Feminist criticism aims to advocate for equal rights and representation of women in society and literature. It examines how patriarchal systems have historically marginalized and misrepresented women. Early feminist critics in the 19th century like Wollstonecraft argued women deserve equal education and opportunities. In the 1960s-70s, feminist criticism emerged as a lens to analyze literature's portrayal of gender. Critics explore common archetypes used in works like the virgin, mother, and whore that reduce women. The field continues to diversify with no single approach, working to incorporate more female authors and perspectives.

1. Feminist Criticism
by: Juvy Darian Lao-ing
MA English

3. Feminine-[fem’i-nin] adj. pertaining to
women; womanly; womanish; (gram) of
that gender to which words denoting
females belong.- adv. Fem’ininely.-ns
fem’inism, the movement to win political,
economic and social equality for women;
fem’inist, supporter of feminism;
femininity, the quality of being feminine. [L
femina, woman.]

4. Critic[krit’ik] n one who appraises literary or
artistic work; a faultfinder, adj.critical, relating
to criticism; discriminating; captions; at or
relating to a turning point, transition, or crisis;
decisive.- adv. Crit’ically.-n criti’icalness.- vt
crit’icize, to pass judgment on; to censure, -ns
crit’icism, the art of judging, esp. in literature or
the fine arts; a critical judgment or observation;
critique [kri-tek’], a critical examination of any
production, a review. [Gr kritikos- krinein, to
judge.]

5. When a school of literary criticism is still evolving,
trying to make a definitive explanation of it can be a
perilous undertaking. Feminist criticism, for example,
is difficult to define because it has not yet been
codified into a single critical perspective. Instead, its
several shapes and directions vary from one country
to another. The premise that unites those who call
themselves feminist critics is the assumption that
Western culture is fundamentally patriarchal, creating
an imbalance of power that marginalizes women and
their work. (Ann B. Dobie. Theory into Practice)

6. Feminist Criticism- A criticism advocating
equal rights for women in a political,
economic, social, psychological, personal
and aesthetic sense: (by Greig E Henderson
and Christopher Brown)
-comes in many forms, and
feminist critics have a variety of goals.
Some have been interested in
rediscovering the works of women writers
overlooked by a masculine dominated
culture. (Feminist Criticism and Jane Eyre)

7. Feminist Criticism- generally assumes, like
reader response criticism, that a literary work is
shaped by our reading of it, and this reading is
influenced by our own status, which includes
significantly gender, or our attitude toward
gender. But, as feminist point out, since the
production and reception of literature has been
controlled largely by men, the role of gender in
reading and writing has been slighted. The
interest and achievements of half of the human
race have been neglected-or appreciated largely
from only one sex’s point of view. (Steven Lynn)

8. Historical Background (Ann B. Dobie,
Theory Into Practice, an introduction to
literary criticism.)
-Although the feminist movement
stretches back into the nineteenth century,
the modern attempt to look at literature
through a feminist lens began to develop in
the early 1960’s. For centuries Western
culture had operated on the assumption
that women were inferior creatures.

9. Aristotle to Darwin-(leading
thinkers) reiterated that women
were lesser beings, and one
does not have to look hard to
find comments from writers,
theologians and other public
figures that disparage and
degrade women.

10. John Chrysostom (345-407 AD)- a
Greek ecclesiast called women “a
foe to friendship, an inscapable
punishment, a necessary evil,” and
Ecclesiasticus ( a book of the
Apocrypha) states, “All wickedness
is but little to the wickedness of a
woman.”

11. Roman Theologian Tertullian (c. 160-230
AD.) lectured women: “The judgment of
God upon your sex endures even today;
and with it inevitably endures your position
of criminal at the bar of justice. You are the
gateway to the devil.”
-even the book of genesis blames Eve
for the loss of paradise. Revered writers of
later ages have been equally ungenerous in
their descriptions of the nature of women.

12. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) asserted,”
Most women have no character at all,”
John Keats (1795-1821) explained,” The
opinion, I have of the generality of
women- who appear to me as children
to whom I would rather give a sugar
plum than my time, forms a barrier
against matrimony which I rejoice in.”

13. Women who accepted their lesser status
Madame de Stael- French writer is said to have
commented.”I am glad that I am not a man, as I
should be obliged to marry a woman.
Jane Austen, advised, ”A woman, especially, if she
have the misfortune of knowing anything, should
conceal it as well as she can,”
Mae West- put it, “Brains are an asset, if you hide
them,” women are staple of jokes too, too.
James Thurber, an often quoted misogynist, once
commented for example, “women’s place is in the
wrong,”

14. Feminist Critics note the following:
(Liana Cote – Montminy, Slide Share)
Women are traditionally
represented by one of the following
figures (archetypes):
A slave
A prostitute
A virgin
A prize

15. A Slave
-the slave need not be a literal
slave but just a woman who must serve
her man.
-the stereotypical housewife who is
a “slave” to her family, overworked and
underappreciated, is an example of this
traditional representation of women.

16. A Prostitute
-Mary Magdalene is a good example of
how the prostitute figure is an incorrect
representation of women.
-Mary is traditionally told to be
prostitute who changes her way and follow
Jesus.
-history now suggests a very different
story: That Mary was merely a wealthy
widow who was benefactor and believer.

17. A Virgin
-society often labels women
either virgin or prostitute
-check out every teen movie
where female characters are
classified either the “good” girl or
the “bad” girl rather than having
any character development.(ex. The
American Pie)

18. A Prize
-every story where a
boyfriend, to win a girl’s heart
contain this idea.
-the short story “araby” by
James Joyce contains the
female “prize”.

19. Historical Background/Early Feminism
-In the late eighteenth century, one of the
earliest feminist writings is Mary Wollstonecraft’s
(1792) A vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which
she depicted women as an oppressed class regardless
of social hierarchy. She argued for women to be “duly
prepared by education to be the companions of men”
and called for the members of her sex to take charge
of their lives by recognizing that their abilities were
equal to those of men, to define their identities for
themselves and to carve out their own roles in
society.

20. John Stuart Mill’s- essay on the
subjection of women (1869) is a
defense of gender equality in
which he attacks the idea that
women are incapable of doing
things that men can do, and
should therefore, be forbidden
from doing them.(slide share)

21. Virginia Woolf (1929) best known as a writer of lyrical
and somewhat experimental novels called, A room of
One’s Own, it questioned why women appear so
seldom in history. Woolf pointed out that poems and
stories are full of their depictions, but in real life they
hardly seem to have existed. They are absent. In the
chapter entitled “Shakespear’s Sister,” she pondered
what would have happened to a gifted female writer
in the Renaissance. Without an adequate education
or a room of her own,” She concluded that whatever
she had written would have been twisted and
deformed issuing from a strained and morbid
imagination.

22. Wollstonecraft and Woolf- stand
out as eloquent spokespersons for
women. Along with them are many
others whose names are less well
known but whose efforts have been
important to the development of
women’s history, both social and
literary.

23. Elaine Showalter- is said to discover
some of the history and has been
traced by her, who divided it into
three phases, which she called;
The feminine phase (1840-1880)
The feminist phase (1880-1920)
The female phase (1920-present)

24. In the first phase- female writers imitated
the literary tradition established by men,
taking additional care to avoid offensive
language subject matter. Novelist such as
Charlotte Bronte and Mary Ann Evans
wrote in the forms and styles of recognized
writers, all of whom were male. Sometimes
female writers even used men’s name
(Currer Bell and George Eliot, for ex.) to
hide their female authorship.

25. In the second phase- according to
showalter, protested their lack of rights and
worked to secure them. In the political
realm, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and others pushed to secure
equality under the law, and some of the
more radical feminists envisioned separate
female utopias. In the literary world they
denied the unjust depictions of women by
male writers.

26. In the third phase- at its beginning concentrated on
exploring the female experience in art and literature.
For female writers this meant turning to their own
lives for subjects. It also meant that the delicacy of
expression that had typified women’s writing began
to crumble as a new frankness regarding sexuality
emerged. For feminist critics it meant looking at the
depiction of women in male text in an effort to reveal
the misogyny (negative attitudes toward women)
lurking there. These latest efforts Showalter refers to
as gynocriticism, a movement that examines the
distinctive characteristics of the female experience, in
contrast to the earlier methods that explained the
female by using male models.

27. During the third period, a host of important
spokespersons have raised public awareness of
issues surrounding women’s right, Simone de
Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) argued that
French culture and western societies in general
are patriarchal. In them it is the males who
define what it means to be humans. Lacking her
own history, the female is always secondary or
non-existent. Beauvoir believed that women are
not born inferior but made to be so. She called
for women to break out of being the “other”
and realize their possibilities.

28. Showalter- acknowledges that
today there is no single strand of
feminism or feminist criticism, no
single feminist approach to the
study of literature, but there do
seem to be some similarities among
feminists in particular countries.

29. American feminism- which has its stronghold in
academia, has worked to add text by female writers to
the canon. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, authors
of The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) have been
influential in American feminist criticism, calling for a
recognition that the male writers have too long
stereotyped women as either “the angel in the
house” (the woman who lives to care for husband)
and “the madwoman in the attic,” the woman who
chooses not to be the angel. They call for the writing
by women, even a woman’s sentence,that will more
accurately capture the complexity of women’s lives
and nature.

30. French Feminists- are primarily psychoanalytic. For
their theoretical basis they have turned to their fellow
countryman Jacques Lacan. They are consequently
concerned with the language particularly with how
women in the Symbolic Order (a phase of
development) are socialized into accepting the
language (and law) of the father and thereby made
inferior. Helene Cixous goes so far as to assert that
there is a particular kind of writing by women that she
calls l’ecriture feminine. It has as it source the
wholeness of Jacques Lacan’s Imaginary Order, the
prelinguistic domain of the female that is
characterized by freedom from laws and a sense of
“other”.

31. British Feminists- according to Showalter,
generally take the Marxist position. Protesting
the exploitation of women in life and literature,
which they view as connected by virtue of being
parts of the material world, the British feminist
critics work to change the economic and social
status of women. They analyze relationships
between gender and class, showing how power
structures, which are male dominated,
influence society and oppress women. Like
Marxist in general, they see literature as a tool
by which society itself can be reformed.

32. All three groups are
gynocentric, trying to find
ways to define the female
experience, expose
patriarchy and save women
from being the “other”.

33. 10 of the Most Powerful Female
Characters in Literature

34. One of the earliest representations of an individualistic, passionate and complex
female character, Jane Eyre knocks our socks off. Though she suffers greatly, she always
relies on herself to get back on her feet — no wilting damsel in distress here. As China
Miéville wrote, “Charlotte Brontë’s heroine towers over those around her, morally,
intellectually and aesthetically; she’s completely admirable and compelling. Never
camp, despite her Gothic surrounds, she takes a scalpel to the skin of the every day.”
Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre

35. In the Harry Potter books, Hermione starts as an insufferable know-it-all, blossoms into
a whip-smart beauty who doesn’t suffer fools (except Ron), and ends up as the glue
that holds the whole operation together. Hermione’s steadfastness and sheer
intelligence (plus the fact that she’s the only one who has ever read Hogwarts: A
History) save her two best friends time and time again, and she’s the only one of the
three never to wholly break down in a crisis. Intelligence often translates into strength,
but only when wielded by a steady hand — and Hermione just happens to have both,
and compassion to boot. That’s our kind of girl.
Hermione Granger, the Harry Potter series

36. Chaucer didn’t mean to make the Wife of Bath as big of a character as he did. Early
drafts show that her role was meant to be much smaller and more one-dimensional,
but somewhere along the line, Chaucer became enamored of his female creation, and
eventually her prologue ended up twice as long as her tale. The Wife of Bath is lewd
and lascivious — but behind all the dirty jokes, she’s making an argument for female
dominance and a woman’s right to control her body, using her considerable rhetorical
skill to simultaneously underscore and attack the anti-feminist traditions of the time.
Not too shabby for 14th century literature.
The Wife of Bath, The Canterbury Tales

37. Sure, Katniss annoys us to no end with all her boy-related waffling and wailing, but any
girl who can shoot like that deserves a place on this list. Not to mention the fact that
she survived not one but two 24-person fights to the death, one of which was
designed specifically to kill her. We’re just saying.
Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games trilogy

38. Though Hester Prynne, who is condemned by her Puritan neighbors for having a child
out of wedlock, is sometimes seen as a victim, she manages to survive with dignity and
faith throughout, which we think makes her pretty darn powerful. NPR has described
her as being “among the first and most important female protagonists in American
literature. She’s the embodiment of deep contradictions: bad and beautiful, holy and
sinful, conventional and radical… [she] can be seen as Hawthorne’s literary
contemplation of what happens when women break cultural bounds and gain personal
power.”
Hester Prynne, The Scarlet Letter

39. Though Tolkien’s novels aren’t exactly known for their female protagonists, who could
be more powerful than the woman who killed the Witch-king of Angmar? A
shieldmaiden who is itching to defend her countrymen from the first minute we see
her, Éowyn disguises herself as a man to follow her friends into battle. Bad guys should
be careful making statements like “No living man can kill me” when they’re fighting
ladies.
Éowyn, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

40. Not only is she the instrumental piece in a literally cosmic war, the unruly and
headstrong Lyra, who is twelve years old at the beginning of the trilogy, can do
something no one else can: read the alethiometer, which tells her the truth of the
present and future. She wins the hearts of those around her through her strong
convictions, and earns the name “Silvertongue” after using her wits to fool the
unfoolable. After all, words are the most powerful weapons of all.
Lyra Silvertongue, His Dark Materials trilogy

41. A remarkably independent woman, Janie Crawford’s strength is in her ability to keep
on going, no matter what her life throws at her, and to uphold her dignity throughout.
She challenges the conventions of who should love whom and what leads to a happy
life, her experience leading her on a journey towards an acute self-realization.
Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God

42. Though you may know Mulan best from the Disney film, she was originally imagined in
the 6th century Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan and has since been reinterpreted
in various literary and non-literary forms. Unlike in the Disney version, which features a
bumbling girl trying to be a soldier, the traditional figure is a totally bad-ass seventeen
year old, already a martial arts and weapons expert — just things she picked up on the
side because she was too smart to be totally happy with her life of weaving. She goes
to war in place of her father, wins all over the place, and then comes home and returns
to her normal life. No big deal.
Hua Mulan, The Ballad of Mulan

43. The powerful female protagonist of the hour is also one of the strongest women on
this list. A world class computer hacker with a photographic memory, she’s also the
survivor of an abusive childhood, which makes her a fiercely anti-social heroine with a
violent streak. Characterized by many as a “feminist avenging angel,” Lisbeth’s brutality
is nothing to aspire to — but she sure gets the job done.
Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series

44. Anti Violence Against Women and Children
Women in the Philippine are Protected by this Law…
RA 9662

45. Philippine Laws and VAWC
The Philippines has a number of laws that can
be used to deal with VAWC. Specifically, it has
the Anti-VAWC Law, which was passed in 2004,
the Anti-Rape Law, and the Law Protecting
Children from Abuse and Exploitation. The Anti-
Rape Law, lauded internationally for its
provisions on marital rape, and for describing
rape as a crime against person rather than as a
crime of chastity.

46. Anti VAWC Law (RA 9262) (excerpted from a manual on
RA 9262 prepared by SALIGAN and module prepared by DMC-
WCPU)
The laws seek to address widespread
acts of violence directed against
women and children, which acts clearly
violate their fundamental human rights
and several international human rights
instruments – for which the Philippine
is a signatory.

47. Under this law, VAWC is defined as:
A. Any act or series of acts committed by any PERSON against:
1. a woman who may be the wife/former wife, or with
whom the abuser has or had a sexual/dating
relationship, or with whom the abuser has a common
child; or
2. the woman’s child, whether legitimate or illegitimate.
B. The acts are committed within or outside the family
residence.
C. The acts result in physical, sexual, psychological harm or
suffering, economic abuse, threats of such acts, battery,
assault, coercion, harassment or deprivation of liberty.

48. The Crime of violence against women is committed
through the following acts.
A. Causing physical harm to the woman or
her child.
B. Threatening to cause the woman or her
child physical harm.
C. Attempting to cause the woman or her
child physical harm.
D. Placing the woman or her child in fear of
imminent physical harm.

49. E. Attempting to compel or compelling the woman or
her child to engage in conduct which the woman
or her child has the right to desist from or to
desist from conduct which the woman or her child
has the right to engage in, or attempting to
restrict or restricting the woman’s or her child’s
freedom of movement or conduct by force or
threat of force, physical, or other harm or threat
of physical or other harm, or intimidation directed
against the woman or her child.
F. Inflicting or threatening to inflict physical harm on
oneself for the purpose of controlling her actions
or decisions.

50. G. Causing or attempting to cause the woman or her child to
engage in any sexual activity which does not constitute
rape, by force or threat of force, physical harm, or
through intimidation directed against the woman or her
child or her/his immediate family Engaging in purposeful,
knowing, or reckless conduct, personally or through
another, that alarms or causes substantial emotional or
psychological distress to the woman or her child.
H. Causing mental or emotional anguish, public ridicule or
humiliation to the woman or her child, including, but not
limited to repeated verbal and emotional abuse and
denial or financial support or custody of minor children or
denial of access to the woman’s child/children.

51. `
End…..