Pakistani Literature ...Lecture 4 .. Mam Najia

1. Introduction to feminism
 Mary Wollstonecraft

2.  Mary Wollstonecraft (/ˈwʊlstən.krɑːft/; 27 April 1759
– 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century English
writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights.
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises,
a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution,
a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is
best known for A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not
naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because
they lack education. She suggests that both men and
women should be treated as rational beings and imagines
a social order founded on reason.
 Wikipedia

3. What is Feminism?
 Rebecca West says,
 “Feminism is the radical notion that women are
people”
 Feminism is the belief that women should have equal
rights to men

5. Elaine Showwalter
 Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is
an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on
cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of
feminist literary criticism in United States academia,
developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.
 Best known in academic and popular cultural
fields,[1] she has written and edited numerous books and
articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist
literary criticismto fashion, sometimes sparking
widespread controversy, especially with her work on
illnesses. Showalter has been a television critic
for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio
and television
 Wikipedia

6. Towards a Feminist Poetics
Woman as Readers: The consumer of male
produced Literature. Its subject includes the images
and literary stereotypes of women in Literature,
omissions and misconceptions and the fissures in
male-constructed literary history.
Feminist Poetics

7. Woman As Writers
 Woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the
history, themes, genres and structures of Literature
by Women.
 Subjects Include: Psychodynamics of female
creativity: linguistics and the problem of a female
language; the trajectory of the individual or collective
female literary career; literary history; and of course,
studies of particular writers and works.

8. La gynocritique
 OR“Gynocritics”

9. CONTD
 The feminist critique is essentially polemical and
political, with theoretical affiliations to Marxist
sociology and aesthetics.
 According to Showalter gynocritics is more self-contained
and experimental, with connections to
other modes of new feminist research.

10. Gynocritics
 Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847)
 Pen Name: Currer Bell
 Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)
 Pen Name: Ellis Bell
 George Eliot (Pen Name): Middlemarch (1872)
 Mary Ann Evans
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Aurora Leigh (1856)

11. Feminism and Three Waves
 The Feminine Phase (1840-1880)Used Pen Names
 Women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual
achievements of the male culture, internalized its
assumptions about female culture.
 Distinguishing sign of this period is the male
pseudonym became national characterstic of English
women writers
 American women during the same period adopted
superfeminine names like Fanny Fern, Grace
Greenwood.

12. The Feminist Phase 1880-1920
 From 1880-1920 led to
 Winning of Vote
 Enabled to reject the accomodating postures of
femininity
 Used Literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged
womanhood e.g Elizabeth Gaskell, Frances Trollope.

13. Female Phase 1920 -----to Present
 Women reject both imitation and protest
 Turn to female experience as the source of an
autonomous art
 Extended the feminist analysis of culture to the
forms and techniques of Literature
 Virginia Woolf started thinking in terms of male and
female sentences and divided their work into
“masculine journalism” and “feminine fictions”
 Redefined internal and external experiences

14.  Their experiments were both enriching and
imprisoning retreats into the celebration of
consciousness.
 “A luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope
surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness
to the end” (Showalter)

15. Three Waves and Woman Situation
 The first Wave:
 19th and 20th Century UK and US
 Won improved rights for women in Marriage and
property
 Biggest achievement was winning political power
 Suffragetes and suffragists campaigned for the
women’s vote

16. CONTD
 In 1918: Women over 30 who owned property won
the vote and in 1928 it was extended to all women
over 21.

17. Feminism and Pakistan
 Under Colonialism Literature was produced all
around the world
 Pre -Partition: Twilight in Delhi(1948) Woman
Situation
 Post -Partition: The Heart Divided (1948) The
beginning of Pakistani Feminist writings in English.
Women were doubly colonized (a) by colonizers
(b) by patriarchal society

18.  After independence women were confined and
restricted
 Spivak: “As Subalterns”.OR “Othered”
 Mohanty: “Produced as Subjects”
 Women are shown as oppressed as well as fighting
oppression

19. Feminism -Politics -Pakistan
 Rana Liaquat founded the united front for women’s rights.
 Had the right to vote
 Representation reserved for them in Parliament
 Woman Movements ignored the role of socio/political forces of feudals,
tribals and military. Pakistan Vs India
 In the decade of 70’s efforts were made to modernize the State
 Representation increased to 10% in National Assembly and 5% in
Provincial Assembly. No substantial forum was provided to woman
 Zia regime proved quite discriminatory as women were restricted and
confined

20. CONTD
 In 1988 Bhutto became the first woman Prime
minister of Pakistan. Not much was done for woman.
 On her return to power again in 1993-0nwards
efforts were made to make domestic violence a crime
 Musharraf Era : Women Friendly
 Women Protecion Act 2006: Facilitated release of
women detained on various charges

21. CONTD
 Zardari Era: Protection Against Harassment of
Women at the Workplace (2011)
 Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act (2011)
 The Prevention of Anti Women Practices 2011
 To deprive women of rightful inheritance
 To give girls in badle-e- sulha to settle disputes
 Force the women to marriage with Quran

22.  Domestic Violence Act 2012
 National Commission on the status of women Act
2012.
 To promote legal, economic and political , social
rights of women.

23. Voices From Pakistan
 Bilquis Jamal, Kaneez Fatima, Safia Shamim, Deputy
Nazir Ahmed, Asmat Chughtai
 Fehmida Riaz, Kishwar Naheed, Farzana Bari,
 Mumtaz Shaheed

24. Feminism Types
 Liberal Feminism
 This is the variety of feminism that works within the
structure of mainstream society to integrate women
into that structure. Its roots stretch back to the
social contract theory of government instituted by
the American Revolution.

25.  Radical Feminism:
This term refers to the feminist movement that
sprung out of the civil rights and peace movements
in 1967-1968. The reason this group gets the
"radical" label is that they view the oppression of
women as the most fundamental form of oppression,
one that cuts across boundaries of race, culture, and
economic class.

26. Marxist and Socialist Feminism
 Marxism recognizes that women are oppressed, and
attributes the oppression to the capitalist/private
property system. Thus they insist that the only way
to end the oppression of women is to overthrow the
capitalist system. Socialist feminism is the result of
Marxism meeting radical feminism.

27.  Cultural Feminists:
 As radical feminism died out as a movement, cultural feminism got
rolling. In fact, many of the same people moved from the former to
the latter. They carried the name "radical feminism" with them, and
some cultural feminists use that name still. (Jaggar and Rothenberg
[Feminist Frameworks] don't even list cultural feminism as a
framework separate from radical feminism, but Echols spells out
the distinctions in great detail.) The difference between the two is
quite striking: whereas radical feminism was a movement to
transform society, cultural feminism retreated to vanguardism,
working instead to build a women's culture. Some of this effort has
had some social benefit: rape crisis centers, for example; and of
course many cultural feminists have been active in social issues (but
as individuals, not as part of a movement).

28. Eco-Feminism
 This branch of feminism is much more spiritual than
political or theoretical in nature. It may or may not be
wrapped up with Goddess worship and
vegetarianism. Its basic tenet is that a patriarchal society
will exploit its resources without regard to long term
consequences as a direct result of the attitudes fostered
in a patriarchal/hierarchical society. Parallels are often
drawn between society's treatment of the environment,
animals, or resources and its treatment of women. In
resisting patriarchal culture, eco-feminists feel that they
are also resisting plundering and destroying the Earth