[log in to unmask] wrote:

> Eliot actually published an unusually large number of women in the
> Criterion.
> This doesn't annul his patronizing remarks about women writers, but it
> does
> suggest the situation isn't as simple-minded as it may seem.  Maybe he
> was
> hypercritical of women but forever making "exceptions." I believe it
> was Paul
> de Man who wouldn't allow women to come to his home. But, says Susan
> Sontag,
> "he made an exception for me."
>

There are wonderful ways to except without excepting.  No dogs being
allowed in Oxford rooms, the master's dog was declared a cat and let be.

More seriously, the "exceptional" woman has long been a problem.
Whenever privileges, and even rights, are given on the basis of
exceptions, the deprived or outcast group turns on itself.  The scarcity
of rewards is sometimes named as one culprit in academic battling.

M.