Feminism
Feminist literary criticism is literary analysis that arises from the viewpoint of feminism, feminist theory and/or feminist politics. Basic methods of feminist literary criticism include:
Women through the ages have written feminist theory and various forms of feminist critique. During the period of second-wave feminism, the loftiest academic circles increasingly challenged the male literary canon. Feminist literary critcism has since intertwined with postmodernism and increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles
Typical questions:
Gender Criticism
This approach examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works. originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinity” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combating such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text and examining how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality.
- Identifying with female characters: This is a way to challenge the male-centered outlook of authors. Feminist literary criticism suggests that women in literature were historically presented as objects seen from a male perspective.
- Reevaluating literature and the world in which literature is read: This involves questioning whether society has predominantly valued male authors and their literary works because it has valued males more than females.
Women through the ages have written feminist theory and various forms of feminist critique. During the period of second-wave feminism, the loftiest academic circles increasingly challenged the male literary canon. Feminist literary critcism has since intertwined with postmodernism and increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles
Typical questions:
- 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?
Gender Criticism
This approach examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works. originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinity” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combating such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text and examining how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality.
What Feminist Critics Do
1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women.
2. Revalue women’s experience.
3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women.
4. Challenge representations of women as ‘Other’, as ‘lack’, as part of ‘nature’.
5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them
down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy.
6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and ‘natural’.
7. Raise the question of whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different.
8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men.
9. ‘Re-read’ psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity.
10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only ‘subject positions … constructed in discourse’, or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central.
11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly ‘neutral’ or ‘mainstream’ literary interpretations.
2. Revalue women’s experience.
3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women.
4. Challenge representations of women as ‘Other’, as ‘lack’, as part of ‘nature’.
5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them
down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy.
6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and ‘natural’.
7. Raise the question of whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different.
8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men.
9. ‘Re-read’ psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity.
10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only ‘subject positions … constructed in discourse’, or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central.
11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly ‘neutral’ or ‘mainstream’ literary interpretations.