Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 15 Number 1, April 2014
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Showalter, Elaine. Faculty Towers. The Academic Novel and its Discontents. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 143 pp. Hardcover: $18.76; paperback: $20.
Reviewed by
University of Granada
Elaine Showalter’s Faculty Towers offers a captivating reflection on the ways in which the academic novel has attempted to represent the evolution of universities, professors, and society at large in the last fifty years. Showalter analyzes the development of the genre throughout the different decades, with a particular focus on how the very advancements in society, such as the rise of feminism, the growing vindications for social rights, or the changes in working conditions have modelled the various tendencies dominating academic fiction.
The title itself accurately suits the tone of irony that often characterizes these narratives. The wordplay reverberating of the famous TV series replicates the demystifying element that has been a constant in academic novels since the 1950s. Indeed, the trope also serves to create a label that defines the successive periods of the genre.
From the very beginning, the reader feels invited to engage in a dialogue with the author, who, at the same time as offering an insight into the specific development in the creation of the characters and situations in which the latter become involved in these narratives, gives her particular view about the varying trends and concerns in each period. This personal take turns reading the book into a friendly, confidence-sharing conversation between author and reader – a quality which becomes evident as early as in the Introduction, very aptly presented under the heading ´”What I Read and What I Read for”.
Showalter also takes advantage of the wordplay in the title of the volume in order to get closer to the reader. Hence, the label of “Ivory Towers” in Chapter One serves to portray the elitist, authority-based nature of the university in the fifties, as a reality clearly demarcated from the rest of society. With “Tribal Towers”, the title of Chapter Two, the author manages to bring to mind the tone of protest and social discontent characterizing the university narratives of the sixties, which she defines as pervaded with a “much more acerbic view of academic life and a much more Darwinian sense of the university and the struggle for survival”. Then, Showalter calls attention upon the gradual process of increasing flexibility experienced by university – and, in fact, by society at large – during the seventies. “Glass Towers” - in Chapter Three – becomes an illustrative metaphor of that progressive opening of the academia in which racial and social minorities in general ceased to be excluded from the institution, at the same time as the idea of the university as an impenetrable fortress exclusively reserved for a God-touched elite begins to fade.
A feminist herself, Showalter is pretty clear about the title she chooses to describe the academic fiction and even – to an extent – society itself during the eighties. “Feminist Towers”, the title of Chapter Four, serves as an evocative reminder of the institutionalization in this period of feminist literary theory and women’s studies. Correspondingly, as the author observes, women in academic novels gain a more central role as characters in terms of skills and position. This occurs in narratives that include brilliant women who become serious contenders for status and recognition.
For Showalter, the most characteristic feature of academic fiction in the nineties is the struggle for tenure in departments and the debates concerning political correctness and cultural diversity. This manifests, as she notes in Chapter Five, “Tenured Towers”, in fictions that satirize the anxiety of their characters to achieve status and tenure, which, in general, infuses a bitter and vengeful tone into these novels. This prepares the ground for the development of the Professorroman around the turn of the century. Showalter remarks how the bitter tone continues to permeate university narratives, which explains the label she chooses to depict twenty-first century academe, “Tragic Towers”. The author also calls attention upon the fact that these stories often become imbued with the new century’s preference for mythic or apocalyptic plots.
In any case, Showalter invites readers to learn from the faults, scandals, and disloyalties of the academia and its members, all of which are satirically, humorously, or tragically deployed in academic fiction. Yet, at the same time, she also encourages us to consider the noble, sincere and profound emotions that are simultaneously present in an institution which lodges, after all, human beings. While campus fiction can be considered as some necessary equipment for understanding university life, Faculty Towers is a must-read in order to fully appreciate and enjoy academic novels.