Kolodny's Aesthetic Fallacy

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Annette Kolodny's essay "Dancing Through the Minefield." She opened my eyes to the discrimination against female writers that has occurred as scholars have defined the literary canon. I resonated with her frustration, and I appreciated her thoughts.

However, her ideas concerning aesthetic merit troubled me. At various points in her essay, she sounds as though she has aligned herself with Barbara Hernstein Smith, who argues that aesthetics are a mere matter of taste. Kolodny also quotes Robert Scholes, who states that "there is no single 'right' reading for any complex literary work.'"

If Kolodny believes that any interpretation of a text is acceptable, what makes her feminist reading legitimate or worth believing? I have to wonder whether this perspective undermines the feminists'-- or even the pluralists'-- cause. If Scholes is speaking the truth, what right does Kolodny have to convince her readers that women should be included in the literary canon? What right does she have to even write an essay and strengthen her argument? Why shouldn't we maintain sexist readings of texts and dismiss her ideas? Finally, if Kolodny adheres to Scholes, I have to ask her what, in fact, makes sexism "wrong"? If I were a male scholar, couldn't I just say that my sexist perspectives are my prerogative, an expression of my intellectual taste?

I can accept Kolodny's view that literary history-- and the historicity of literature-- is a fiction or a construct. However, I think one can hold to this belief without throwing out the idea of a hierarchy of aesthetics. (Perhaps the word "hierarchy" conjures up connotations of patriarchy. If this is offensive, I'll use the word "absolute.")

It is my opinion that males have been included in the literary canon because of their works' aesthetic merit and their command of the English language. This mastery is not an innate "male" trait that makes men superior to women. This is merely the result of males' access to the education that history has denied women. If women have very little education, it follows that they will not create "aesthetically superior" masterpieces. An illiterate woman can't compose sonnets.

I fully support Kolodny's basic cause: the inclusion of women and a reexamination of the qualifications for canonicity. At the core of her argument is a desire for respect and acknowledgement, which I see as completely legitimate. However, I don't think she needs to discard the metanarrative of aesthetics to accomplish this.