As a girl, Sandra M. Gilbert would ask her mother, a schoolteacher who frequently took courses in psychology,to tell her about the "cases" she was studying. Fascinated even in childhood by the stories of people's lives, fears, and desires, Gilbert has gone on to become, along with coauthor and coeditor Susan Gubar, a pioneer in uncovering the stories women have told about their own lives. As Laura Shapiro put it (in Ms., January 1986), the names Gilbert and Gubar are destined to become "campus shorthand all over the country." Together, Gilbert and Gubar are greatly responsible not only for establishing the academic respectability of the study of literature by women but also for redefining the canon of literature. Through such influential critical works as Shakespeare's Sisters (1979), The Madwoman in the Attic (1980), and No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century (2 volumes, 1988, 1989), Gilbert and...