Literary Perspectives Tool Kit
Literary perspectives help us explain why people might interpret the same text in different ways.
Perspectives help us understand what is important to individual readers, and they show us why those readers
end up seeing what they see. One way to imagine a literary perspective is to think of it as a lens through which
we can examine a text. No single lens gives us the clearest view, but it is sometimes fun to read a text with a
particular perspective in mind because you often end up discovering something intriguing and unexpected.
While readers typically apply more than one perspective at a time, the best way to understand these
perspectives is to employ them one at a time. What follows is a summary of some of the best-known literary
perspectives. These descriptions are extremely brief, and none fully explains everything you might want to
know about the perspective in question, but there is enough here for you to get an idea about how readers use
them.
The Archetypal Perspective: In literary criticism, the word archetype signifies a recognizable pattern or
model. It can be used to describe story designs, character types, or images that can be found in a wide variety
of works of literature. It can also be applied to myths, dreams, and social rituals. The archetypal similarities
between texts and behaviors are thought to reflect a set of universal, even primitive, ways of seeing the world.
When we find them in literary works, they evoke strong responses from readers. Archetypal themes include the
heroic journey and the search for a father figure. Archetypal images include the opposition of heaven and hell,
the river as a sign of life and movement, and mountains or other high places as sources of enlightenment.
Characters can be archetypal as well; some examples are the rebel-hero, the scapegoat, the villain, and the
goddess.
Archetypal Criticism Essential Questions:
1. What archetypal characters do you see, if any, in the text?
2. What archetypal situations do you see, if any, in the text?
3. What archetypal symbols do you see, if any, in the text?
4. What recurring images do you see, if any, in the text?
5. What recurring themes do you see, if any, in the text?
6. How do recurring patterns and our understanding of these patterns affect our understanding of the text?
Upon Seeing an Orange
Archetypal Perspective asks: What reoccurring ideas, patterns, or aspects do we see from one orange to the
next? How do those patterns help us understand this orange?
Understanding Literary Perspectives/Theory & Archetypal Perspective
Based on the information above, respond to the following:
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What does understanding different literary perspectives help us explain?
What is a metaphor for literary perspectives? In other words, how can we think of it?
Archetypal perspective is one of the best-known lenses. What does the work archetype mean?
What are 4 questions an archetypal critic might ask when reading?
What would an archetypal critic ask themselves upon viewing an orange?
Literary Perspectives Tool Kit
The Feminist Perspective: A Feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a “patriarchal” society
that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and women’s cultural
identification is as a merely negative object, or “Other” to man as the defining and dominating “Subject.” There
are several assumptions and concepts held in common by most feminist critics.
1. Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.
2. The concepts of “gender” are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs, effected by the omnipresent
patriarchal biases of our civilization.
3. This patriarchal ideology also pervades those writings which have been considered great literature. Such
works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and leave the woman
reader an alien outsider or else solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of
perceiving, feeling and acting.
This is somewhat like Marxist criticism (see next), but instead of focusing on the relationships between the
classes it focuses on the relationships between the genders. Under this theory, you would examine the
patterns of thought, behavior, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between the sexes.
The feminist approach holds that most of our literature presents a masculine-patriarchal view in which
the role of women is negated or at best minimized. As an adjunct of the feminist movement in politics,
the feminist critique of literature seeks to raise consciousness about the importance and unique nature
of women in literature. Specifically, the feminist view attempts (l) to show that writers of traditional
literature have ignored women and have also transmitted misguided and prejudiced views of them, (2)
to stimulate the creation of a critical milieu that reflects a balanced view of the nature and value of
women, (3) 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 (4) to urge transformations in the language to eliminate inequities and inequalities that
result from linguistic distortions. In form, the feminist perspective seeks to evaluate various literary
works from the standpoint of the presentation of women.
The Gender Perspective: Because gender is a way of viewing the world, people of different genders see
things differently. For example, a feminist critic might see cultural and economic disparities as the products of a
“patriarchal” society, shaped and dominated by men, who tend to decide things by various means of
competition. In addition, societies often tend to see the male perspective as the default, that is, the one we
choose automatically. As a result, women are identified as the “Other,” the deviation or the contrasting type.
When we use the gender lens, we examine patterns of thought, behavior, value, and power in interactions
between the sexes.
Upon Seeing an Orange
Gender theory asks: What possibilities are available to a woman who eats this orange? To a man?
Examples
At the beginning of "Young Goodman Brown," Brown's wife, Faith, is only peripheral. In the traditional
patriarchal spirit of wife-as-adjunct, she asks her husband to stay at home and take his journey at another time.
Hawthorne does not give her the intelligence or dignity, however, to let her explain her concern (or might he
not have been interested in what she had to say?), and she, therefore, remains in the background with her pink
hair ribbon as her distinguishing characteristic (By the way, why did Hawthorne choose this object to represent
Faith? Stereotypical femininity?). During the forest satanic ritual, she appears again and is given power, but
only the power to cause her husband to go astray. Once she is led in as a novice in the practice of demonism,
her husband falls right in step. Unfortunately, by following her, Brown may conveniently excuse himself from
guilt by claiming that she had made him do it, just as Eve "made" Adam eat the apple. Hawthorne's attention
on to the male hero, in other words, permits him to distort the female's role.
For works such as '''The Necklace" (story), "A Work of Artifice" (poem), and The Bear (play), a feminist
critique would focus on how such works treat women and also on either the short comings or
enlightenment of the author as a result of this treatment: How important are the female characters,
how individual in their own right? Are they credited with their own existence and their own character?
In their relationships with men, how are they treated? Are they given equal status? Ignored?
Patronized? Demeaned? Pedestalized? How much concern do the male characters exhibit about
women's concerns? A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be seen as the story of how gender
expectations make it impossible for love to be anything but silly and shallow or "Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been" can be seen as the story of the malicious dominance men have over women
both physically and psychologically. Connie is the female victim of the role in society that she
perceives herself playing-the coy young lass whose life depends on her looks.
Gender Conflict Essential 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? Men’s ambition? The androgynous dichotomy?
 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 does the work play in terms of gender literary history and literary tradition?
Understanding Feminist Theory & Gender Perspective
Based on the information above, respond to the following:
This reading talks a lot about a “patriarchal” society.” What does this mean?
Who is “Other”? Who is “Subject”?
Feminist critics believe that our civilization is pervasively what?
What does it mean that “’gender’” [is] largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs”?
What does it mean writing “lack[s] autonomous female role models”?
The feminist approach attempts to show that traditional literature has either altogether ignored women
or showed an incorrect view of them. What else does it attempt to do? List 3 more in your own words.
7. What would a feminist or gender critic ask themselves upon viewing an orange?
8. Summarize how a feminist or gender critic would perceive Hawthorne’s representation of the character
Faith in “Young Goodman Brown.”
9. What are 5 questions a feminist or gender critic might ask when reading literature?
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