Feminist criticism analyzes literature from a gendered perspective, highlighting the portrayal and experiences of women in contrast to male-centric narratives. It originated with Virginia Woolf’s insights in 'A Room of One’s Own' and has evolved to challenge traditional gender roles and the treatment of women by both male and female authors. Key themes include the representation of women as 'the other,' the criticism of patriarchy, and the reevaluation of texts written by women.

1. Paper no:7 Literary theory & criticism :2
Prepared by:Kavita .D. Mehta
Semester:2
Email Id:kavitamehta164@gmail.com
Enrollment no:2069108420170020
S.M.T S.B Gardi Department of English
Maharaja Krishnkumarsihji Bhavnagar
University

2.  Feminist criticism is a literary
form of criticism that gives
the perspective of writing
through a feminist
perspective. It is a political
form of literature that
analyzes the questions of
how male and females relate
to each other and the world,
the repression of women and
how women are portrayed in
literature.

3.  Feminist criticism is the literary and critical
theory that explores the based in favour of
the male gender in literature and which re-
examines all literature from a feminist point
of view.
 Feminist theory focuses on analyzing
gender inequality.

4.  Feminist criticism gives credit to Virginia Woolf’s “A
Room of One’s Own” analyzation of circumstances
unique to women writers as the beginning of
feminist criticism.
 One of the first examples of a major feminist
literary analysis is the focus of Petruchio’s
treatment of Katharina in William Shakespeare’s
“The Taming of the Shrew” in the late 1960s. The
feminist criticism school entitled Gynocriticism
followed in the late 1970s to solidify the existence
of feminist criticism.

5.  Patriarchy: any culture that privileges men by
promoting traditional gender roles.
 Traditional gender roles: cast man as rational ,
strong,protective,decisive,and
hetrosexual.Traditional cast woman as
emotional,week,nurturing and submissive.
 Ideology: dominant values, beliefs, ways of
thinking through which a culture understands
reality.
 The Other: Woman has often been categorized as
being “other”

6.  Re-discover texts written by woman
 Re-value woman’s experience
 Examine representations of woman in
literature
 Challenges the view of woman as “other”
 Examine the challenges patriarchal roles

7. 1. Woman presented in literature by male writers
from male point of view.
2. Woman presented in writing of female writer from
female point of view.

9.  Cinderella’s happiness
depends on man.
 After Cinderella’s father dies,
she is force to live with his
evil step sister.
 Cinderella lives in competition
with her step mother and step
sister and must vie for
attention of man.
 In order to attract the Prince
,she must impress him with
her look.
 The prince only knows her by
her beauty and the missing
glass slipper .