It has been a busy week so no time to blog. But I did read two interesting things this week that I want to recommend.
First, I recommend that everyone read this very thought provoking essay by Sarah Sentilles in which she reflects on the responses to her writing and how they seldom are about the substance of her writing but are about her, personally. In reflecting on what she sees as the sexism inherent in reviews of works by women (fiction and nonfiction), she says "I am beginning to understand why Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot." Sentilles is a theologian and I've never read any of her work but I like the way she argued her point in this essay.
Second, I recommend Rohan Maitson's blog post in which she asks if she is making excuses for Dorothy Sayers' novel "Gaudy Night".
Maitzen teaches Gaudy Night in one of her classes and some of the students have raised questions about the novel that she addresses in her essay. I love Dorothy Sayers' novels and I like Maitzen's responses to her students' criticism, but I also applaud her for opening up her responses to the larger world for a critique.
