A Feminist Critical Approach to literary pieces

4. `A belief that women universally face
some form of oppression or
exploitation;
A commitment to uncover and
understand what causes and sustains
oppression;
A commitment to work individually
and collectively everyday life to end
all forms of oppression.

5. • In broad definition: it is women’s
movement in 1960s to struggle for
the equality of rights as social class.
• In literature: feminism is related to
the ways in understanding literary
works, in both production and
reception.

6. • Feminist critics analyze how literary
work is influenced by a male
dominated society.
• Feminists feel that authors look for
non-feminine objects or characters
and describe them as feminine to
belittle them and make woman look
bad (Brayton)

7. History of Feminism

8. First Wave Feminism
Second Wave Feminism
Third Wave Feminism

9. 1st: (Late 1700s – Early 1900s) Mary
Wollstonecraft highlights the
inequalities between the sexes.
Feminists were active in the women’s
suffrage movement, which lead to the
National Universal suffrage in 1920
First Wave Feminism

10. Women widely are considered to be:
• Intellectually inferior
• Physically weak
• Emotional, intuitive, irrational
• Suited to the role of wife and mother
• Women could not vote
• They were not educated at school/universities
and could only work in manual jobs.
• A married women’s property and salary were
owned by her husband
First Wave Feminism

11. 2nd: (Early 1960s – Late 1970s) There
are more equal conditions. N.O.W.
(National Organization for Women)
was formed for feminists in 1966.
Simone de Beauvoir and Elain
Showalter formed a basis for the
distribution of feminist theories.
Second Wave Feminism

12. • Women could attend school and university
• Women did not receive equal pay for the same
work
• It was easier to gain a divorce but socially frown
upon
• Rape and physically abuse within marriage were
illegal but husbands were rarely convicted
• Abortion was still illegal
• Women’s body were objectified in advertising
Second Wave Feminism

13. Basic assumptions:
• Society is Pathriarcal
• Women may have legal rights but
they are still treated as inferior.
• Women should be equal to men in all
respects.
Second Wave Feminism

14. • The second wave of feminism
which occured in 1960-1980,
came as a response to the
experiences of women after World
War II.
• It dealt with inequality of laws
and pioneered by Betty Friedan.
Second Wave Feminism

15. 3rd: (Early 1990s – Present) These
decades deepened the equality of
women, such as with a variety of
jobs women can have and a variety
of opportunities open to them.
Third Wave Feminism

16. Women are no longer obligated to marry or have
children, and marriage is more equal.
Third Wave Feminism
Women seem to be more equal to men
The legal system is better at protecting
women’s right.

17. • Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or
avoid what it seems the second wave's
"essentialist" definitions of femininity, which
often assumed a universal female identity and
over-emphasized the experiences of upper-
middle-class white women.
• Third-wave feminists such as Elle Green often
focus on "micro-politics", and challenge the
second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is
not, good for women.
Third Wave Feminism

18. • Third wave feminism was a continuation and
response to the perceive failures of the second
wave.
• The movement that called as young feminist
emphasizing collective action to effect changes
and embrace the diversity represented by
various feminisms.
• They focused on a multicultural emphasis and
strived to address problems stemming from
sexism, racism, social class inequality and
homophobia.
Third Wave Feminism

20. A type of literary criticism that
critiques how females are commonly
represented in texts, and how insufficient
these representations are as a categorizing
device. They focus on how femininity is
represented as being passive and emotional
– the “caregiver,” and the male is
associated with reason and action – the
“doer.”

21. Feminist Criticism
The feminist critique of literature
seeks to raise the consciousness about
the importance and unique nature of
women in literature, and to point out
how language has been used to
marginalize women.

22. Feminist Criticism Con’t
• Feminist scholars wish to consider women as
subjects, or points of interest to study.
• They do not want to categorize women as
“objects” as men often do.
• They want to question why male dominance is
the norm.
• Feminist approach to literary criticism main
concern: the ways in which literature
undermines the economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of women.
(McManus)

23. Feminist Criticism Con’t
Specifically, the feminist view attempts to:
1. Show that writers of traditional literature
have ignored women and have presented
misguided and prejudiced views of them
2. Create a critical landscape that reflects a
balanced view of the nature and value of
women

24. Feminist Criticism Con’t
• 3. Expand the literary canon by recovering
works of women of the past and publication
of contemporary female writers
• 4. Urge transformation in the language to
eliminate inequities and inequalities that
result from linguistic distortions such as
mankind (rather than humanity).

25. Feminist Critical Questions
1. To what extent does the representation of
women (and men) in the work reflect the time
and place in which the work was written?
2. How are the relationships between men and
women presented in the work?
3. Does the author present the work from
within a predominantly male or female
perspective?

26. Feminist Critical Questions
4 .How do the facts of the author’s life relate
to the presentation of men and women in the
work?
5. How do other works by the author
correspond to this one in their depiction of the
power relationships between men and
women?

27. How To Identify It
Typical questions literary critics with a
feminist approach ask:
 How is the relationship between men and
women portrayed?
 What are the power relationships between
men and women (or characters assuming
male/female roles)?
 How are male and female roles defined?

28. How To Identify It
 What constitutes masculinity and
femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 Do characters take on traits from opposite
genders? How so? How does this change
others’ reactions to them?” (Brizee and
Tompkins)

29. Types of Feminism
Radical Feminism
Liberal Feminism
Socialist Feminism

30. Radical Feminism
• Radical Feminism arose within the
second wave in the 1960s.
• RF focused on the theory of patriarchy as
a system of power.
• RF paid particular attention to oppression
based on sex and female bodily
disadvantage.

31. Socialist Feminism
A central concern of socialist
feminism therefore has been to
determine the ways in which the
institution of the family and women’s
domestic labour are structured by, and
reproduce the sexual division of
labour.

32. Liberal Feminism
• Liberal feminism aims to achieve equal
legal, political, and social rights for
women.
• It wishes to bring women equality into all
public institution and to extend the
creation of knowledge so that women’s
issues can no longer be ignored.

33. What are the ways to criticize
literature in the feminist approach?

34. Male Treatment of Women
Gynocriticism
Madwoman Thesis
French Feminism
Depictions of Women by
Men

35. Male Treatment of Women
• In this early stage of feminist criticism, critics
consider male novelists' demeaning treatment or
marginalisation of female characters. First wave
feminist criticism includes books like Marry
Ellman's Thinking About Women (1968) Kate
Millet's Sexual Politics (1969), and Germaine
Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970). An example of
first wave feminist literary analysis would be a
critique of William Shakespeare's Taming of the
Shrew for Petruchio's abuse of Katherina.

36. Madwoman Thesis
• suggests that because society forbade
women from expressing themselves
through creative outlets, their
creative powers were channeled into
psychologically self-destructive
behavior and subversive actions.

37. Gynocriticism
• Gynocriticism involves three major aspects. The first
is the examination of female writers and their place in
literary history. The second is the consideration of the
treatment of female characters in books by both male
and female writers. The third and most important
aspect of gynocriticism is the discovery and
exploration of a canon of literature written by
women; gynocriticism seeks to appropriate a female
literary tradition. In Showalter's A Literature of Their
Own, she proposes the following three phases of
women's writing:

38. 3 Phases
• The 'Feminine' Phase - in the feminine
phase, female writers tried to adhere to
male values, writing as men, and usually
did not enter into debate regarding
women's place in society. Female writers
often employed male pseudonyms during
this period.
• .

39. The 'Feminist' Phase -
in the feminist phase, the central
theme of works by female writers
was the criticism of the role of
women in society and the
oppression of women

40. The 'Female' Phase -
during the 'female' phase, women writers
were no longer trying to prove the
legitimacy of a woman's perspective.
Rather, it was assumed that the works of a
women writer were authentic and valid.
The female phase lacked the anger and
combative consciousness of the feminist
phase.

41. French Feminism
French Feminism, led by critics such as
Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixousx, and Luce
Irigaray, relies heavily on Freudian
psychology and the theory of penis envy .
French feminists postulate the existence
of a separate language belonging to
women that consists of loose, digressive
sentences written without use of the ego.

42. Depictions of Women by Men
Its when men portray a
woman-like character
 man dressing like a
woman