Like Sommers and Roiphe, Paglia is committed to demonstrating her intelligence, reasonableness and academic finesse. Claiming that she can “talk trash with the rest of the human race,” Paglia adopts a matter-of-fact tone, noting that “I call my feminism ‘streetwise’ or ‘street-smart’ feminism” (1994, 36, 51). She further urges a return to the “plain voice of common sense” and she advocates a “simple, rational” and self-critical analytical approach to reforming educational standards (xvi, xviii, 38). With a wide variety of references to deconstructionism, Greek mythology, psychopathology, the Conservative Right, and Romanticism, Paglia bombards her readers with a smorgasbord of theoretical wisdom. For example, she cites a myriad of intellectuals including Allen Ginsberg, Donatello, Caravaggio, Marshall McCluhan, Michel Foucault, Oscar Wilde, Horace, Juvenal, Euripides, Rosseau, Emile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud (vv, xvii, 24, 25, 88, 106, 149, 194, 400). As a result, she lends credibility to her position as a well-read and informed scholar; while simultaneously and implicitly contrasting her diverse knowledge with the myopic and uncritical view of academic feminists.

In summary, the authors, as heroes, embody all that is good about living in a democratic society—they are willing to take a stand for what they believe in; they are willing and able to think rationally for themselves; they want to preserve scientific truths and objectivity; they are self-reliant and responsible individuals. On the other hand, academic feminists are portrayed in stark contrast to the stories' popular press feminist heroes.

DEPICTIONS OF ACADEMIC FEMINISTS

In these narratives, academic feminists are represented as the real enemies of women in today's society. Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers use vivid and colorful language to portray academic feminists as “ideologues” who are “divisive and resentful” (Sommers 1995, 17). According to Sommers, “American feminism is currently dominated by a group of women who seek to persuade the public that American women are not the free creatures we think we are” (16). Paglia demonizes academic feminists by terming them “Stalinist” and “corrupt palace elites,” arguing that they practice a “Betty Crocker feminism,” and are comparable to “Nazis” (1994, xvi, xvii, 20, 25). She further describes feminists as “bourgeois,” “snippy neurotics” whose own sexual repression has resulted in the creation of a “spectral sexual hell” for other women (ix, 30, 32, 50). In general, the authors depict academic feminists in three ways: self-absorbed, unscholarly, and exclusionary.⁷

First, all three authors portray academic feminists as self-involved. For instance, Sommers asserts that the “New Feminists, many of them privileged, all of them legally protected and free, are preoccupied with their own sense of hurt and their own feelings of embattlement and ‘siege’” (1995, 24-25). As a result of what she calls their melodramatic, uncritical stance, Sommers charges that these feminists see “revelations of monstrosity in the most familiar and seemingly innocuous phenomena” (27). Similarly, in her depiction of student rallies, Roiphe portrays feminists as so self-indulgent with their “victim mentality” that they celebrate the most mundane of activities: “In the context of Take Back the Night, it is entirely acceptable to praise yourself for bravery, to praise yourself for recovery, to praise yourself for getting out of bed every morning and eating breakfast” (1994, 37). Roiphe suggests that the participants at these rallies get caught up in the emotional show, and they compete with each other to see “whose stories can be more Sadean, more incest-ridden, more violent, more like a paperback you can buy at a train station” (42). Citing the prostitute as the most liberated type of woman, Paglia further charges that academic feminists' activism against prostitution reveals their own self-absorption. She explains that “[i]n reducing prostitutes to pitiable charity cases in need of their help, middle-class feminists are guilty of arrogance, conceit, and prudery” (57).

A second critique these authors levy against academic feminists is that they are unscholarly as evidenced by their use of inaccurate statistics, unsound methodology, and emotional appeals to make their points. Sommers begins her book implying that feminists relied on a false statistic to create hysteria around the issue of anorexia. Roiphe, too, argues that the pull of the feminist clique is so strong that some women are willing to lie to be a part of the group. She relates the example of a woman named Mindy who fabricated a rape story so that she could participate in the Take Back the Night rally at Stanford. Roiphe suggests that the incident may not be unique: “If Mindy's political zeal and emotional intensity blurred the truth of her story, one wonders how many other survivors experience a similar blurring” (1994, 41). Paglia also charges feminists with distorted and inaccurate thinking that obfuscates truth. For example, she states that

Social constructionism was a crude distortion of the vast Sixties cosmic vision. It was promulgated for sectarian political purposes by … the new Seventies breed of Stalinist feminist[s] [who] tried, in the abortion crusade, to wipe out all reference to nature or religion—a misconceived strategy that backfired and simply strengthened the pro-life opposition.

(1994, 20)

The authors also portray feminists as anti-intellectual because of their confused methodology and emotional thinking. For instance, Sommers argues that because of their hostility to “exact thinking” and their disrespect for science and rationality, academic feminists are driven more by their emotions and psychological states than by any real intelligent insight. She states, “I believe that how these feminist theorists regard American society is more a matter of temperament than a matter of insight into social reality” (1995, 26). Sommers further contends that “[m]uch of what students learn in women's studies classes is not disciplined scholarship but feminist ideology” (51). Similarly, Roiphe claims that feminists' political approach to knowledge leaves them misdirected in their concerns and conflicted about their convictions. For instance, Roiphe argues that academic feminists have mistakenly identified a sexual identity crisis for a rape crisis, and in the process, are perpetuating the problem:

The movement against date rape is a symptom of a more general anxiety about sex. … Take Back the Night offers tangible targets, things to chant against and rally around in a sexually ambiguous time. Take Back the Night is a symptom of conservative attitudes about sex mingling with the remains of the sexual revolution. The crisis is not a rape crisis, but a crisis in sexual identity.

(1994, 26-27)

Further, Paglia stereotypes the academic feminists as being devoid of critical thinking skills claiming, “I have written and spoken extensively about the need to demolish women's studies, a corrupt autocracy that was flung together without regard for scholarly standards or objective criteria of professional credentialing” (1994, xxii-xxiii). She also charges that the “process of curricular reform has been complicated by the insularity of humanities faculty, most of whom seem naively oblivious to the political complexities and inner turbulence of contemporary America” (xviii-xix).

Paglia argues that this irrationality encourages academic feminists to exclude authentic feminists from the movement. Paglia recounts her experiences in the academy:

At Harvard and elsewhere I was boycotted by the feminist faculty, and at several colleges leaflets were distributed, inaccurately denouncing me as a voice of the far right. Following my lecture at Brown, I was screamed at by soft, inexperienced, but seethingly neurotic middle-class white girls, whose feminist party-line views on rape I have rejected in my writings. Rational discourse is not possible in an atmosphere of such mob derangement.

(100)

In this passage, Paglia sets up a powerful dichotomy between herself as a rational leader interested in discussion with other feminists and irrational, erratic, and unstable academic feminists who are desperate to exclude Paglia's informed opinions from the academic sphere.

In essence the texts vilify feminists within the academy by painting an unappealing picture of their psychological and social profile. The principal thrust of the rhetoric is that these academic feminists have corrupted feminism to serve their own personal psychoses and political agendas. Thus, the three authors caricature academic feminist theories and practices as destructive and negative. Academic feminists are constructed as the dangerous villains in the narrative quest who must be defeated if the soul of feminism is to be saved.

THE QUEST FOR A PURER FEMINISM

Throughout their books, Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers portray themselves as heroes, identify academic feminists as antagonists, and suggest a necessary conflict between authentic and “false” feminists for the soul of feminism. As a result, they create a highly persuasive romantic quest narrative with widespread appeal. In keeping with the form of the narrative quest, all three authors locate the corruption of mainstream feminism in its straying from feminism's true roots. Each author champions a golden age where feminism is practiced appropriately and successfully. For example, Roiphe (1994) reminisces about the “true” feminism she grew up with in her home. Similarly, evoking women's mythical past of being vamps and tramps (“queens of the night,” “prostitutes,” “sexual seductresses”) Paglia urges a return to a purer “sixties” style feminist past which she brands “tough-cookie feminism” (1994, ix, xii, xiii). Her “equal opportunity feminism … demands the removal of all barriers to woman's advance in the political and professional world—but not at the price of special protections for women, which are infantilizing and anti-democratic” (x). Finally, Sommers laments that “It is unfortunate for American feminism that their [the gender/academic feminists] ideology and attitude are diverting the women's movement from its true purposes” (1995, 21). Sommers celebrates the feminism of a bygone era—a feminism of the nineteenth century. She states that “American women owe an incalculable debt to the classically liberal feminists who came before us and fought long and hard, and ultimately with spectacular success, to gain for women the rights that the men of this country had taken for granted for over two hundred years” (17). Sommers contrasts the feminism of Seneca Falls with the feminism of today and in her description suggests that all that feminism was back then (Seneca Falls) is all that feminism is not today: “The aims of the Seneca Falls activists were clearly stated, finite, and practicable. They would eventually be realized because they were grounded in the tradition of equity, fairness, and individual liberty” (35). Sommers' portrayal of the nineteenth century women's rights movement, however, ignores the fact that it took almost a century for women to gain the right to vote, and her account ignores the ideological struggles within the movement's long history.⁸

On their journey to reclaim the soul of feminism, the authors predict an inevitable battle between authentic feminists (people like themselves) and academic/gender feminists—a fight that authentic feminists must endure in order to redeem feminism. For instance, Paglia repeatedly contends that she is “at war” with individuals such as Catharine MacKinnon in battles over sexuality and feminism (1994, 107). In a play script entitled “Glennda and Camille Do Downtown,” Paglia spars with anti-porn feminists and describes how one protesting woman “strikes at the camera with her poster … [and] there is pushing and shoving and a general melee” (285). A satirical spoof on feminist protests, Paglia's account nevertheless underscores the essence of conflict and battle in the war over feminism. As a result of her efforts, Paglia suggests that she has been increasingly successful in reclaiming feminism's true nature. For example, she states:

In the past four years since I arrived on the scene (after an ill-starred career that included job problems, poverty, and the rejection of Sexual Personae by seven major publishers), there has been a dramatic shift in thought in America. The fascist rigidity of political correctness, in academe and the media, has begun to melt. Heretical ideas that, when I expressed them in essays and lectures in 1991 and 1992, got me pilloried and picketed, in a torrent of abuse and defamation, have now become common coin. My terminology and frame of analysis have passed into general usage.

(xiv-xv)

In this passage, Paglia clearly presents herself as a determined heroine engaged in a relentless struggle against academic feminists. Notably, she casts herself as the likely victor.

Similarly, Sommers also predicts a coming battle between the equity feminists who represent “Truth” and the academic feminists who represent “Ideology.” She states that “All indications are that the new crop of young feminist ideologues coming out of our nation's colleges are even angrier, more resentful, and more indifferent to the truth than their mentors” (1995, 18). As such, others must take up the challenge to rescue feminism from the wrong hands. She declares that “Only forthright appraisals can diminish its [academic feminism] inordinate and divisive influence. If others join in a frank and honest critique, before long a more representative and less doctrinaire feminism will again pick up the reins. But that is not likely to happen without a fight” (18). Here again, Sommers positions herself and her would-be followers on the side of Truth engaged in a battle over the heart of feminism. Like Paglia, Sommers also slants the impending victory in her favor.

Finally, Roiphe also characterizes the current situation as a war:

The cliché about the war between the sexes has, like all clichés, its grain of truth: this war has its propaganda and its blind patriotism. When the maps and alliances and battle lines are drawn, loyalties pledged, sides declared, all ambiguities, doubts, and subtleties seem to disappear. This is a war of absolutes.

(1994, xiii)

In all three texts, the militaristic language of propaganda, patriotism, alliances, and battle lines invokes a vocabulary of heroes and villains; a cleaved society with clear distinctions between good and evil. In these narratives the authors suggest that their readers must be willing to fight if feminism, the academy, and society are to be saved. Just in case the audience is reluctant to engage in an all-out-war, the narratives of Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers detail the dangerous consequences of refusing to do battle.

Much is at stake in this battle for the soul of feminism and the academy. The authors argue that the world and their audience's values are at risk. Sommers argues that under the rule of academic feminists, students are not able to get the basic knowledge necessary to function effectively in the world: “Those who deploy the new scholarship in an attempt to make up for the short-comings of the ‘male-centered curriculum’ almost inevitably shortchange their students” (1995, 63). She paints a very bleak future for the academy if the academic feminists' efforts are not curtailed:

But when future historians go back to find out what happened to American universities at the end of the twentieth century that so weakened them, politicized them, and rendered them illiberal, anti-intellectual, and humorless places, they will find that among the principal causes of the decline was the failure of intelligent, powerful, and well-intentioned officials to distinguish between the reasonable and just cause of equity feminism and its unreasonable, unjust, ideological sister—gender feminism.

(52-53)

Sommers' concern for the force of academic feminists does not stop with the academy, however. She believes the academic feminists' critique of knowledge production and curriculum transformations is “an illiberal, irrational, and anti-intellectual program that is a threat to everything. … American democracy, liberal education, academic freedom, and the kind of mainstream feminism that has gained women near-equality in American society” (82-83). In her view, academic feminism undermines feminism as well as the American ideals of democracy, free speech, and equality.

For Roiphe what is at stake in the ultimate battle over feminism is freedom of speech, and she faults academic feminists for their intolerance of opposing views. As an example, Roiphe claims that academic feminists insist “on a type of politicized language, on words like ‘patriarchy’ or ‘gender, race, and class.’ Such language offers easy code words for ‘on our side’ … What is ominous about this particular form of intolerance is that it dictates a certain homogeneity” (1994, xx). Thus, Roiphe's language choices portray academic feminists as a powerful force that dictates thought and identifies allies and enemies through a secret language.

Roiphe warns that current feminist rule crushes individual freedom and demands blind allegiance to a single mode of thought: “The concept of the individual writer thinking ragged individual thoughts, writing in his or her own ragged individual idiom, is sacrificed to the idea of the sleek political mechanism churning out endless, methodical analyses written in the common language” (xx). Like Sommers, Roiphe asserts that academic feminist thought runs counter to widespread American values such as individualism and freedom of expression. Roiphe suggests that she and other popular press feminists are among the first to challenge the excesses and exclusions of a narrowly defined feminism (xiv).

Of course, in order to make her argument, Roiphe must ignore existing voices within the feminist movement who have “continually critiqued the very excesses she names” (hooks 104). As bell hooks has indicated, radical black women, women of color, and progressive white women throughout feminism's history have challenged the assumptions and limits of “sentimental white bourgeois feminist thought” (106; Wood 1996, 181).

Similarly, Paglia worries that the “left” has lost control of ideas to a powerful conservative right. She explains:

Progressive values are damaged when the left has lost touch with reality and when the plain voice of common sense is heard mainly on the right. Conservative Christian organization have made enormous gains in America because most of their issues are legitimate ones that have been misunderstood, misrepresented, or treated with sophomoric disrespect by what Dan Quayle correctly called the “cultural elite.” The only way to slow or stop the national drift to the right is for intellectuals to reclaim these issues and methodically recast them, one by one, in a new progressive language comprehensible to middle America but divested of narrow Christian moralism. The people can and must be pulled back toward the center. Civil liberties, as the Sixties understood them, are at stake.

(1994, xviii)

Because elitist academic feminists are out of touch with reality, Paglia argues that the power of the right is increasing at an alarming rate. Self-appointed as intellectual and public spokeswoman, Paglia assumes responsibility for redirecting feminism on an appropriate course so that “the intellectual and artistic creativity of America will [not] suffer” (xxiii). Indeed, Paglia champions herself as a defender of free speech and free thought: “I condemn all speech codes and espouse offensiveness for its own sake, as a tool of attack against received opinion and unexamined assumptions” (xvi).

Clearly, each author makes use of a quest narrative as a central persuasive strategy. Each is engaged in a battle over true feminism with an unsavory and corrupt academic feminist opponent. Each author casts herself as a hero and predicts her eventual triumph. And each recalls a more glorious feminist past that must be restored. As we explain in further detail in the following paragraphs, this quest narrative circumscribes possible audience interpretations of the authors' messages precisely because the form (genre) dictates the presence of heroes and villains, a lost past to be reclaimed, and inevitable ultimate battles.

THE RHETORICAL FORCE OF THE NARRATIVES

Throughout this essay we have demonstrated that an analysis of three popular press feminist books reveals the persuasive appeal and power of the quest narrative. Specifically, we argue that this quest form positions audiences (readers) in powerful ways. The quest form outlines an impending battle between good and evil and characterizes the victors and losers in this battle. The very form of the narrative encourages readers to identify with the heroes (authors) and disparage the villains (academic feminists). Such a form is not conducive to the liberating capacity of narrative rationality articulated by Fisher (1984; 1985).

In contrast to Fisher's theory of narrative rationality as a judgment that the audience brings to a text, our analysis suggests that some narratives, ones that are mythic in form like the quest narrative, carry within them their own narrative logic. This narrative logic works much like formal logic—the form itself effectively limits audiences' abilities to resist and challenge the story being told. Within the quest narrative, the presence of oppositional binaries combined with associations between the heroes and idealized cultural values encourage readers to identify with popular press feminists.

Oppositional binaries are central to both the form of the quest narrative and the depiction of the hero and the enemy. Because of this binary structure, the romantic quest narrative favors simplicity and absolutes over subtlety and complexity. Consequently, in these narratives, readers are encouraged to see themselves as either victim or victor, antagonist or protagonist, ideological or scholarly, oppressed or liberated, automatons or individuals, powerless or powerful, members of Orwell's “Ministry of Truth” or advocates of free speech (Roiphe 1994, xviii).

Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers invite readers to participate in the quest narrative, and in doing so position the readers in such a way as to be either for or against the quest. Frye states that in a quest narrative “[c]haracters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it they are caricatured as simply villainous or cowardly” (1957, 195).

The quest narrative, however, provides powerful incentives for readers to identify with the heroes. Frye explains that audiences of the quest narrative rarely have a true choice in being for or against the quest: “The central form of romance is dialectical: everything is focused on a conflict between the hero and his [or her] enemy, and all the reader's values are bound up with the hero” (187).

Kathleen Hall Jamieson refers to this no-choice choice as a double bind. She explains:

Rhetoric, as critic Kenneth Burke notes, is a reflection as well as a selection and a deflection. Rhetoric makes sense of otherwise inchoate experiences. It structures. It orders. It focuses. It attempts to limit our angle of vision to that of the writer or speaker. A double bind is a rhetorical construct that posits two and only two alternatives, one or both penalizing the person being offered them. … When a bind casts one alternative as loathsome, it points to the other as a woman's only appropriate choice.

(1995, 13-14)

These popular press authors' quest narratives create such a bind for their readers. If readers resist (or even reject a part of) Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers' rhetorical vision, they are encouraged to see themselves as the authors depict the academic feminists—uncritical, self-indulgent, misdirected, and opposed to many cultural ideals. Further, the readers may view themselves as antagonists who are thwarting progress and supporting a false feminism. In contrast, if readers agree with Paglia, Roiphe and/or Sommers, they, like the authors, become heroes and advocates for authentic feminist principles and values.

The quest narrative further directs the audience to identify with the authors by associating the authors with revered cultural values of independence, rationality, objectivity, and freedom of thought and expression. The authors characterize themselves and their followers as critical and rational scholars, authentic feminists, and independent, powerful women. Paglia portrays her audience as “queens of the night,” rulers of the sexual and emotional sphere, autonomous, no one's victim, and responsible (1994, ix, xii, 31). Similarly, Roiphe depicts her readers as independent, individualistic, and superior to the misdirected feminists and their disillusioned followers (1994, 72). Sommers describes her audience as objective and philosophically aligned with feminism's true roots (1995, 22, 71).

Clearly these depictions invite readers to imagine an ideal and attractive feminist world, a utopia that may not reflect the real world experiences of many women. For instance, many women are constrained by obligations such as family responsibilities, employment, economic disadvantages, and relationships. In this sense, women are not completely autonomous or independent. Still, Roiphe, Paglia, and Sommers construct a powerful vision of how women would like to perceive themselves. As narrative theory predicts, such idealistic stories have tremendous appeal. Fisher explains that:

the narrative perspective leads to the conclusion that idealistic stories … generate adherence because they are coherent and “ring true” to life as we would like to live it. Such stories involve us in a choice of characters in competition with other characters, leading us to choose our “heroes” and our “villains”; the choice is existential.

(1985, 362)

The popular press authors maximize this pleasing worldview by writing in straight-forward, common language, offering simple right/wrong and good/bad choices, and enacting the scientifically-privileged positivistic approach to knowledge. Further, all three authors use the first-person plural form of “we” to refer to themselves and their readers, a powerful strategy that encourages readers to identify with the authors' position. How much more appealing (or at the very least, easier to comprehend) are these depictions than the ones that we academic feminists create with our subtle open-ended arguments, discipline-specific language, complex choices, and critical approaches that make problems out of positivistic thinking with no easy solutions?

STRATEGIES FOR AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE

Beyond theoretical implications, our analysis indicates that academic feminists must attend and respond to the power of these popular press feminist works and similar discourses. Based on our analysis, we suggest a variety of stances feminists in the academy may take to reduce the rhetorical force of these popular press feminist texts including: (1) deconstructing Paglia's, Roiphe's, and Sommers' narratives, (2) shifting the nature of the argument over feminism; and (3) appropriating some of Paglia's, Roiphe's and Sommers' strategies.

Academic feminists can adopt two main approaches to deconstructing the archetypal narratives. One way feminists in the academy can deconstruct the narrative is by identifying the presence of double binds. Jamieson states that:

The first step in overcoming a double bind is seeing it for what it is. Reframing invites an audience to view a set of options from a different perspective and confront the fact that the options offered are false—whether they present a no-choice-choice, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a no-win situation, a double standard, or an unrealizable expectation.

(1995, 190)

Our rhetorical critique of these texts was intended to do just that—reframe Paglia's, Roiphe's, and Sommers' arguments to illustrate the underlying narrative structure that places the audience in a double bind and discourages them from adopting a critical stance toward the author's arguments.

Another deconstructive approach that feminists might adopt is exposing the inconsistencies that are present in the archetypal narratives. For instance, Sommers frequently uses the same methodologies she critiques to make her argument. She accuses academic feminists of dichotomizing social reality “into two groups politically at odds, one of whom dominates and exploits the other” (1995, 42). As already demonstrated, Sommers creates a similar dichotomy by dividing feminists into gender (academic) versus equity feminists—one embodying all good the other all evil. In addition, Sommers disdains academic feminists for using the practice of “scare quotes to indicate the feminist suspicion of a ‘reality’ peculiar to male ways of knowing” (66). However, Sommers also uses this tactic of scare quotes to indicate her own suspicion of academic feminists' ways of knowing. For instance, she asserts that social studies texts are full of “filler feminism” and this “filler feminism pads history with its own ‘facts’ designed to drive home the ideological lessons feminists wish to impart” (60). By revealing the problems of incoherence and inconsistency embedded within these narratives, academic feminists can expose the limits of popular press feminists' claims.

To gain increased legitimacy, academic feminists can also shift the argumentative ground of the debate. Roiphe, Sommers, and Paglia occupy a position of success, in part, because they construct feminism in terms of a battle between true feminists (themselves) and false feminists (academic feminists). Any attempt by academic feminists to respond within this framework presents problems because academic feminists occupy an inferior, antagonistic position in these authors' narratives. In addition, any direct attacks by academic feminists on these popular texts only reinforce the authors' view—that authentic feminists are besieged outsiders fighting a tyrannical feminist establishment.

Thus, academic feminists should consider re-situating the nature of the debate. For example, Roiphe's, Sommers', and Paglia's primary strategy for reclaiming feminism is engaging in an empirical debate over the accuracy of statistical information and locating the origins of authentic feminism. Instead, academic feminists might shift the argumentative ground to one of improving material conditions for women. Sommers argues in her book that “Gender feminists are committed to the doctrine that the vast majority of batterers or rapists are not fringe characters but men whom society regards as normal—sports fans, former fraternity brothers, pillars of the community” (1995, 198). Sommers then proceeds to “prove” that batterers are really criminals and sociopaths and that gender feminists have inaccurately stereotyped innocent men as potential batterers. Paglia adopts a similar move when she states

I categorically reject current feminist cant that insists that the power differential of boss/worker or teacher/student makes the lesser party helpless to resist the hand on the knee, the bear hug, the sloppy kiss, or the off-color joke. … That a woman, whether or not she has dependent children, has no choice but to submit without protest to a degrading situation is absurd.

(1994, 48)

In arguing as they do, both Paglia and Sommers ignore material reality. Regardless of the number of women being battered, the fact of the matter is that women do suffer from physical and psychological abuse and arguing over the accuracy of statistics does not change that fact nor does it provide necessary help for battered women. Likewise, Paglia ignores the presence of power relationships and fails to consider real situations in which women cannot simply walk away from battery for a variety of reasons including fear for one's life, economic survival, and perceived dependence.

Instead of playing the popular press feminist game of engaging in debates in which academic feminists must necessarily lose as a result of the quest narrative construction (Paglia, Roiphe and Sommers have already cast themselves as heroes and academic feminists as villains), academic feminists might respond from alternate argumentative ground. Rather than arguing endlessly over statistical data, for example, academic feminists could demonstrate the ways in which their social advocacy deals with material reality and works to improve women's lives.

A final method academic feminists could use to gain legitimacy is to appropriate some of the strategies Paglia, Roiphe and Sommers employ with success. While we certainly do not advocate that academic feminists construct their own quest narratives, thereby reinscribing and reinforcing destructive dichotomies and binary thinking, we do acknowledge that academic feminists can learn from these authors. For instance, as demonstrated throughout this paper, the stories Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers tell derive considerable power because they contain simple language and draw on cultural values and myths.

Currently, many academic feminists write in discipline-specific language, provide complex analyses, and use complicated theoretical constructs to support their arguments. As a result, academic feminist work frequently does not lend itself to general public readership and as such reinforces popular stereotypes that feminists in the academy are elitist and out of touch with the concerns of everyday people. While explaining complex concepts in easy to understand language is difficult, academic feminists must learn to convey their messages in ways that appeal to the popular press if they want to define the nature and function of feminism. In the words of feminist theorist Carol Cohn: “If we [academic feminists] refuse to learn the language, we are guaranteed that our voices will remain outside the ‘politically relevant’ spectrum of opinion” (1990, 50).

Roiphe, Sommers, and Paglia levy a powerful and compelling critique against academic feminists, simultaneously forcing academic feminists to find answers to central questions such as: How can we, as academic feminists, act responsibly and productively in our communities, which often operate using dichotomous belief systems? How can we convey the legitimacy of our work as well as utilize popular sites for knowledge production? Moreover, Roiphe, Paglia and Sommers clearly have positioned themselves successfully as feminist spokeswomen.

Academic feminists must follow this example and create discursive sites to speak as public intellectuals. Women's studies advocate Patricia McDermott (1985) suggests that academic feminists must position themselves at the crossroads of movements, media, and the academy in order to gain a powerful voice in contemporary popular culture. Academic feminists cannot afford to confine their actions to the academic realm or they risk reinforcing popular feminist stereotypes that academic feminists exist in an ivory tower and are out of touch with “true” feminist concerns. Thus, academic feminists must continue to draw attention to their work inside and outside the academy by forming coalitions with women's activist groups, writing in non-discipline specific language, developing productive relationships with the media, and actively engaging popular press “feminists” in dialogue. By doing so, they can increase their influence in and responsiveness to popular culture.

Notes

1. Throughout this paper we refer to authors such as Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers as “popular press feminists” to facilitate their self-identified distinction from academic feminists. While we respect the desire of these authors to identify themselves as feminists, we do believe that their work is limited in scope in that the authors present a largely white, heterosexual, middle-class woman's standpoint as representative of women, in general. As such, we think these works are ultimately counter-productive to many of feminism's goals such as collective action and political and social advocacy within a complex matrix of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, socio-economic, and political diversity.

2. For example, within months of its release, Christina Hoff Sommers' book, Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women, was reviewed in numerous national and local newspapers and magazines including: the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and U.S. News and World Report. Newsweek claimed, for example, that Sommers' book was “likely to be the most talked-about manifesto since Susan Faludi's ‘Backlash’” (“Sisterhood” 68). In addition, national television and radio talk shows such as The McLaughlin Group, CNN's Crossfire, ABC's Nightline, and CBS's Eye to Eye with Connie Chung discussed Sommer's book. More recently, Sommers was the feature cover story author of the Atlantic Monthly in May 2000 (“The War against Boys”). Katie Roiphe's The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism received several favorable reviews and was the cover story of the New York Times Magazine, the lead story in the Washington Post's Style section, and a feature interview for the fashion magazine Mirabella. A New York Sunday Newsday review heralded Roiphe as a “prominent—and provocative—new voice in feminist debate” (Roiphe 1994, back cover). Further, after publishing Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia earned a place on the front cover of New York and Harper's (Faludi 1995, 319). In Vamps and Tramps, she devoted over 75 pages to a media chronicle, a collection of cartoons, book reviews, and commentaries about her work.

3. bell hooks argues convincingly that these authors, who are young, white, privileged women, “write as though their experiences reflect the norm without testing many of their assumptions to see if what they have to say about feminism and female experience is true across class and race boundaries” (1994, 102). Time book reviewer Barbara Ehrenreich accuses Sommers of downplaying important feminist concerns while New York Times book reviewer Nina Auerbach charges that Sommer's book is vitiated by logical flaws (Auerbach 1994, 13; Ehrenreich 1994, 61). And, feminist scholar Molly Dragiewicz (2000) critiques Katie Roiphe for distorting rape statistics and research. Also consult the works of Dow (1996), Parry-Giles (1998), and Wood (1996).

4. Interestingly, Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers are not the only critics of feminism who are drawn to the mythic form. For example, Martha Solomon (Watson) notes that the archetypal pattern of the romantic quest narrative characterizes the rhetoric of STOP ERA. Solomon argues convincingly that “the most effective rhetorical visions (and those least amenable to logical refutation) draw from a reservoir of myth” (1979, 263).

5. We borrow the term rhetorical depiction from Michael Osborn's (1986) work on depiction. Defined as “strategic pictures, verbal or nonverbal visualizations that linger in the collective memory of audiences as representative of their subjects,” rhetorical depictions assume a variety of forms including extended anecdotes, metaphors, allegories, illustrations, and empirical evidence (79). In the context of this paper, the depictive forms function to create a vivid picture of feminism's heroes and villains.

6. Sommers offers a lengthy description of gender feminists: “American feminism is currently dominated by a group of women who seek to persuade the public that American women are not the free creatures we think we are. The leaders and theorists of the women's movement believe that our society is best described as a patriarchy, a ‘male hegemony,’ a ‘sex/gender system’ in which the dominant gender works to keep women cowering and submissive. The feminists who hold this divisive view of our social and political reality believe we are in a gender war. … The ‘gender feminists’ (as I shall call them) believe that all our institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance. Believing that women are virtually under siege, gender feminists naturally seek recruits to their side of the gender war” (1995, 16.)

7. Paglia, Roiphe, and Sommers rarely acknowledge the existence of a wide variety of academic feminist philosophies including liberal, radical, revisionist, and cultural feminisms. Instead, they frequently conflate these diverse categories into one branch of feminism that they refer to as liberal feminism. Julia Wood (2000), provides a concise discussion of the differences among several branches of feminism in her book Gendered Lives (2000, 64-87).

8. For instance, after the civil war, the women's rights movement split into two distinct organizations because of the debates concerning the passage of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments. The American Women's Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, argued that it was more important to ensure that African-American men obtained the vote with the passage of the amendments, while the National Women's Suffrage Movements, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, argued that women's suffrage should also be included in an amendment to the Constitution. In addition to this ideological division, working-class women and women of color persistently challenged the limits of the movement, which was composed primarily of white, middle-class women who defined women's emancipation largely, although not exclusively, in terms of the franchise. For more information, consult Eleanor Flexner's (1975) account of the women's rights movement in Century of Struggle.

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