Book Review: Sentimentalism in an energetic and fiercely feminist package

Simon Fraser University scholar Hannah McGregor’s book of essays is a rich and extended meditation on what a feminist education looks like.

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a sentimental upbringing

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hannah mcgregor | Wilfrid Laurier University Press (Waterloo, Ontario, 2022)

$24.99 | 147 pages


Gustave Flaubert published A Sentimental Education in 1869. His novel about the love of a young man for an older woman became one of the most admired and influential fictions of the 19th century.

Hannah McGregor’s book of essays of the same name, due for print in September 2022, is a very different work. McGregor, an assistant professor of publishing at Simon Fraser University, says on her website (hannahmcgregor.com/bio/) that her “…research, teaching, and organization focus on the field of publishing and social change, with an in four key areas: building public feminist scholarship, building capacity for academic podcasting, addressing barriers to access in Canadian publishing, and understanding the history of magazine publishing in Canada.” Clearly, we are a long way from nineteenth-century France and the heteronormative concerns of classic novels.

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McGregor’s previous work includes podcasts such as Secret Feminist Agenda (hannahmcgregor.com/2021/06/11/secret-feminist-agenda/) and Witch please (hannahmcgregor.com/2021/06/11/witch-please/). In the second of these podcasts, the author, along with her collaborator Marcelle Kosman, examines the Harry Potter phenomenon through the lens of feminist theory.

So far, so far from Flaubert. Why, then, the choice of title for this collection of energetic and ferocious essays?

To be sure, McGregor is being subversively playful in appropriating a title from Great Books’ patriarchal canon for her volume, but she hasn’t chosen Flaubert’s title at random. Her book is a rich and extensive meditation on what feminist education looks like and on the complex issues of sentimentality and care in literature and in life.

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Unsurprisingly, McGregor’s language in these essays reflects her academic background, and with it the specialized language of gender studies, queer studies, and other recently emerging socially critical academic specialties. But sometimes it also reflects a more relaxed, vernacular, and personal style that characterizes podcasting at its best.

Some readers may wish that McGregor had tipped the balance between these two modes closer to the podcast booth and further away from the seminar room, and this reviewer would share that wish. And McGregor is no stranger to this issue. She comments wryly, for example, on the frequency with which her friends and colleagues call her attention to her excessive use of the word “praxis.”

But that’s a small criticism. Overall, these important essays represent rigorous thinking and a fierce commitment to a committed style of intellectual and political practice.

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Highly recommended.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes comments and story suggestions from him at [email protected]


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