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    Feminism Criticism

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    AiraMagalonaAguilar
    Feminist literary criticism examines women's roles and representations in literature through a feminist lens. It aims to rediscover works by women, challenge patriarchal norms, and examine how gender is socially constructed through language and texts. Key figures like Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and de Beauvoir advocated for women's education, independence, and rejecting traditional gender roles. Feminist critics explore themes of patriarchy, hegemony, and how women have been portrayed as the "Other" to justify male dominance.

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    Feminism Criticism

    Uploaded by

    AiraMagalonaAguilar
    159 views18 pages
    Feminist literary criticism examines women's roles and representations in literature through a feminist lens. It aims to rediscover works by women, challenge patriarchal norms, and examine how gender is socially constructed through language and texts. Key figures like Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and de Beauvoir advocated for women's education, independence, and rejecting traditional gender roles. Feminist critics explore themes of patriarchy, hegemony, and how women have been portrayed as the "Other" to justify male dominance.

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    Introduction to literary criticism.

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    Feminist literary criticism examines women's roles and representations in literature through a feminist lens. It aims to rediscover works by women, challenge patriarchal norms, and examine how gender is socially constructed through language and texts. Key figures like Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and de Beauvoir advocated for women's education, independence, and rejecting traditional gender roles. Feminist critics explore themes of patriarchy, hegemony, and how women have been portrayed as the "Other" to justify male dominance.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    159 views18 pages

    Feminism Criticism

    Uploaded by

    AiraMagalonaAguilar
    Feminist literary criticism examines women's roles and representations in literature through a feminist lens. It aims to rediscover works by women, challenge patriarchal norms, and examine how gender is socially constructed through language and texts. Key figures like Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and de Beauvoir advocated for women's education, independence, and rejecting traditional gender roles. Feminist critics explore themes of patriarchy, hegemony, and how women have been portrayed as the "Other" to justify male dominance.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 18

    Feminist literary criticism

    What is it?
    • A concern with:
    • Women's’ role in
    society as portrayed
    through texts
    • Woman as a construct
    through literature
    Mary Wollstonecraft
    • A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
    • formed the basis of modern thoughts of equality
    • Called for the right for women to

    – Have an equal education


    “How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained
    by its own exertions?”

    – To be treated as equal partners not as ornamental wives


    “Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions
    which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are
    insultingly supporting their own superiority”
    Virginia Woolf
    • A Room of One’s Own (1929)
    – Women’s need for economic and social freedom

    “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is


    to write fiction”
    “It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for
    any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in
    the age of Shakespeare”

    – Forego the traditional role as a mirror for man’s ability

    "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses


    possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the
    figure of a man at twice its natural size."
    Simone de Beauvoir
    – The Second Sex (1949)

    – Woman as a social
    construction

    – No “natural” distinction
    between the sexes

    “one is not born, one


    becomes a woman”
    Woman as a construct

    “If the definition provided for this concept [of the eternal
    feminine] is contradicted by the behavior of flesh-and-
    blood women, it is the latter who are wrong: we are told
    not that Femininity is a false entity, but that the women
    concerned are not feminine.”
    • What does this
    advert mean?

    • What is the
    underlying
    suggestion?
    Men's contributions?
    • Freidrich Engels
    – The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
    (1884)
    1960s

    • Focus lay in the images of women in literature


    • A need to combat the authority of these
    images
    1970s
    • Focus developed to
    explore the
    “mechanisms of
    patriarchy”
    • Language, science
    and social structures
    that reproduced
    inequality
    1980s
    • Eclectic
    development –
    drawing on other
    disciplines eg
    – Marxism
    – psychoanalysis
    • Exploration of
    female experience
    • Rewriting of the
    canon
    (rediscovering
    female writers)
    What feminist critics do
    • Rediscover texts written by women
    • Revalue women’s experience
    • Examine representations of women in literature
    • Challenge the view of woman as “Other”
    • Examine and challenge patriarchal roles
    • Examine language as a tool of gender construction
    • Discuss social versus biological difference
    • Question the “death of the author”
    • Question the neutrality of mainstream interpretation
    Feminist terminology
    • Patriarchy – in a society the male is the centre
    of authority
    – This is what is meant by a patriarchal society
    Feminist terminology
    • Hegemony – leadership; predominance.
    – A hegemony is a dominant group or a system that
    creates the rules we live by

    • Gender – term used when distinguishing male


    and female in a variety of disciplines
    Identity and agency
    • Words commonly employed when discussing
    women and their rights:

    • Agency: the capacity for a person to act in the


    world, make decisions
    – If you do not have the power to speak up for
    yourself then you have no agency, or the capacity
    to act for your own benefit
    The “Other”
    • The opposite of “the same”
    • Used to exclude a group
    • To subordinate those who do not fit in
    • Gives justification for the dominance and
    exploitation of “inferior” groups
    Phallocentrism
    • a doctrine or belief centred on the phallus,
    especially a belief in the superiority of the
    male sex.
    – In other words we can say that a patriarchal
    society is phallocentric
    – In literature it is common to search for phallic
    symbols – symbols of male dominance
    – This overlaps with psychoanalytic Freudian theory

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