Literary and cultural theory from basic principles to advanced applications

Notes on Theory

Feminist and Gender Criticism

What is Feminism?

Feminism is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism.
Historically, feminism has evolved from the critical examination of inequality between the sexes to a more nuanced focus on the social and performative constructions of gender and sexuality.
What is Feminism cont.

Feminists speak of women being relegated to the status of objects, pointing out that they have traditionally been valued for their beauty and usefulness to men. In other words, women in some sense have been dehumanized.
In examining women’s history, sociology, and psychology, feminist critics would explore precisely what self-definitions and avenues for expression were available at a given time.
A Man’s World?

This is a patriarchal society.
Language, institutions, and social power structures have reflected patriarchal interests throughout much of history; this has had a profound impact on women’s ability to express themselves and the quality of their daily lives.
Early feminist work sought to recover oppositional voices of women from the past, showing how previous attempts at challenging patriarchy were expressed and how such expressions fared.
As Literary Theory

Since many texts were written when the social oppression of women was considered natural, they often reflect patriarchy in substantially unmodified ways.
Thus feminist criticism of writers such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Earnest Hemingway have often focused on how they portrayed women characters and what biases those characterizations demonstrate.
Power Relations

Feminist Critics and theorists are interested not only in exploring how men have exercised such power so widely but also in how women’s experiences of selfhood have been affected by the power exercised over them.
It is indeed a testament to their resilience that some women have worked within an oppressive system to carve out productive lives, finding even in domestic ways to exercise power.
A Designated Role?

Though sometimes defined solely as mothers, wives, governesses, and/or teachers, women have found ways of influencing social structures in complex and often covert ways.
Within the family structure and the home, women have always exercised forms of power, as they have negotiated to meet their own economic, psychological, and intellectual needs as well as those of others.
A Lasting Impression

Have we engaged in feminist criticism in here?
From the late eighteenth century to the present day, many feminist theorists have suggested that oppression is most productively countered by opening up institutions such as the educational system and the political process to as large a number of people as possible.
For some feminists, the most important way to resist patriarchy is to challenge laws and other institutional barriers to women’s equality.
Hall, Donald E. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.