Feminist Criticism

Examines ways in which literature
reinforces or undermines the oppression
of women.
 Economically
 Socially
 Politically
 Psychologically
Traditional Gender Roles
 Patriarchy
 Any culture that privileges men by promoting
traditional gender roles.
Traditional Gender Roles

Men

Women
 Rational
 Emotional
(no crying)
 Strong
 Protective
 Decisive
(irrational)
 Weak
 Nurturing
 Submissive

Traditional gender roles have
been used successfully to justify
inequities such as excluding
women from equal access to
leadership and decision-making
positions and paying men higher
wages than women for doing
the same job.

Patriarchy is by definition sexist
 It promotes the belief that women are
innately inferior to men
 “head of the tribe or family”
 Biological
Essentialism
 Belief of inborn inferiority
 based on biological differences
between the sexes that are part of
our unchanging essence as men
and women
○ Example: hysteria

Feminists don’t deny biological
differences
 don’t agree that differences in physical size,
shape, and body chemistry make men
naturally superior to women
○ more intelligent
○ more logical
○ better leaders
SEX: biological constitution as female or
male
GENDER: our cultural programming as
feminine or masculine
Judith Butler: Gender is performed

The inferior position long occupied by
women in a patriarchal society has been
culturally, not biologically, produced.

Patriarchy continually exerts forces that
undermine women’s self-confidence and
assertiveness, then points to the
absence of these qualities as proof that
women are naturally self-effacing and
submissive.
 Example: girls and math

Patriarchal gender roles are destructive for
men as well as women.
 Traditional gender roles dictate that men are
supposed to be strong:
○ Physically powerful
○ Emotionally stoic
 Men are not supposed to cry (considered a sign of
weakness)
 Unmanly to show fear or pain
 Shouldn’t express sympathy for other men
Arguments Against Feminist Premises
 Western society has actually been structured
to protect women from the brutalities of war
and commerce, allowing them to be nurturers,
mothers, and homemakers.
 Rather than exploiting or suppressing women,
it actually celebrates and cherishes them.
Counter Argument by Feminists

Assumes suppression and exclusion.
 If a woman is put on a pedestal, she can’t do
much of anything up there.
Assumes women are weaker sex, needing
protection.
 Assumes women are unable to compete
with men.

 Disallows for the fact that some women are
physically and mentally stronger than some
men.
Roots of Feminism

Men have oppressed women.
 allowing them little or no voice in the political,
social, or economic issues of their society
Roots of Feminism

…Men have made women the
“nonsignificant Other.”
Goal of Feminism

Therefore, feminism’s goal is to change
these degrading views of women so that
all women will realize they are not a
“nonsignificant Other” and will realize that
each woman is a valuable person
possessing the same privileges and
rights as every man.
Roots of Feminism
Women must define themselves and assert
their own voices in the arenas of politics,
society, education, and the arts.
 By personally committing themselves to
fostering such change, feminists hope to
create a society in which not only the male
but also the female voice is equally valued.

Historical Roots of Feminism

According to feminist criticism, the roots
of prejudice against women have long
been embedded in Western culture.
 Some say it originated with biblical narrative
where the fall of man is blamed on Eve, not
Adam.
Historical Roots of Feminism

According to feminist criticism, the roots
of prejudice against women have long
been embedded in Western culture.
 Ancient Greeks (Aristotle) ”The man is by
nature superior, and the female inferior; and
the one rules and the other is ruled.”
Roots of Feminism

According to feminist criticism, the roots of
prejudice against women have long been
embedded in Western culture.
 Religious leaders: Thomas Aquinas and St.
Augustine
○ women were merely “imperfect men”
○ Spiritually weak creatures
○ Possessed a sensual nature that lures men
away from spiritual truths, thereby preventing
males from attaining their spiritual potential.
Roots of Feminism

According to feminist criticism, the roots of
prejudice against women have long been
embedded in Western culture.
 Darwin (The Descent of Man – 1871)
○ “women are of a characteristic of … a past and
lower state of civilization.”
○ Are inferior to men, who are physically,
intellectually, and artistically superior
Roots of Feminism

Opposition to patriarchal opinions against
women was not heard of until the late
1700s.
 Mary Wollstonecraft
○ A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
 Women must stand up for their rights and not allow their
male-dominated society to define what it means to be a
woman.
 Women must take the lead and articulate who they are
and what role they will play in society.
 Women must reject patriarchal assumption that women
are inferior to men.
Roots of Feminism

Not until the early 1900s (Progressive Era)
that the major roots of feminist criticism
began to grow.
 Women gained the right to vote
 Women became prominent activists in the social
issues of the day
○ Health care
○ Education
○ Politics
○ literature
History of Feminist Criticism

Virginia Woolf
 A Room of One’s Own (1919)
○ Declares men have and continue to treat women as
inferiors.
○ The male defines what is means to be female and controls
the political, economic, social and literary structures.
History of Feminist Criticism

Virginia Woolf
 A Room of One’s Own (1919)
○ Hypothesizes the existence of Shakespeare’s sister,
equally as gifted a writer has he.
 Gender prevents her from having “a room of her own”
 She cannot obtain an education or find profitable employment
because she is a woman.
 Her innate artistic talents will therefore never flourish, for she
cannot afford a room of her own.
History of Feminist Criticism

Virginia Woolf
 A Room of One’s Own (1919)
○ This kind of loss of artistic talent and personal worthiness
is the direct result of society’s opinion of women: they are
intellectually inferior to men.
○ Women must reject this social construct and establish
their own identity.
○ Women must challenge the prevailing, false cultural
notions about their gender identity and develop a female
discourse that will accurately portray their relationship “to
the world of reality and not to the world of men.”
History of Feminist Criticism

Simone de Beauvior
 The Second Sex (1949)
○ “foundational work of 20th century feminism”
○ Declares that French society (and Western societies in
general) are PATRIARCHAL, controlled by males.
○ Like Woolf, believed that the male defines what it means
to be human, including, therefore, what it means to be
female.
○ Since the female is not the male, she becomes the Other,
finding herself a nonexistent player in the major social
institutions of her culture
 Church
 Government
 Educational systems
History of Feminist Criticism

Simone de Beauvior
 The Second Sex (1949)
○ Woman must break the bonds of her patriarchal society
and define herself if she wishes to become a significant
human being in her own right and defy male classification
as the Other.
 Must ask herself, “What is a woman?”
- Answer must not be “mankind” (generic label allows men to
define women as relative to him, not as herself.)
History of Feminist Criticism

Kate Millet
 Sexual Politics (1970)
○ challenges the social ideological
characteristics of both the male and the
female.
 “A female is born but a woman is created.”
- One’s sex is determined at birth (male or female)
- One’s gender is a social construct created by cultural
ideals and norms (masculine or feminine)
History of Feminist Criticism

Kate Millet
 Sexual Politics (1970)
○ challenges the social ideological characteristics
of both the male and the female.
 Women and men (consciously and unconsciously)
conform to the cultural ideas established for them by
society.
 Cultural norms and expectations are transmitted
through media: television, movies, songs, and literature.
- Boys must be aggressive, self-assertive, domineering
- Girls must be passive, meek, humble
History of Feminist Criticism

Kate Millet
 Sexual Politics (1970)
○ Women must revolt against the power center of
their culture: male dominance.
○ Women must establish female social
conventions for themselves by establishing and
articulating female discourse, literary studies,
and feminist theory.
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Feminist critics began to examine the
traditional literary canon
○ Discovered examples that supported
assertions of Beauvoir and Millet
 that males considered the female “the Other”
 male dominance and prejudice
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Feminist critics began to examine the
traditional literary canon
○ Stereotypes of women
 Sex maniacs
 Goddesses of beauty
 Mindless entities
 Old spinsters
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
literary canon
○ found male authors in established literary canon:
Dickens, Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Twain, etc.
○ Found few females achieved such status
○ Roles of female, fictionalized characters were limited to
secondary positions
 More frequently than not as minor parts within story or as
stereotypical images
○ Female scholars such as Woolf and Beauvior were
ignored
 Works seldom referred to by male critics of literary canon
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Feminist critics began to examine the
traditional literary canon
○ Asserted that the males who created and
gained prominence in canon assumed all
readers were male.
○ Most university professors were males
 Women reading such works were trained to read as if
they were males.
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Feminist critics began to examine the
traditional literary canon
○ Brought about existence of a female reader who
was affronted by the male prejudices abounding
in the canon.
○ Brought about questions concerning the male
and female qualities of literary form, style, voice,
and theme.
○ By 1970s, books that defined women’s writings
in feminine terms flourished.
History of Feminist Criticism

Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
 Having highlighted the importance of gender
○ Feminist critics began to rediscover literary
works authored by females that had been
dismissed or deemed inferior by their male
counterparts, unworthy to be a part of the canon.
 Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899)
 Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962)
Feminist Criticism

Elaine Showalter
 A Literature of Their Own: British Women
Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977)
○ Asserts female authors were consciously and
deliberately excluded from the literary canon by the
male professors who established the canon itself.
 Example: Olive Schreiner
○ To fully understand the development of women’s
literature, we must recognize the Schreiners as well as
the Austins.
Linguistics

Gilbert & Gubar
 The War of Words (1988)
○ “a major campaign in the battle of the sexes is
the conflict over language and, specifically,
over competing male and female claims to
linguistic primacy” (228).
○ It’s not enough to challenge the way women
have been portrayed in literature; must
recognize that language itself has been
shaped by men in ways that denigrate and
alienate women.
Stereotypical Criticism

(Sandra) Gilbert & (Susan) Gubar
 Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination (1979)
○ Analyze literature in relationship to the myths
created by men and challenge such myths.
 “those mythic masks male artists have fastened over
[woman’s] human face.”
- Passive, submissive “angel”
- Destructive, sinister “monster”

Judith Fetterly
 The Resisting Reader (1978)
○ Women should resist the meanings that male
authors – or female authors who have
inherited patriarchal values – embed in their
books.
○ A woman must read as a woman “exorcising
the male mind that has been implanted in
women.”
Stereotypical Criticism

Judith Fryer’s The Faces of Eve:
Women in the 19th Century American
Novel (1976)
 Faces of Eve:
○ The Temptress
○ The American princess
○ The Great Mother
○ The New Woman
Stereotypical Criticism

Not all stereotypical criticism is negative
with the attack on works by male
authors.
 Annis Pratt examines “healthier
representations” (“New Feminist Criticism”)
 Miriam Lerenbaum (“Moll Flanders: A
Woman on Her Own Account”)
○ Defends Defoe as shedding a positive light on
the female character Moll.

Feminist critics also criticize critics they
consider to be sexist.
 “Phallic Criticism” (Annis Pratt)
○ Critics that look at and distort chauvinistic
interpretations of works either by men or women.
 Nina Baym’s “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How
Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors”
- Scarlet Letter
○ Critics who ignore literature by women.
 Carol Ohmann’s “Emily Bronte in the Hands of Male
Critics”
- Wuthering Heights

Some feminist critics have attempted to use
literature and criticism to promote social
change.
 Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Reinventing Womanhood -1979)
○ Makes literary criticism a part of her effort to promote “the
struggle for female selfhood.”
 Toril Moi (Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory –
1985)
○ Feminist criticism can and should contribute to social
change
○ “the principal objective of feminist criticism…has always
been political: it seeks to expose, not to perpetuate,
patriarchal practices.”
Feminist Criticism

No one critical theory of writing
dominates feminist criticism; few
theorists agree upon a unifying feminist
approach to textual analysis.
 American: textual, stressing repression
 British: Marxist, stressing oppression
 French: psychoanalytic, stressing repression
Feminist Criticism

Asserts that most of our literature
presents a masculine-patriarchal view in
which the role of women is negated or at
best minimized.
Feminist View
Attempts to show that writers of
traditional literature have ignored
women and have transmitted misguided
and prejudiced views of them;
 Attempts to stimulate the creation of a
critical environment that reflects a
balanced view of the nature and value of
women;

Feminist View
Attempts to recover the works of women
writers of past times and to encourage the
publication of present women writers so
that the literary canon may be expanded
to recognize women as thinkers and
artists; and
 Urges transformations in the language to
eliminate inequities and inequalities that
result from linguistic distortions.

Questions for Analysis

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Is the author male or female?
Is the text narrated by a male or female?
What types of roles do women have in the text?
Are the female characters the protagonists or secondary and
minor characters?
Do any stereotypical characterizations of women appear?
What are the attitudes toward women held by the male
characters?
What is the author’s attitude toward women in society?
How does the author’s culture influence his or her attitude?
Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the significance of
such imagery?
Do the female characters speak differently than do the male
characters? In your investigation, compare the frequency of
speech for the male characters to the frequency of speech for
the female characters.