As ridiculous as this is going to sound, I never really thought the literary world was so gender-biased. Perhaps it is because I have seen a great deal female authors topping the bestsellers list that I never really thought to dig deeper into the history of the written word in regard to male and female contribution. Of course, since I started a Gender-Studies minor, I have learned a lot of things that I really never knew about.
Personally, I am quite excited that Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's "Infection in the Sentence" manages to merge the two fields I enjoy into one argument. Issues surrounding gender are hot-button topics for me and I found the Gilbert and Gubar piece fascinating and appalling at the same time.
A single line (though there were many other potent moments as well) within the piece stood out to me. Gilbert and Gubar assert that "[The female writer's] battle, however, is not against he (male) precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her" (452). This jarred me from the comfort and safety of 2011, and reminded me that how it is now is not something that simply occurred overnight. Because of what the societal social norms were, women were seen in an inferior light in contrast to men (an ideal that has not totally gone away, I feel inclined to point out) thus, female writers posed a challenge to those norms and threatened to upset the balance. Yet, to do so was quite difficult as Gilbert and Gubar point out, saying "Unlike her male counterpart, then, the female artist must first struggle against the effects of socialization [...]," which means that before she can even explore herself as an artist, she has to explore herself as a woman according to the socialization her society implements (451). It is challenging when a woman tries to break into a field dominated by men and governed by a male (patriarchal) mentality (for an example, women in the military). Of course, it is a struggle that has to start somewhere and usually, such bold attempts are usually hardest when they are first introduced. For this fact alone, I feel a great deal of respect for the female writers who pushed their way through, fracturing an old-school, rigid way of thought.
I think your statement that a woman must explore herself as a woman before she can become a woman artist is accurate and interesting. I'd like to add, though, that even more than "exploring" herself, a woman writer needed to recreate her entire identity as a woman on her own terms. It wasn't enough to simply be a different kind of woman, because the whole idea of "woman" at this time, was one created primarily by patriarchal society. She was seen as a malformed man, an imperfect member of an inferior sex, and she understood herself in these terms (even if she did not agree with them) because these were the only terms given to her. It is no wonder, then, that writing by female authors is filled with "dis-ease" as a result of their feelings of inadequacy or inability to resist the system in which they were so hopelessly mired. In light of the struggles of female authors it is indeed amazing that they were able to produce texts that became respected, but it is not surprising that these texts still bear the marks of damaging patriarchal assumptions.
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