Feminist Criticism

`A belief that women universally face some form of oppression or exploitation;

A commitment to uncover and understand what causes and sustains oppression;

A commitment to work individually and collectively everyday life to end all forms of oppression.

• In broad definition: it is women’s movement in 1960s to struggle for the equality of rights as social class.• In literature: feminism is

related to the ways in understanding literary works, in both production and reception.

• Feminist critics analyze how literary work is influenced by a male dominated society.• Feminists feel that authors

look for non-feminine objects or characters and describe them as feminine to belittle them and make woman look bad (Brayton)

History of Feminism

First Wave Feminism

Second Wave Feminism

Third Wave Feminism

1st: (Late 1700s – Early 1900s) Mary Wollstonecraft highlights the inequalities between the sexes. Feminists were active in the women’s suffrage movement, which lead to the National Universal suffrage in 1920

First Wave Feminism

Women widely are considered to be:• Intellectually inferior• Physically weak• Emotional, intuitive, irrational• Suited to the role of wife and mother• Women could not vote• They were not educated at school/universities

and could only work in manual jobs.• A married women’s property and salary were

owned by her husband

First Wave Feminism

2nd: (Early 1960s – Late 1970s) There are more equal conditions. N.O.W. (National Organization for Women) was formed for feminists in 1966. Simone de Beauvoir and Elain Showalter formed a basis for the distribution of feminist theories.

Second Wave Feminism

• Women could attend school and university

• Women did not receive equal pay for the same work

• It was easier to gain a divorce but socially frown upon

• Rape and physically abuse within marriage were illegal but husbands were rarely convicted

• Abortion was still illegal• Women’s body were objectified in

advertising

Second Wave Feminism

Basic assumptions:• Society is Pathriarcal• Women may have legal rights

but they are still treated as inferior.• Women should be equal to

men in all respects.

Second Wave Feminism

• The second wave of feminism which occured in 1960-1980, came as a response to the experiences of women after World War II.• It dealt with inequality of laws and pioneered by Betty Friedan.

Second Wave Feminism

3rd: (Early 1990s – Present) These decades deepened the equality of women, such as with a variety of jobs women can have and a variety of opportunities open to them.

Third Wave Feminism

Women are no longer obligated to marry or have children, and marriage

is more equal.

Third Wave Feminism

Women seem to be more equal to men

The legal system is better at protecting women’s right.

• Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it seems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women.

• Third-wave feminists such as Elle Green often focus on "micro-politics", and challenge the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for women.

Third Wave Feminism

• Third wave feminism was a continuation and response to the perceive failures of the second wave.

• The movement that called as young feminist emphasizing collective action to effect changes and embrace the diversity represented by various feminisms.

• They focused on a multicultural emphasis and strived to address problems stemming from sexism, racism, social class inequality and homophobia.

Third Wave Feminism

Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism

A type of literary criticism that critiques how females are commonly represented in texts, and how insufficient these representations are as a categorizing device. They focus on how femininity is represented as being passive and emotional – the “caregiver,” and the male is associated with reason and action – the “doer.”

Feminist Criticism

The feminist critique of literature seeks to raise the consciousness about the importance and unique nature of women in literature, and to point out how language has been used to marginalize women.

Feminist Criticism Con’t• Feminist scholars wish to consider

women as subjects, or points of interest to study.

• They do not want to categorize women as “objects” as men often do.

• They want to question why male dominance is the norm.

• Feminist approach to literary criticism main concern: the ways in which literature undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women. (McManus)

Feminist Criticism Con’t

Specifically, the feminist view attempts to:1. Show that writers of traditional literature have ignored women and have presented misguided and prejudiced views of them2. Create a critical landscape that reflects a balanced view of the nature and value of women

Feminist Criticism Con’t

• 3. Expand the literary canon by recovering works of women of the past and publication of contemporary female writers

• 4. Urge transformation in the language to eliminate inequities and inequalities that result from linguistic distortions such as mankind (rather than humanity).

Feminist Critical Questions

1. To what extent does the representation of women (and men) in the work reflect the time and place in which the work was written?2. How are the relationships between men and women presented in the work?3. Does the author present the work from within a predominantly male or female perspective?

Feminist Critical Questions

4 .How do the facts of the author’s life relate to the presentation of men and women in the work?5. How do other works by the author correspond to this one in their depiction of the power relationships between men and women?

How To Identify It

Typical questions literary critics with a feminist approach ask: How is the relationship between men

and women portrayed? What are the power relationships

between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?

How are male and female roles defined?

How To Identify It

What constitutes masculinity and femininity?

How do characters embody these traits?

Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?” (Brizee and Tompkins)

Types of Feminism

Radical FeminismLiberal FeminismSocialist Feminism

Radical Feminism

• Radical Feminism arose within the second wave in the 1960s.

• RF focused on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power.

• RF paid particular attention to oppression based on sex and female bodily disadvantage.

Socialist Feminism

A central concern of socialist feminism therefore has been to determine the ways in which the institution of the family and women’s domestic labour are structured by, and reproduce the sexual division of labour.

Liberal Feminism

• Liberal feminism aims to achieve equal legal, political, and social rights for women.

• It wishes to bring women equality into all public institution and to extend the creation of knowledge so that women’s issues can no longer be ignored.

What are the ways to criticize literature in the feminist approach?

Male Treatment of Women

GynocriticismMadwoman ThesisFrench FeminismDepictions of Women by Men

Male Treatment of Women

• In this early stage of feminist criticism, critics consider male novelists' demeaning treatment or marginalisation of female characters. First wave feminist criticism includes books like Marry Ellman's Thinking About Women (1968) Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969), and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970). An example of first wave feminist literary analysis would be a critique of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for Petruchio's abuse of Katherina.

Madwoman Thesis

• suggests that because society forbade women from expressing themselves through creative outlets, their creative powers were channeled into psychologically self-destructive behavior and subversive actions.

Gynocriticism

• Gynocriticism involves three major aspects. The first is the examination of female writers and their place in literary history. The second is the consideration of the treatment of female characters in books by both male and female writers. The third and most important aspect of gynocriticism is the discovery and exploration of a canon of literature written by women; gynocriticism seeks to appropriate a female literary tradition. In Showalter's A Literature of Their Own, she proposes the following three phases of women's writing:

3 Phases

• The 'Feminine' Phase - in the feminine phase, female writers tried to adhere to male values, writing as men, and usually did not enter into debate regarding women's place in society. Female writers often employed male pseudonyms during this period.

• .

The 'Feminist' Phase -

in the feminist phase, the central theme of works by female writers was the criticism of the role of women in society and the oppression of women

The 'Female' Phase -

during the 'female' phase, women writers were no longer trying to prove the legitimacy of a woman's perspective. Rather, it was assumed that the works of a women writer were authentic and valid. The female phase lacked the anger and combative consciousness of the feminist phase.

French Feminism

French Feminism, led by critics such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixousx, and Luce Irigaray, relies heavily on Freudian psychology and the theory of penis envy . French feminists postulate the existence of a separate language belonging to women that consists of loose, digressive sentences written without use of the ego.

Depictions of Women by Men

Its when men portray a woman-like character

man dressing like a woman