This document discusses the history and development of feminism and feminist literary criticism. It outlines how traditional gender roles portrayed women as emotional, weak, nurturing and submissive while men were seen as rational, strong, protective and decisive. Early feminist thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft argued women should have equal rights. Later authors like Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir examined how patriarchal societies define women in relation to men. The document also discusses the work of feminist critics like Elaine Showalter who argued for a feminist literary criticism focused on examining women's writing through a female framework. It provides examples of genres and historical periods feminist criticism has been applied to.

1. By:
Deepika Tripathi

2. What is “FEMINISM”??
The doctrine — and the
political movement based on it
— that women should have
the same economic, social, and
political rights as men.
Examines ways in which
literature reinforces or
undermines the oppression
of women.

3. TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLESTRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES::
• Emotional (irrational)Emotional (irrational)
• WeakWeak
• NurturingNurturing
• SubmissiveSubmissive
Any culture that privileges men by
promoting traditional gender roles.
““PatriarchyPatriarchy””
• RationalRational
• StrongStrong
• ProtectiveProtective
• DecisiveDecisive

4. •Men have oppressed women
•De-voiced, devalued, and
trivialized the women
•Nonsignificant “Other”

5. Aristotle:
“The man is by nature superior,
and the female inferior; and the
one rules and the other is ruled.”
Darwin (The Descent of Man – 1871)
•“Women are of a characteristic of … a past
and lower state of civilization.”
•Are inferior to men, who are physically,
intellectually, and artistically superior
Religious leaders: Thomas Aquinas and
St. Augustine
•women were merely “imperfect men”
•Spiritually weak creatures
•Possessed a sensual nature that lures men
away from spiritual truths, thereby preventing
males from attaining their spiritual potential.

6. 1900
•Women gained the right to vote
•Women became prominent activists in the social issues of the day
Health care
Education
Politics
Literature
1700
Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
•Women must stand up for their rights and not allow
their male-dominated society to define what it means
to be a woman.
•Women must take the lead and articulate who they
are and what role they will play in society.
•Women must reject patriarchal assumption that
women are inferior to men.

7.  VIRGINIA WOOLF:
A Room of one’s Own (1929)
Hypothesizes the existence of Shakespeare’s
sister, equally as gifted a writer as he.
Gender prevents her from having “a room of
her own”
She cannot obtain an education or find
profitable employment because she is a
“woman”
Her innate artistic talents will therefore
never flourish, for she cannot afford a room of
her own.

8. Simone de Beauvior
The Second Sex (1949)
“Foundational work of 20th
century feminism”
•Declares that French society (and Western societies in general) are
PATRIARCHAL, controlled by males.
•Like Woolf, believed that the male defines what it means to be human
•Since the female is not the male, she becomes the Other
Kate Millet
Sexual Politics (1970)
•Women and men (consciously and unconsciously) conform to the
cultural ideas established for them by society.
•Cultural norms and expectations are transmitted through media:
television, movies, songs, and literature.
•Boys must be aggressive, self-assertive
•Girls must be passive, meek

9. Elaine Showalter
A Literature of Their Own (1977)
Chronicles three historical or evolutionary
phases of female writing:
 Feminine phase (1840-1880)
(Wrote in an effort to equalize their
intellectual achievements with male culture-
Imitation)
 Feminist phase (1880-1920)
(Dramatise the ordeals of wronged
womanhood- Protest)
 Female phase (1970-present)
(Uncovering of misogyny in male texts-
neither imitation nor protest)

10. What is needed is a “feminist criticism”
that is genuinely women centered.
Coined term gynocritics or gynocriticism:
“Process of constructing a female framework for analysis of
women’s literature to develop new models based on the study of
female experience, rather than to adapt to male models and
theories.”
Subjects it deals with:
The history, style, themes, genres, and structures.
Asserts that most criticism of novels by women
focuses only on a few novelists recognized as
major figures:
•Jane Austen
•The Brontës
•George Eliot
•Virginia Woolf

11. GYNOCRITICISM has provided
critics with four models that
address the nature of women’s
writing:
•The biological
(How the female body marks itself upon the
text)
•The linguistic
(Concerns itself with the need for a
female discourse)
•The psychoanalytic
(Based on an analysis of the female
psyche and how such an analysis affects
the writing process)
•The cultural
(Investigates how the society in which
female authors work and functions
shapes women’s goals, responses, and
points of view)

12. By drawing attention to lesser
known writers, Showalter led the
way for other feministfeminist critics to
contribute to the reshaping of the
literary canon.
•Zora Neale Hurston
•Charlotte Perkins Gilman
•Kate Chopin
•Susan Glaspell
Genres
Autobiography / Autography / Autofiction
Perreault, Jeanne. Writing Selves: Contemporary Feminist Autography. Univ. of
Minnesota Press, 1995.
Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, ed. De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of
Gender in Women's Autobiography. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Detective / Crime Fiction
Munt, Sally. Murder By the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. Routledge, 1994.

13. Drama (Plays and Screenplays)
Bowen, Barbara E. Gender in the Theater of War: Shakespeare's Troilus and
Cressida. Garland Pub., 1993.
Burke, Sally. American Feminist Playwrights: A Critical History. Twayne Pub., 1996
Callaghan, Dympna, Lorraine Helms, and Jyotsna Singh. The Weyward Sisters:
Shakespeare and Feminist Politics. Blackwell Pub., 1994.
Gervitz, Susan. Narrative's Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy
Richardson. 1996.
Hodkinson, Yvonne. Female Parts: The Art and Politics of Women Playwrights. Paul
and Co. Pub. Consortium, 1991.
General
Kester-Shelton, Pamela, ed. Feminist Writers. St. James Press, 1996.
Lauret, Maria. Liberating Literature: Feminist Fiction in America. Routledge, 1994
.
Walker, Barbara G. Feminist Fairy Tales. Harper San Francisco, 1997.
Narrative
Singley, Carol J. and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, ed. Anxious Power: Reading,
Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women. SUNY Press, 1993.

14. Novels
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel.
Oxford Univ. Press, 1987.
Carlin, Deborah. Cather, Canon, and the Politics of Reading. 1992.
Castellanos, Gabriela. Laughter, War, and Feminism: Elements of Carnival in
Three of Jane Austen's Novels. Peter Lang Pub., 1994.
Doherty, Patricia. Marge Piercy: An Annotated Bibliography. 1997.
Dorscht, Susan Rudy. Women, Reading, Kroetsch: Telling the Difference. Wilfrid
Laurier Univ. Press, 1991.
Greene, Gayle. Changing the Story: Feminist Fiction and the Tradition. Indiana
Univ. Press, 1991.
Higonnet, Margaret R., ed. The Sense of Sex: Feminist Perspectives on Hardy.
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993.
Mandelker, Amy. Framing Anna Karenina: Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the
Victorian Novel. Ohio State Univ. Press, 1993.
Michael, Magali Cornier. Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse: Post-World War II
Fiction. 1996.
Payant, Katherine B. Becoming and Bonding: Contemporary Feminism and
Popular Fiction by American Women Writers. 1993.
Stern, Madeleine B., ed. The Feminist Alcott: Stories of a Woman's Power.
Northeastern Univ. Press, 1996.

15. Poetry
Cameron, Keith. Louise Labé: Renaissance Poet and Feminist. Berg Pub. Ltd., 1990.
Fountain, Gay and Peter Brazeau. Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral
Biography. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1996.
Freedman, Diane P. An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by American
Feminist Poet-Critics. 1992.
Hogue, Cynthia. Scheming Women: Poetry, Privilege, and the Politics of Subjectivity.
SUNY Press, 1998.
Markey, Janice. A New Tradition? The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and
Adrienne Rich: A Study of Feminism and Poetry. 1988.
Montefiore, Jan. Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Women's
Writing. 1994.
Sakelliou-Schultz, Liana. Feminist Criticism of American Women Poets: An
Annotated Bibliography, 1975-1993. Garland Pub., 1994.
Templeton, Alice. The Dream and the Dialogue: Adrienne Rich's Feminist Poetics.
Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1995.
Zwarg, Christina. Feminist Conversations: Fuller, Emerson, and the Play of Reading.
Cornell Univ. Press, 1995

16. Rhetoric
Campbell, JoAnn, ed. Toward a Feminist Rhetoric: The Writing of Gertrude Buck.
Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
Falco, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. Penn State
Univ. Press, 1996.
Science Fiction
Burwell, Jennifer. Notes on Nowhere: Feminism, Utopian Logic, and Social
Transformation. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Short Stories
Dyman, Jenni. Lurking Feminism: The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Peter Lang
Pub., 1996.
Utopian Literature
Bammer, Angelika. Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s.
Routledge, 1991.
Sargisson, Lucy. Contemporary Feminist Utopianism. Routledge, 1996.

17. Historical PeriodsHistorical Periods
Classical
Cohen, Beth, ed. The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's 'Odyssey'.
Oxford Univ. Press, 1995.
Doherty, Lillian Eileen. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the
Odyssey. Univ. of Michigan Press, 1995.
McManus, Barbara F. Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics. Twayne
Pub., 1997.
Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin. Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women.
Cornell Univ. Press, 1993.
Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkmin and Amy Richlin, ed. Feminist Theory and the Classics.
Routledge, 1993.
Wilson, Lyn Hatherly. Sappho's Sweetbitter Songs: Configurations of Female and
Male in Ancient Greek Lyric. Routledge, 1996.
Medieval
Evans, Ruth and Lesley Johnson. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature:
The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect. Routledge, 1994.
Lomperis, Linda and Sarah Stanbury, ed. Feminist Approaches to the Body in
Medieval Literature. 1993.

18. Modern:
Castellanos, Gabriela. Laughter, War, and Feminism: Elements of Carnival
in Three of Jane Austen's Novels. Peter Lang Pub., 1994.
Harman, Barbara Leah and Susan Meyer, ed. The New Nineteenth
Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction. Garland Pub.,
1996.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender
from Charlotte Smith to the Brontes. Penn State University Press, 1998.
Kranidis, Rita S. Subversive Discourse: The Cultural Production of Late
Victorian Feminist Novels. St. Martins Press, 1995.
Bammer, Angelika. Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s.
Routledge, 1991.
Birkett, Jennifer and Elizabeth Harvey, ed. Determined Women: Studies in
the Construction of the Female Subject, 1900-90. 1991.
Bowlby, Rachel. Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia
Woolf. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997.
Burke, Sally. American Feminist Playwrights: A Critical History. Twayne
Pub., 1996.
Freedman, Diane P. An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by
American Feminist Poet-Critics. Univ. Press of Virginia, 1992.
Gervitz, Susan. Narrative's Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy
Richardson. 1996.

19. AIMS OF A FEMINIST CRITIC:AIMS OF A FEMINIST CRITIC:
 Attempts to show the ignorance
of women in the traditional
literature.
 Stimulates the creation of a
critical environment.
 Expansion of the literary canon
of women writers.
 Urges language transformation.