The single most important development in reading theory during the 1980s was produced in response to the recognition that reading is inescapably gendered. In her landmark essay, Patrocinio Schweickart explores the developments in feminist reading theory up to the mid1980s. Schweickart critically adduces two separate strands in feminist reading theory: in the first place there is the resisting reader, the woman reader who resists the patriarchal assumptions and 'immasculating' forces of canonical texts. Secondly, there is a rewriting of the canon, necessitated by a specifically feminist reading of women's (hitherto largely non-canonical) texts: implicit even if not explicit in such a rereading is a critique of androcentric reading and a redescription of women reading. In both cases, Schweickart argues, reading theory 'needs feminist criticism' to escape from the eternal dualism of conventional reader-response criticism which seeks to locate authority in the text or in the reader. Finally, Schweickart is concerned throughout her essay to address the question of what it would mean to read 'as a woman', and approaches this question by way of Adrienne Rich's reading of Emily Dickinson.