SOURCE: Goff, Barbara. “Figures of Antiquity in the Memoirs of Mme Roland: The Classical, the Revolutionary, and the Feminine.” Classical and Modern Literature 17, no. 1 (fall 1996): 57-84.

In this essay, Goff evaluates Roland's use of references to classical texts in her memoirs.

In her book Feminism without Illusions, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese writes some provocative paragraphs on her relationship to the “canon.”¹ As a child she was introduced by her father to the central works of Western philosophy and literature, which she “loved” (170) and which by her own account do not cease to signify for her. Reflecting on her early reading, she revisits her relationship to these texts:

I uncritically accepted the terms of the discourse presented to me. … In retrospect, I can see that I was torn by contradictions I had no words to express. I did not give much thought to women's having been excluded from the debates that...