Sandra Gilbert, feminist scholar of 'Madwoman in the Attic,' dies at 87

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Sandra Gilbert, feminist scholar of ‘Madwoman in the Attic,’ dies at 87

Dr. Gilbert and her colleague Susan Gubar shook up literary studies by seeing feminist defiance woven into works by female authors in the 19th century.


Sandra Gilbert at Harvard University in 2017 after receiving an honorary degree. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

By Brian Murphy
November 22, 2024 at 2:11 p.m. EST

Sandra Gilbert, a poet and professor of literature who co-wrote a landmark analysis of works by 19th-century female writers, “The Madwoman in the Attic,” which reinterpreted characters and images as symbols of feminist discontent, died Nov. 10 at a hospital in Berkeley, California. She was 87. ... The death, from obstructive pulmonary disease, was announced by her family.

The title of the 1979 book — written with Susan Gubar — refers to the fictional Bertha Mason, who was locked away in an isolated room by her husband in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel “Jane Eyre.” In the end, Bertha Mason sets fire to the home and leaps to her death from the roof.

To Dr. Gilbert and Gubar, the tormented life of Bertha represented Brontë’s anguish at the limitations English society placed on women at the time. The two scholars saw similar strains of rebellion in novels by other prominent female writers: Jane Austen attacking conformity with the opiniated and headstrong character Mary Crawford in “Mansfield Park” (1814) and Mary Shelley using “Frankenstein” (1818) as an indictment of a male desire to control nature.

“The Madwoman in the Attic” argued that the female authors of the era, including Emily Brontë, the pen-named George Eliot and others, used their characters and descriptions as proxies for defiant feminist messages. Their books, Dr. Gilbert and Gubar concluded, comprised a distinct canon of literature separate from their male contemporaries. ... Almost immediately, “The Madwoman in the Attic” was widely hailed as a masterwork in literary criticism and became essential reading in feminist scholarship.

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By Brian Murphy
Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books.follow on X @BrianFMurphy

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