Concept of feminism in literature

The term ‘feminism’ was derived from the Latin word ‘femina’ meaning ‘woman’ and was first used
with regard to the issues of equality and ` Women’s Rights Movement.

Feminism is a movement influenced by the ideas postulated, popularized and precipitated by the
thinkers and authors like Alice Walker, Naomi Littlebear, Judith Feltebey, Michele Wallace, Simone
de Beauvior and others. It is a modern movement expressing protest against the male domination.
The aim of feminist is to understand women’s oppression keeping in mind, race, gender, class and
sexual preferences.

The term feminism appeared the France in the late of 1880’s by Humburtine Auclert in her journal La
Citoyenne as La Feminite where she tried to criticize male domination and to claim for women’s
rights in addition to the emancipation promised by the French Revolution. By the first decade of the
twentieth century, the term appeared in English first in Britain and then in 1910’s in America and by
the 1920’s in the Arab World as Niswia.

Even in the west, feminism did not appear before the last quarter of the nineteenth century. When a
society starts taking cognizance of a problem, its literature cannot fail to reflect it.

The Indian English fiction too has not remained unaffected and the Indian writers in English have
taken up the task of challenging the age old superiority of men over women and of asssrting
women’s equality and freedom. The method may differ from writer to writer. A woman protagonist
in a novel may question the accepted value and raise her voice of protest against the existing moral
codes or social norms that are prejudicial to women. The heroine in Gita Mehta’s novel refuse to toe
the line and try to find their own meaning and value of life.

The historians of Europe discovered that the term “feminism” itself barely existed before the
twentieth century and that, from the time of its introduction, it was controversial. Studies revealed
definitively that the word “feminisme” and its derivatives originated quite recently in France.
Although invention of the word “feminisme” has often erroneously been attributed to Charles
Fourier in the 1830s, in fact its origins are still uncertain.

Two of the most important works of contemporary feminist theory- Simone de Beauvior’s The
Second Sex and Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father derive their ideological premise from the
twentieth-century philosophical movement, existentialism. This body of ideas was itself rooted in
the theoretical constructs of several German philosophers: Hegel, Hussel and Heidegger, but had its
most popular formation in the works of French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre. Simone de Beauvior views
in The Second Sex, “The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of
form, as on legsl papers.”

In 1869, John Stuart Mill published ‘Subjection of Women’, a very persuasive and well-reasoned
book which exerted great influence on feminist movement. However, the movement developed
rather by slow degrees.

Sophocles says, “silence gives the proper grace to women”. Women speak on sufferings in the
patriarchal order. That is why culture prefers them to be silent.
The concept of silence recurs in women’s writings. Women writers have proved themselves as silent
protestors. They have given vent to their feelings of protest in their poetry. In pre-independent
India, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and a host of other poets produced the best kind of poetry. Toru
Dutt, a pioneer of Indian English poetry, whose first years of writing poetry were years of
estrangement between the family and the orthodox Hindu community, treated Indian epics and
mythologies. Toru Dutt observes “sufferings of women but does not extricate the feelings of
women. Sarojini Naidu, the women, the mother, the patriot, looks into the buried and broken heart
of women. She sees there a new vision of the chained mother and vowed to break the bonds.

Meena Alexander, Sujata Bhatta and other modernist poets have written poetry on their
surroundings, whereas Gouri Deshpande’s ‘Beyond The Slaughter House’, a collection of poems,
provides enough proof of her disinterest in Hindu ethos. Kamala Das, one of the most aggressively
individualistic of the new poets is a new phenomenon in Indo-Anglian Poetry, a fierce feminist dares
without any inhibition to articulate the hurts she received in an insensitive and largely man-
dominated world. Her poems in ‘Summer in Calcutta’ and ‘A Dozen Poems’ describe the heat of
summer, urban males, urban sophistication, and the contrast between desire an spasm.

Looking at Indo-English literature of the 1970’s, it appears that the contribution of female authors
had markedly increased and that a greater awareness is also to be found, with many critics to direct
their attention at the literary depiction of the modem Indian women’s problems, be they of a
psychological, emotional, a social or an economic nature. Most of the young female writers
preferred short form of narration to express their ideas. Majority of the writers of the 1970’s
belonged to the middle class. Life of this class in India does seem to offer the opportunity, the
challenge and the material means to a women to sit down and write her own stories. Thus female
writers, accordingly, chose their themes within the confines of the clearly drawn ‘sphere of women’.

The inception of feminist movement in the first world country like America, was ironically a failure.
Women did not succeed in gaining equality with men, but instead mired in their status of second-
class citizenship.

Comparison between male and female feminist writers

Several female writers, Charlotte Brontë was among them, were even writing under a pseudonyms
because they felt intimidated to write under their real name, and as for Brontë she was using the
pen name Currer Bell. Women at the beginning of the 19th century were rather insecure to write
explicitly about their problems in society, thus they used male pseudonyms, because men’s opinions
were much more respected and they also wanted to avoid the influence of prejudice of the society
against female writers. Feminism at that time was not outright spoken and passed rather through
literature. Literature was the primary medium to communicate ideas and thoughts about this topic,
it was also one of the means of communication because literature could spread around the world
when people travelled.

During the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century a new literary style
emerged – modernism. That meant that literature was more naturalistic and the authors had more
freedom to express sexual content. The literature during this period was born out of feminist
interests and focused primarily on middle-class white women. The writings tended to privilege the
history of feminist activism and consciousness and attempted to recover forgotten literary history of
women’s writing. As Pamela K. Gilbert says in her book Gender the early literature of this era also
focused largely on “reading women writers’ resistance to patriarchy and on the representation of
female characters.” In general, this period was marked by sexual exploration and queer culture, as is
also reflected in Mrs. Dalloway.