Literary Criticism

Feminist Criticism

Definitions• Focuses on human identity as critical framework• “Reading as a woman”• Focuses on gender (social roles performed by sexes)

and explore ways in which woman have been denied social power and right to various forms of expression.

• Closely related to issues of socio-economic class and race.

Important Terms

• Critique Patriarchy- male-dominated power structure throughout organized society and in individual relationships.

• Egalitarianism- trend of thought that favors equality for all people

• Essentialism - view that for any specific entity there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identity and function.

Phases of Criticism

1. 1960’s - Focused on men’s treatment of women in fiction

2. Late 1960’s – 1970’s - Focused on place of women as writer in literary history

3 phases of Women’s Novels

1. Women trying to write as men.2. Polemics or castration Novels3. Genuine Female Novel that for granted authenticity and

legitimacy of women’s point of view.

FEMINIST CRITIQUE“If men keep science, reason, logic etc.

does that mean women should embrace unreasonableness, illogic etc.? “

Critics consider male novelists' demeaning treatment or marginalisation of female characters

Examples: Marry Ellman'sThinking About Women (1968) Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969),

and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970)

Approaches of Feminist Criticism

1. Male Treatment Of Women

2. Gynocriticism

Elaine Showalter- A Literature of Their Own (1977)3 Major Aspects

1. Examination of female writers and their place in literary history.

2. Consideration of the treatment of female characters in books by both male and female writers.

3. Discovery and exploration of a canon of literature written by women.

3. Madwoman Thesis

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979)

Suggests that because society forbade women from expressing themselves through creative outlets, their creative powers were channelled into psychologically self-destructive behaviour and subversive actions

4. French Feminism

Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixousx, and Luce Irigaray,

It postulate the existence of a separate language belonging to women that consists of loose, digressive sentences

written without use of the ego.

5. Depictions of Women by men

Students could begin approaching Great Writers Inspire by considering the range of women depicted in early English literature: from Chaucer's bawdy 'Wife of Bath' in The Canterbury Tales to Spenser's interminably pure Una in The Faerie Queene.

6. Class of Female Writers

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, suggests a female novelist can only create successful work if she is of

independent means.

Reporter: Steffany Villanueva