Feminist Literary Criticism
Applied Literary Criticism
Ni Wayan Swardhani W
2013
Defining Feminist Literary Approach
• "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce
or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression
of women" (Tyson).
• Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of
marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the
traditional literary canon:
• "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to
under-represent the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 82-83).
• Looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male
dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit
misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346).
• Kate Millet “the essence of politics is power” and pervasive concept of
power in our society is male dominance (Guerin 199).
• Feminist literary criticism is often a political attack upon other modes of
criticism and theory and its social orientation moves beyond traditional
literary criticism (Guerin196).
• Feminist literary critics try to explain how power imbalances due to
gender in a given culture are reflected in or challenged by literary text
(Guerin 196).
• Feminist critics sees the very act of speaking – of having a language – as a
focus for studying women writers, so often silenced in the past (Guerin
197)  women’s silence  resistance to the dominant discourse
• Feminist Literary Approach examines the experiences of women from all races and classes
and cultures, including, for example, African American, Latina, Asian American, American
Indian, lesbian, handicapped, elderly and Third World subjects  Annette Kolodny’s playful
pluralism  liberal tolerance, interdisciplinary links, and connecting art to the diversity of life
(Guerin 197).
• Feminist critics generally agree that their goals are to expose patriarchal premises and
resulting prejudices, to promote discovery and re-evaluation of literature by women, and to
examine social, cultural, and psychosexual contexts of literature and literary criticism (Guerin
197).
• Internal colonialization by men over women  androcentric
 even worse than racial segregation (Millet 199)
• Patriarchy = ideology that privileges masculine ways of thinking/points of view and
marginalizes women politically, economically and psychologically.
Three Waves of Feminism
• First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's:
 writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities
between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage
movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth
Amendment
• Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s:
 building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II,
movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere
feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxième sexe, 1972) and
Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories
dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement
• Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present:
 resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a
white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism
borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to
expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to
"...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and
wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and
community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women
perform" (Tyson 97).
Historical Phases of Women’s Literary
Development According to Elaine Showalter
• 840-1880 phase
the feminine phase  women writers imitated the dominant tradition
• 1880-1920 phase
the feminist phase  women advocated minority rights and protested
• 1920 phase -today
the female phase  a rediscovery of women’s texts and women
Characteristics of Feminist Approach:
• Sex ≠ gender
• Gender is a socially/culturally constructed. It is learned and performed; it involves the
myriad and often normative meanings given to sexual difference by various cultures.
• Sex is a biologically based category.
• Although sex/gender systems differ cross-culturally, most known societies
have used and still use sex/gender as a key structural principle
organizing their actual and conceptual worlds, usually to the
disadvantage of women.
• Feminist scholars argue that gender is a crucial category of analysis and that modes of
knowledge which do not take gender into account are partial and incomplete.
• Seek to question and transform androcentric systems of thought which
posit the male as the norm.
• In practice this means not only revealing and critiquing androcentric biases, but also
attempting to examine beliefs and practices from the viewpoint of the “other,” treating
women and other marginalized groups as subjects, not merely objects.
• The existing inequalities between dominant and marginalized groups
can and should be removed.
• Feminist scholarship has an acknowledged and accepted political dimension, as
opposed to the hidden political dimension of scholarship that claims to be “neutral”
and “objective.”
• With regard to scholarship, the political goal of feminist work is broader than
simply a stronger emphasis on women, though that is an important part of it; the
goal is to revise our way of considering history, society, literature, etc. so that
neither male nor female is taken as normative, but both are seen as equally
conditioned by the gender constructions of their culture.
Elaine Showalter’s Feminist Identifications
• Biological Model  if the text somehow mirrors the body  reducing women
merely to bodies
• Linguistics Model  language of sexism
• Psychoanalytic Model  identifies gender difference as the basis of the psyche,
focusing on the relation of gender to the artistic process
• Cultural Model  places feminist concerns in social contexts, acknowledging
class, racial, national, and historical differences ad determinants among women,
but offering a collective experience that unites women over time and space – a
binding force.
How to Apply Feminist Approach in Literary
Criticism
• Purpose:
• to reveal many subordination and oppression of women
• to reveal the veil that covers the certain message inside the literary works and reclaim
the opinions in literature externally (Ruthven, 1984:24-58)
• How to do this:
• men’s perception about women, and how they describe women,
• the creativity of women in relation with their potentiality
• the application of the theory in women’s studies
Four Significant Current Practices on Feminist
Literary Approach
• Gender Studies
• Marxist Feminism
• Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Minority Feminist Criticism
Some Problems and Limitation on Feminist
Literary Criticism
You Don’t Own Me – Lesley Gore (1964)
You don't own me
I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me
Don't say I can't go with other boys
And don't tell me what to do
Don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display 'cause
You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay
I don't tell you what to say
I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you
I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please
And don't tell me what to do
Oh, don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display
I don't tell you what to say
Oh, don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you
I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live
Those to Relate with Feminist Aaproach
• Rebecca West
• Elaine Showalter
• Adrienne Rich
• Virginia Woolf
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Kate Millet
• Betty Friedan
• Myra Jehlen
• Julia Kristeva
Sources:
• Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New
York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11/
• http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/femcharacteristics.html