Feminist criticism is a school of literary criticism which is still evolving maki

Welcome to Feminist criticism topic! Feminist criticism is a school of literary criticism which is still evolving making it a bit difficult to define because it has not yet been codified into a single critical perspective. Instead, its several shapes and directions vary from one country to another, even from one critic to another (Dobbie, 2009). Presently however, feminist criticism is becoming more and more popular with a growing number of followers and critics. In various forms of media, we cannot deny the growing clamor of feminist criticism practitioners and writers. This could be attributed to the growing consciousness among the women in society. More and more women are finding themselves empowered and emboldened with the successes of various female-starring roles not only in novels but also in the movies, TV series, animations, feature films, to name a few. To give you an idea what feminist criticism is, please read and analyze the story, “Mrs. Dalloway” written by Virginia Woolf. You can download the summary of the story by clicking here or the whole novel by clicking here. This is a very good selection to read as we practice feminist criticism. So, hang on as you join me undertake this incredible journey to the world of feminist criticism.

Intended learning outcomes

At the completion of this topic, you should be able to:

Explain Feminist criticism;
Discuss the gist of the short story “Mrs. Dalloway;”
Write a Feminist criticism of your chosen literary piece.

Historical background of Feminist criticism

Since the dawn of civilization, the Western culture had operated on the assumption that women were inferior creatures.

What is woman?

“…this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be
called a woman.” ~ Adam, Genesis:1:26-27

Leading thinkers, from Aristotle to Charles Darwin maintained that women were lesser beings.

Aristotle says: “the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities…”
Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher says: “Woman is God’s second mistake.”
Our Manusmariti says: “She has to be protected by her father in the childhood, husband in her youth and son in her old age. She does not deserve freedom.”
John Chrysostom, a Greek ecclesiast, called women, “foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil.” Even the Book of Genesis blames Eve for the loss of Paradise.

“All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.” ~ from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, Biblical Apocrypha

Tertullian, a Roman theologian, lectured to women that, “the judgment of God upon your sex endures even today; and with it inevitably endures your position of criminal at the bar of justice. You are the gateway to the devil.”

Are they misogynists?

Revered writers of later ages have been equally ungenerous in their descriptions of the nature of women.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) asserted, “Most women have no character at all.”
John Keats (1795-1821) explained: “The opinion, I have of the generality of women – who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.”

Even their fellow women are questionable. Are they misogynists?

Madame de Stael, a French writer is said to have commented, “I am glad that I am not a man, as I should be obliged to marry a woman.”
Jane Austen, an English writer advised, “A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
Mae West – put it, “Brains are an asset, if you hide them.”

Common stereotypes of women

James Thurber, an often quoted misogynist, once commented: “A women’s place is in the wrong.” So, how does our society view women? Here are some of the most common stereotypes:

A Slave. The slave need not be a literal slave but just a woman who must serve her man. The stereotypical housewife who is a “slave” to her family, overworked and underappreciated, is an example of this traditional representation of women.
A Prostitute. Mary Magdalene is a good example of how the prostitute figure is an incorrect representation of women. Mary is traditionally told to be prostitute who changes her way and
follow Jesus. History now suggests a very different story: That Mary was merely a wealthy widow who was benefactor and believer.
A Virgin. Society often labels women either virgin or prostitute. Check out every teen movie where female characters are classified either the “good” girl or the “bad” girl rather than having any character development.
A Prize. Every story where a boyfriend, to win a girl’s heart contain this idea. The short story “Araby” by James Joyce contains the theme, female “prize”.

What is Feminist criticism?

Feminist criticism is a literary advocating equal rights for women in a political, economic, social, psychological, personal and aesthetic sense. (Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown). It comes in many forms, and feminist critics have a variety of goals. Some have been interested in rediscovering the works of women writers overlooked by a masculine dominated culture.

Feminist criticism or simply, feminism, generally assumes, like reader-response criticism, that a literary work is shaped by our reading of it, and this reading is influenced by our own status, which includes significantly gender, or our attitude toward gender. But, as feminists point out, since the production and reception of literature has been controlled largely by men, the role of gender in reading and writing has been slighted. The interest and achievements of half of the human race have been neglected-or appreciated largely from only one sex’s point of view (Steven Lynn).

John Stuart Mill’s Essay on the Subjection of Women (1869) is a defense of gender equality in which he attacks the idea that women are incapable of doing things that men can do, and should therefore, be forbidden from doing them.
Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf stand out as eloquent spokespersons for women. Along with them are many others whose names are less well known but whose efforts have been important to the development of women’s history, both social and literary.

Seeds of Feminism

Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley
1. She wrote the monumental work, A Vindication of the Rights of
  Woman (1792)
2. She viewed women as an oppressed class regardless of social hierarchy.
3. She argued for women to be “duly prepared by education to be the companions of men.”
4. In her Vindication… she maintained that… “Women must take charge of their lives by recognizing that their abilities were equal to those of men, to define their identities for themselves and to carve out their own roles in society.
Simone de Beauvoir
1. She wrote the masterpiece, The Second Sex (1949)
2. She argued that French culture and western societies in general are patriarchal.
3. It is the males who define what it means to be humans.
4. Lacking her own history, the female is always secondary or non-existent.
5. Beauvoir believed that women are not born inferior but made to be so. She called for women to break out of being the “other” and realize their possibilities.
Virginia Woolf
1. She wrote the masterpiece, A Room of One’s Own (1927)
2. Woolf questioned why women appear so seldom in history.
3. She pointed out that poems and stories are full of their depictions, but in real life they hardly seem to have existed. They are absent.
4. In the chapter entitled Shakespeare’s Sister, she pondered what would have happened to a gifted female writer in the Renaissance.
5. “Without an adequate education or a room of her own,” she concluded that whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed issuing from a strained and morbid imagination.
Olive Schreiner – Women and Labour (1911)
Kate Millet – Sexual Politics (1970)
Sulamith Firestone – The Dialect of Sex (1972)
Toril Moi – Sexual/ Textual Politics (1983)
Elaine Showalter – History of Feminism
John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women (1869)
Freidrich Engels – The Origin of the Family (1884)

History of Feminism

The First Wave – The Feminine Phase (1840-1880)
1. Female writers imitated the literary tradition established by men, taking additional care to avoid offensive language subject matter.
2. Sometimes female writers even used men’s name. Charlotte Bronte used Currer Bell and Mary Ann Evans used George Eliot for example, to hide their female authorship while writing in the forms and styles of recognized male writers.
3. In the US: First wave of feminism focused on right to vote and right to practice birth control.
4. July 13, 1848: USA, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of woman and issued the “Declaration of Sentiments.”
5. Key Thinkers of this phase: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth.
6. Major achievements: Voting rights, property rights and birth control.
The Second Wave – The Feminist Phase (1880-1920)
1. It was particularly connected to other social movements occurring at the time, such as the anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement.
2. The “new social movement” dedicated to raising consciousness about sexism and patriarchy, legalizing abortion and birth control, attaining equal rights in political and economic realms, and gaining sexual liberation.
3. Important books: Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963)
4. Although it did stress such important social and economic issues as equality in employment and sexual harassment, was also driven by other, more theoretical interests, such as the differences between men and women and the political consequences of those differences.
5. Major achievements: Sexual freedom, integration in the workplace and into the political arena, equal funding.
The Third Wave – The Female Phase (1920-present)
1. Third phase shares many of the interests of the first two waves (such as the empowerment of women).
2. Also characterized by a desire of young women to find a voice of their own and to include various diverse groups in the fold of feminist thought.
3. Rebecca Walker, who coined the term “Third Wave,” is one of the most prominent figures in this wave of feminism.
4. This includes various groups of women, including women of color; lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered women; and low-income women.
5. Often seen as a critique to the Second Wave feminism for either excluding or overlooking these dis-empowered groups.
6. Major concerns: sexual freedom, inclusion of women of color and women from other cultures, including the issues of the 1st and the 2nd wave feminism.

Reading as a Feminist critic

Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson:

Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so.
In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values.
All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.
While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine).
All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.

Here are typical questions to consider when reading a selection using the Feminist criticism.

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?
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?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women’s creativity?
What does the history of the work’s reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
What role the work play in terms of women’s literary history and literary tradition?

Writing as a Feminist critic

Prewriting

If possible, choose a female-written text.
Then, choose an identity/character/person in the text regardless if she is a protagonist, antagonist, supporting, or minor character.
Be ready to pinpoint her attitudes and ideology, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
Answer the following questions:
1. Why did you choose her?
2. Is she related to you? In what ways?
3. Are her experience related to yours?

Drafting and Revising

Introduction.
1. Explain why you have chosen a character from the text you have chosen.
2. Alternatively, connect events/situations that happen in the text to an event/situation in real life as underwent by your chosen character.
3. Other introduction techniques could be cultural context in which the text was produced, the life circumstances surrounding the author, among others.
Body.
1. You may choose one from any of the following issues on your body of writing:
  1. Gender differences. You will be looking for what makes a female text different from one written by a male author. Answer questions such as:
    1. 1. Is the genre one that is traditionally associated with males?
      2. Is the subject one that is of particular interest to women? Or important to them?
      3. Is the work sympathetic to female characters?
      4. Is/Are the female character/s and their situation presented with complexity or in detail?
    How does the language differ from what you would expect from a male writer? What are the predominant images? Why are they/not associated with women? Who are the intended audience? Does it include/exclude women? How do the answers to these questions support a case for this work’s having been written in particular masculine/feminine style?
  2. Balance of Power. You will be investigating balance/imbalance of power depicted in the text. Answer questions such as:
    1. Who are the primary decision makers: men or women?
    2. Do the women character play overt part or covert part in decision making?
    3. Who holds the positions of authority?
    4. Who controls the finances?
    5. Do the female characters play traditional/unusual female roles?
    6. Who are the primary decision makers: men or women?
    7. Do the women character play overt part or covert part in decision making?
    8. Who holds the positions of authority?
    9. Who controls the finances?
    10. Do the female characters play traditional/unusual female roles?
    11. Are the achieving female characters rewarded?
    12. Do the male character/s consult the female characters before doing things?
    13. Does the text approve/disapprove, glorify/condemn the power structure as revealed by your answers to these questions?
    14. How do you, as a reader, accept/reject the images of women presented in the text?
  3. Female experience. You will be examining how the unique female experience is captured in the work you intend to analyze. Answer questions such as:
    1. Does the text reject the idea of a male norm of thinking and behavior that is stable and unchanging?
    2. Is the writer’s style characterize by blanks, gaps, silences, or circularity?
    3. Are the images of the female body important in the text?
    4. Are there references to female diseases or bodily functions?
    5. Do motherhood, or characteristics of motherhood figure significantly in the text?
    6. Can you find the traditional male/female, intellectual/emotional, objective/subjective, active/passive are reversed?
    7. If there are, what do the reversals suggest?
    8. Can you find instances in which wholeness rather than otherness is associated with the female character/s?
    9. What generalizations about the uniqueness of the female experience can you make based on the answers to these questions?
Conclusion.
1. The end of your paper is appropriate place to state your generalizations and conclusions based on the answers to the questions on the area you have chosen.
2. It should pool all the references to the text into a single statement about what is particularly female (or male) about the way the work was written, about the power relationships depicted in it, or about the presentation of the nature of the female experience.

References

Dobbie, Ann B. (2009). Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Fry, Paul H. (2013). Theory of Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Habib, M. R. (2011). A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Present. UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11
http://www.almaclassics.com/excerpts/Mrs-Dalloway.pdf

Feminist criticism