Where are the Women?

People who know that I spent ten years+ researching, teaching and writing about women’s writing (especially Irish women’s writing) would be justified in asking this question as they look back through my blog to date (all 6 entries). A survey like the ones I used to conduct on book review pages would reveal an overwhelming predominance of references to men in this blog to date. I believe this is accidental, but I’ll admit that it’s interesting, given the accusations of gender imbalance that I used to fling around with such abandon – and justification, it has to be said.

On the other hand, a blog lends itself to spontaneous, random and occasional observation, so should it be constrained by ideology or bias one way or another? I think not. This blog began in a spirit of responding to whatever stimulus came my way, and that's how I've written it. Nevertheless, being aware of the slippage has brought me full circle, back to Virginia Woolf. Or maybe it’s the slow progress of that room of my own that’s done it, causing me to delve into past essays, articles and stories, teaching and research notes, minutes from various committee meetings, reminding me of past convictions. It could even be the strong appeal of the circular form that brings me back to Woolf, who wrote that ‘ a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades or domes.’