2. Advocacy of equality of the sexes and the
establishment of the political, social, and
economic rights of the female sex; the
movement associated with this (Oxford
English Dictionary)
3. First Wave: political, ends in 1920 when
women got the vote
Second Wave: cultural and political, 1960s
feminist movement
essentialist vs. constructivist arguments
Third Wave: 1980s & 90s international
movement
4. 1960’s & 70’s : critique of representations of
women in male-authored texts
1970’s & 80’s: expanding the canon &
recovering of texts by women
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” & Zora
Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Gilbert & Gubar’s Madwoman in the Attic (1979)
1990’s – Present: women & agency
5. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists
from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1977.
Three phases:
Feminine: 1840-80 women writing like men
Feminist: 1880-1920 women advocating for their rights
Female: 1920-present women examining biological,
linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural differences
Gynocriticism: women need to study writing
by women, their “mothers”
6. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
“anxiety of influence”: Bloom’s patriarchal model in
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973)
doesn’t fit woman writer’s experience:
Precursors are male
Models as written are angel/demon stereotypes
“anxiety of authorship”: fear of writing at all
women taught to be self effacing
female authors as madwomen hiding from
publication
7. Essentialist
gender reflects a natural difference between men
and women that is as much psychological, even
linguistic, as it is biological
Constructivist
accepting of the idea that gender is made by
culture in history
8. “An analysis of gender that ‘ignores’ race, class,
nationality, and sexuality is one that assumes a
white, middle-class, heterosexual woman
inclined toward motherhood as the subject of
feminism; only by questioning the status of the
subject of feminism – ‘woman’ – does a
feminist criticism avoid replicating the
masculinist cultural error of taking the
dominant for the universal” (765).
9. Womanism is a feminist term coined by Alice
Walker
It is a reaction to the realization that feminism
does not fully encompass the perspectives of
black women
A Womanist is a woman who loves women and
appreciates women’s culture and power as
something that is incorporated into the world
as a whole
10. Addresses the racist and classist aspects of
white feminism and actively opposes separatist
ideologies
It includes the word “man”, recognizing that
black men are an integral part of black
women’s lives as their children, lovers, and
family members
11. Accounts for the ways in which black women
support and empower black men
Serves as a tool for understanding the Black
woman’s relationship to men as different from
the white woman’s due to a shared history of
racial oppression
Used as a means for analyzing black women’s
literature, as it marks the place where race,
class, gender, and sexuality intersect
12. A philosophy that advocates living in sexual
and social equality and in harmony with nature
Humans should reject current male-
dominated, warlike cultures and return to the
egalitarian societal model of the past –the true
path of human cultural evolution
Humans must rediscover and reaffirm the
ancient Mother Goddess, who represents the
feminine aspect of the divine and the union of
nature and spirituality
13. Most people assume that the only alternative
to patriarchy is matriarchies – in other words,
if men do not dominate women, then women
must dominate men – this is a dominator
society worldview
The real alternative to patriarchy is not
matriarchy which is only the other side of the
dominator coin
The alternative is a Partnership Society
14. 1. Rethink the canon—the accepted
“greats” of all-time—to include women
authors, poets, directors, actors
2. Examine representations of women in
literature and film by male and female
authors & moviemakers
15. 3. Challenge representations of women
as “other,” as “lack,” as part of “nature”
(whereas men are part of “culture” and
better than “natural” or “emotional”)
4. Raise the question of whether men and
women are “essentially” different because
of biology, or are socially constructed as
different (subjugating women as “worse”
than men in the important ways)
16. 1. Are there “natural” roles men and women fill?
2. To what extent are our roles created by culture?
Nature vs. nurture
3. Who puts limitations on genders?
4. Who grants privileges to a gender?
5. Examines these two statements:
A “woman” is/has ______________ (adjective, image, trait, ability…)
A “man” is/has _______________ (adjective, image, trait, ability…)
6. Should we scrap our created gender roles and
stereotypes?
7. How does a creator’s gender affect a piece?
8. What are the social expectations of men and women in
this piece?
9. Are the social norms different for men and women?
10. How does society value men and women differently?
What about men is valued? What about women is valued?
17. Essential Questions:
How does gender matter/function in this
piece?
How are women portrayed/depicted in this
piece?
This lens helps examine how gender is a
factor in a piece - the main focus is on
how women are portrayed, how they
function, behave, are limited/privileged
for being women - however, also
examines how maleness defines roles &
limits men.
Literary Theory Anthology page 766
Constructionist: accepting of the idea that gender is made by culture in history
Essentialist: gender reflects a natural difference between men and women that is as much psychological, even linguistic, as it is biological
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
Addressed 19th & early 20th century hysteria or invalidism in women
S. Weir Mitchell in epigraph was Gilman’s doctor
Virginia Woolf
A Room of One’s Own. 1929. New York: Harcourt, 1981.
“[W]e think back through our mothers if we are women” (79).
“Shakespeare’s Sister”
A woman needs a room of her own
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex. 1949. Trans. H.M. Parshley, New York: Vintage, 1974.
Challenges essentialist concepts of womanhood: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one” (301).
Women represented as either Mary or Eve.
See Part 8 Chapter 5 of Literary Theory an Anthology
enculturation of women debilitating
“no natural group ‘women’” (2015)
“myth of woman”; links oppression of women with that of blacks as an “imaginary formation.”
Women are a class & must struggle as a class
See Opposing Viewpoints: Constructing a Life Philosophy Viewpoint 7 of Chapter 3
Riane Eisler is the author of the international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade and the cofounder of the Center for Partnership Studies, a research and educational center in Pacific Grove, California. In her works Eisler reinterprets ancient history and modern archeological findings to support ecofeminism
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Ecofeminism.html
Constructing a Life Philosophy pages 125-126 and see page 767 in Theory Anthology