Feminist Literary Theory

Adapted from

Ms. A. Stephens

Ms. B. McAdam

and Crystal Bernard

Student Quote

“I have a male mind with male experiences. Therefore, I see things through the perception of a man. I couldn’t relate to some of Virginia Woolf’s view and I despised the way she pushed her view on the reader. This was brought on by my masculinity, I feel.”

-Bill, Grade 12, after reading A Room of One’s Own

Student Quote

“Being a feminist is not a gender-specific role.”

-Erin, Grade 11

Quotes for comments:

“What enrages me is the way women are used as extensions of men, mirrors of men, devices for showing men off, devices for helping men get what they want. They are never there in their own right, or rarely. The world of the Western contains no women. Sometimes I think the world contains no women.”

-JANE TOMPKINS, “Me and My Shadow”

Feminism Misconstrued

Often confused terms: Gender vs. Sex

What is Gender?While one’s sex is determined by anatomy, the concept

of gender – the traits that constitute masculinity and femininity – are largely cultural constructs, affected by the patriarchal biases of our society. Masculinity

is associated with the following traits: dominant, adventurous, rational, and active. Femininity, the

opposition, is associated with these traits: passive, acquiescent, timid, and emotional. 

“Feminist criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it, by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read”

Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader

A Definition of Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism

A development and movement in critical theory and in the evaluation of literature

Came about during the late 1960s

Has its origins in the struggle for women’s rights which began in the late 18th century

An attempt to describe and interpret women’s experience as depicted in various kinds of literature

Feminist Criticism

It questions the long-standing, dominant, male, phallocentric ideologies (which add up to a kind of male conspiracy), patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in literature

It attacks male notions of value in literature

It challenges traditional and accepted male ideas about the nature of women and about how women feel, act and think, or are supposed to feel, act and think and how in general they respond to life and living

It questions numerous prejudices and assumptions about women made by male writers

Feminism’s Goal

Change the degrading view of women Help make all women realize that they are

“significant” Make all women see that each woman is a valuable

person possessing the same privileges and rights as every man

Women must define their voices Hope to create a society in which the female voice is

valued equally with the male

What Can You See With Feminist Theory

1. You can view female characters and deal with the author’s treatment of those characters

2. You can evaluate the significance of the female in terms of her influence on the literary work

3. You can decipher and manipulate patterns in text, especially with the treatment of women

What’s Wrong With This Picture

Feminist critics wish to show society the errors of ways of thinking concerning women

Literature and society have frequently stereotyped women as angels, barmaids, bitches, whores, brainless housewives, or old maids

Women must break free from such oppression and define themselves

How To Apply

Images of the female body as presented in a text. This would highlight how various parts of the body are significant. (uterus and breasts)

Female language. Look at differences between male and female language. Do women speak or write differently from men?

How To Apply

The female psyche and its relationship to writing. Freud and Lacan are decent references.(hint, hint)

Culture. Analyzing cultural forces (such as importance and value of women’s roles in a given society), critics investigate how society shapes a woman’s understanding of herself, her society, and her world.

Dimension 1View female characters and appraise the author’s stance towards those characters and its influence on his/her writing

She seems lonely. I wonder what the author thinks of her?

Dimension 2Evaluate the significance of the author’s gender

VS.

Dimension 3Interpret whole texts within a feminist framework

Maybe John in “The Yellow

Wallpaper” isn’t really helping his wife get better. It seems different

after looking through a feminist

lens.

Help!!!!

Dimension 4Read the gendered patterns in the world

Traditional vs.. Feminist

She was a bad girl, a tease, and a flirt.

She was a “beautiful little fool” who depended on her husband to take care of her.

She’s just been treated poorly by her horrible, selfish, chauvinistic husband. She is not bad.

Her husband took control of her and wouldn’t let her think for herself. She was doing her best within the limits of women’s role in society.

Traditional vs. Feminist

She is the queen, she has some power.

Gertrude is simply the mother of Hamlet and the queen of the country.

She is more of a plot device than of thematic importance herself.

She’s defined by her husbands and her son.

Outside the classroom, the feminist literary theory helps you…

Examine your life and the world from an informative perspective;

Become politically aware of your society; Remove constraints society places on

gender roles; and Analyze mass media.

“Feminist” Texts vs. Traditional Texts?

Feminist criticism can be applied to a wide range of texts.

“Eureka” moments can occur with texts that don’t seem “loaded”.

However, “feminist” texts illustrate the tenets of the theory.

In short, apply feminist theory to both kinds of texts.

Feminist Texts Continued

Feminist Theory, as do other theories, provides us with a way of recognizing and naming other visions while promoting our own ways of seeing.

It invites us to attend to the cultural imprint of patriarchy as we read.

Feminism in Interpreting Texts

“As [you] read and interpret literary texts, feminist theory can help [you] to notice salient issues of gender – the portrayal of women in the world of the novel, the gender of the author and what relevance it may bear to how the work is both written and received, the ways in which the text embraces or confronts prevailing ideologies of how men and women are situated in the ‘real world’ and the ways our own interpretations as individual readers are gendered.”

Works Cited

Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters In High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. Urbana: NCTE, 2000.

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994.