FEMINIST CRITICISM

FEMINISM, GENDER AND SEXUALITY

◦ Feminism: politically motivated movement dedicated to personal and social change
◦ Feminists: challenge traditional power of men
◦ revalue and celebrate the roles of women
◦ Feminism feeds and is fed by other theories:
Eg: Strong interest in psychological models and methods
As post-Freudians or anti-Freudians: seek to develop more positively woman-centred and gender-
sensitive critical and therapeutic practices
Aproximately a decade ago: Common to distinguish French Feminists (Psychoanalytically inclined) from
socially and historically inclined (Anglo American) Feminists
Internationalising of women’s movement has led to more flexible and eclectic approach
VARIETY OF FEMINISMS:
Socialist Feminism: Configured with Marxism and cultural Materialism
Black Feminism and Women of Colour: often drawing on and contributing
to Postcolonial and Multicultural agendas
Radical Separatist Feminism: often expressly aligned with Lesbian
movement
Bourgeois or Liberal Feminism: Concerned with selected “images” of
relatively privileged women, but not with representation of working-class
women and women of colour or with lesbian and gay politics
SEX AND GENDER:
◦ SEX: physiological make-up and biological differences determining us as female or male
◦ GENDER: social make-up and culturally constructed differences distinguishing us as
feminine or masculine
◦ Usually mutually reinforcing binary oppositions underpin many people’s expectations of what
it is to be a girl/woman and boy/man
◦ Gender differences: always inflected with other multicultural differences of period, class,
caste, nation, religion, age and familial role.
◦ SEXUALITY: refers to sexual orientation and the play of desire across a wide range of
objects, subject positions and practices.
BATTLES OF (AND FOR) THE SEXES
◦ Awareness that men and women are expected to play distinct roles
◦ Awareness that they often fail or refuse to conform
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN by Virginia Woolf (1929):
 Feminist literary echo to work of suffragettes in 1920’s
 Pointed to lack of education, leisure and opportunity precluding most women from writing
 Also began to (re)construct a female literary tradition
THE SECOND SEX by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
Offered political and philosophical history of women as institutionalised other, relative to dominant notions of the male self
FOUCAULT’S THE HISTORY OF
SEXUALITY
(Vol 1 1976)
◦ Laid foundations for understanding social regimes and institutions
in terms of explicitly heterosexual and homosexual practices, and
of implicitly homosocial or homophobic expectations
ROOTS OF Contemporary Feminism,
Gender and Sexuality Studies
◦ Women’s liberation and gay rights movements of late 1960’s and
1970’s
 THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

◦ Language: common place to start exploring ways in which men and women
are culturally constructed through discourse and not just biologically
determined
◦ 4 main approaches:
◦ Anglo American and Australian approach
French approach
Black, ethnic or postcolonial
Gay and Lesbian writers
Anglo-American and Australian Approach
◦ Theorists: Lakoff, Spender, Miller and Swift, Tannen
◦ More practical and overtly political
◦ Language: seen as “man-made” or at least “man-centred”
◦ Task of feminist language user: to overthrow that order and construct one fairer to
women
FRENCH APPROACH:
◦ Main Theorists: Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous
◦ Tends to be more theoretical and politically elusive
◦ Emphasises PSYCHOANALYTIC MODELS
◦ LANGUAGE: primary system wherein we learn to construct ourselves
and others through differences of all kinds, including gender
◦ Task: Renegotiate our subject positions and gender identities as best we
can
BLACK, ETHNIC OR POSTCOLONIAL
APPROACHES:
◦ Theorists: Hurston, Fanon, Hooks, Smith and Spivak
◦ Often combine political and psychological emphases
◦ Language: primary site where gender identity is further vexed by combinations
of Western and indigenous versions of patriarchy and matriarchy
GAY AND LESBIAN WRITERS
◦ Theorists: Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and
Dollimore
◦ Attempt to wrest whole notion of differences constructed on heterosexual lines
from its pride of place
◦ Propose radically revised notions of what it is (not) to be
◦ Read and write, from a range of assertively-but often deliberately elusive and
evasive-”queer” positions.
Adrienne Rich

“revision – the act of looking back, of seeing with

fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical
direction – is for women more than a chapter in
cultural history: it is an act of survival.”
Adrienne Rich, ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as
Re-Vision’ (1971) in Bartholomae and Petrosky
(1999: 604)
TRENDS IN FEMINIST LITERARY
CRITICISM
◦ Representation of women by male writers
◦ Rediscovering and revaluing Women’s writing
REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN BY MEN:

◦ Initial and enduring emphasis in feminist literary studies: images or

representations of women in work by male writers ( Due to absence
of female writers from traditional male-dominated canon)
◦ Inevitable also: early insistence on ways in which male writers mis-
or under-represent women
 Rediscovering and revaluing Women’s writing
◦ Next phase of feminist criticism and research: GYNOCRITICISM
 Has tended to concentrate less on men’s representations of women than on women’s struggle to represent themselves
 Re-reading of female novelists (Austen/Brontes/G. Eliot/ Gaskell/ Woolf)
 Previously marginalised or ignored female writers investigated afresh or for first time:
Eg: Ann Bradstreet/ Aphra Behn/ Mary Wollstonecraft/ M Shelley/ E. Browning

 Crucial texts in reshaping of literary landscape:

Ellen Moers: Literary Women
Elaine Showalter: A Literature of their Own
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: The Madwoman in the Attic
Elaine Showalter

“when we look at women writers collectively we can see an

imaginative continuum, the recurrence of certain patterns, themes,
problems and images from generation to generation.
◦ Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1977: 10)
 Possible Ways of applying Feminist
Criticism
◦ considering the roles and representations of women
◦ Is there a sense of tension between and within the sexes?
◦ What kinds of women’s and men’s roles and relationships are not represented – and are either unspoken
or even ‘unspeakable’ (i.e. taboo)?
◦ Pay special attention to: representations of: family;
occupations outside and within the home;
gendered ways of speaking, dressing and behaving; clothed and
naked bodies; sexual activity; childbirth and child care; single or married
states
◦ Notice the sex, sexual orientations and gender expectations of the writer. Are these
ascertainable from the text or from external (e.g. auto/biographical) sources?
Possible Ways of applying Feminist
Criticism
◦ the gender roles and sexual practices current at the time. Can the text be read
as a form of sexual expression, repression or negotiation?
◦ What behaviour seems to have been considered ‘proper’ or ‘normal’, and how
far are such proprieties and norms reinforced or challenged?
◦ Consider the contexts of writing and reading: what is the context of production
of the text? What was the ideology at the time?