Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941)[1] is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues.

She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics, a term describing the study of "women as writers".

Showalter has written and edited numerous books and articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, sometimes sparking controversy, especially with her work on illnesses.

Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in women's writing and in the portrayal of female characters.

Showalter's early essays and editorial work in the late 1970s and the 1980s survey the history of the feminist tradition within the "wilderness" of literary theory and criticism.

Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was just emerging as a serious scholarly pursuit in universities in the 1970s, Showalter's writing reflects a conscious effort to convey the importance of mapping her discipline's past in order to both ground it in substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that will be able to inform a path for future feminist academic pursuit.

In her essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness (1981), Showalter says, "A cultural theory acknowledges that there are important differences between women as writers: class, race, nationality, and history are literary determinants as significant as gender.

Showalter acknowledges the difficulty of "[d]efining the unique difference of women's writing", which she says is "a slippery and demanding task" in "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness" (New, 249).

She says that gynocritics may never succeed in understanding the special differences of women's writing, or realize a distinct female literary tradition.

But, with grounding in theory and historical research, Showalter sees gynocriticism as a way to "learn something solid, enduring, and real about the relation of women to literary culture" (New, 249).

Duke University-based Toril Moi, in her 1985 book Sexual/Textual Politics, described Showalter's as a limited, essentialist view of women.

In a predominantly poststructuralist era that proposes that meaning is contextual and historical, and that identity is socially and linguistically constructed, Moi claimed that there is no fundamental female self.

I think it's time I came out of the closet.Showalter was reportedly severely criticized by her academic colleagues for her stance in favour of patriarchal symbols of consumer capitalism and traditional femininity.

Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about proper feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity from the Victorian era to the present.

Psychological and physical effects of unhappy lives become "hysterical epidemics" when popular media saturate the public with paranoid reports and findings, essentially legitimizing, as Showalter calls them, "imaginary illnesses" (Hystories, cover).

Newspapers, magazines, talk shows, self-help books, and of course the Internet ensure that ideas, once planted, manifest themselves internationally as symptoms" (Plett).

Showalter covers the contributions of predominately intellectuals like Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Camille Paglia.

Showalter covers approaches to teaching theory, preparing syllabi and talking about taboo subjects among many other practical topics.