Norvell is an independent educational writer who specializes in English and literature and who has done graduate work in religion. In this essay, Norvell defends The Elements of Style against the arguments of feminist and other critics.

In the past couple of decades, virtually every literary work bearing the label "classic" has been assailed as misogynistic, irrelevant, or both. Critics writing from a number of different perspectives, from postmodernist to feminist, have pointed out the myriad ways in which the writing of white males—whether they lived in ancient Greece or the twentieth-century United States—supposedly denigrates everyone else. Some of these scholars, contradicting their own rhetoric about the importance of inclusion and diversity, have argued that the traditionally accepted canon of Western literature is so pernicious that it should be thrown onto the trash heap of history.

Anyone who supposes that a slim little...