This document discusses the history and key concepts of feminism and its relationship to literature. It outlines some of the major texts in feminist literary theory published from the 18th century onward by authors like Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir. It also defines the terms "feminist", "female", and "feminine" and discusses how feminist literary criticism analyzes the representation of women in literature and its role in shaping social norms. Finally, it outlines Elaine Showalter's three phases of feminist approaches to literature from the 19th and 20th centuries.

1. Feminism
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2. Mary
Wollstonecraft:
A Vindication of
the Rights of
Women (1792)

3. “Woman and Labour”
by Olive Schreiner,
who is best
remembered for The
Story of an African
Farm.

4. Virginia Woolf: “A
Room of One’s
Own” (1929)

5. Simone de Beauvoir: “The
Second Sex” (1949)

6. John Stuart Mill: The
Subjection of Women
(1869)

7. Friedrich Engels:
“The Origin of
Family” (1884)

8. Toril Moi
Feminist: political
position
Female: a matter
of biology
Feminine: a set of
culturally defined
characteristics

9. Literature and Feminism:
1. Feminism has been ‘literary’ from the
very beginning itself as it realised the
significance of the images of women
promulgated by literature.
2. The representation of women in
literature is one of the most important
forms of ‘socialisation’, since it provided
the role models which indicated to
women, and men, what constituted
acceptable versions of the ‘feminine’ and
legitimate feminine goals and
aspirations.

10. Gynocriticism refers to a kind of criticism with
woman as writer/producer of textual meaning, as
against woman as reader (feminist critique).
(Elaine Showalter in Towards a Feminist
Poetics), for example, Patricia Meyer Spacks‘
The Female Imagination, Ellen Moers‘ Literary
Women, Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of their
Own and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The
Madwoman in the Attic.

11. Three phases of feminism: the
“feminine” 1840-80 (women writers
imitate men), the “feminist” 1880-1920
(women advocated minority rights and
protested), and the “female” 1920s (the
focus is now on women’s texts as
opposed to merely uncovering
misogyny in men’s texts). (Elaine
Showalter)