This Presentation Is about Feminist Criticism &Feminist Lense

1. Name : Asari Bhavyang .M
Roll no :-3
Enrollment No:-3069206420200002
Course:-M.A (English)Sem2
Subject:-Contemporary Western Theories and Film
Studies
Topic:-Feminist criticism and Feminist Lense
Teacher Name :- Dilip Barad sir
Batch :- 2021-2023
Email :- asaribhavyang7874@gmail.com
Department:- Department of English

2. FEMINISM: EQUALITY GENDER IN LITERATURE
● Men and women have their own background and culture, the
community has separated the notions of the two genders. Most
of the world community assume that men as superior and
women as inferior,
● Feminism is born because women are tired of being
subordinated to everything, through feminism women are able
to show themselves. Women are no longer dangerous
creatures and creatures that have been in the minds of men.
But women are also able to work and be productive with men.

3. ● The English and the American women writers and critics revolted
against the fact that women writers had been silenced by and large
excluded from literary history.
● The feminist critics were aware of the fact that criticism till then
had been male dominated and the critical attention concentrated
mostly on male writers.
Feminist criticism :-

4. Criticism written by women was not taken seriously and was
considered 'superficial' as they were supposed to be innately
handicapped in literary competition with men. But it does not
mean that no women is capable of writing literary criticism .
● George Eliot
● Simone de Beauvoir,
● Winifred Holtbyn,
● Kate Millet,
● Adrienne Rich,
● Virginia Woolf
● Rebecca West,
● Mary Wollstonecraft
● George Sand

5. Several texts on feminist in America :-
● Mary Ellmann ;-Thinking About Women in 1968
● Patricia Meyer :- The Female Imagination
● Ellen Moers:- Literary Women in 1976
● Virginia Woolf :- A room of one’s
● Simone de Beauvoir’s :-The second sex
● Judith Fetterley’s :- The Resting Reader
● Elaine Showalter :- A Literature of Their Own: British
Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing in 1977.

6. Elaine Showalter observes:-
‘It is important to see the female literary tradition in
broad terms, in relation to the wider evolution of
women's self-awareness and to the ways in which any
minority group finds its direction of self-expression
relative to a dominant society because we cannot show
a pattern of deliberate progress and accumulation.
’(Showalter 12)
(By Sharma,Sandeep Kumar from “Feminist Criticism :
An Introduction”)

7. ● Ros Coward argues that a book written by a woman
need not necessarily be a feminist text just for
having been written by a woman.
● Michele Barrett is also of the opinion that the focus
on female experience is not the only condition for
making the work feminist. It means that even the
text written by men can claim to be the 'feminist'
texts.
(By Sharma,Sandeep Kumar from “Feminist
Criticism : An Introduction”)

8. -Is the author male or female?
- Is the text narrated by a male or female?
- What types of roles do women have in the text?
- What are the attitudes toward women held by the
male characters?
- What is the author’s attitude toward women in
society?
- How does the author’s culture influence his/her
attitude?

9. Feminist Lens :-
● The feminist lens allows us to look at text through the eyes of a
feminist to closely analyze how women are portrayed and presented
in comparison to men. Feminism- movement for social, political,
economic, and cultural equality between men and women; campaigns
against gender inequalities.

10. ● Recently, gender criticism has expanded beyond its original
feminist perspective. Critics have explored the impact of
different sexual orientations on literary creation and
reception. A men’s movement has also emerged in response
to feminism. The men’s movement does not seek to reject
feminism but to rediscover masculine identity in an
authentic, contemporary way. Led by poet Robert Bly, the
men’s movement has paid special attention to interpreting
poetry and fables as myths of psychic growth and sexual
identity.
( By Siegel, Kristi from Literature through A Feminist Lens )

11. Reference :-
1. Arizah, Mila. 2021,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344186149_FEMINI
SM_EQUALITY_GENDER_IN_LITERATURE/link/5f59ae369285
1c07895864a1/download. Accessed 18 Oct 2021.
2. Sharma, Sandeep Kumar. Puneresearch.Com, 2021,
http://www.puneresearch.com/media/data/issues/56e5b49175
a6b.pdf.
3. Siegel, Kristi. Vmhughes.Weebly.Com, 2021,
http://vmhughes.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/4/8/4548166/literatu
re_through_a_feminist_lens.pdf.