Feminist literary criticism examines how literature represents women and gender, and how patriarchal power structures influence literary works and their interpretation. It launched in the 20th century with works like Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics. Key ideas include that patriarchy oppresses women economically, politically, socially and psychologically through ideology, and defines women in opposition to male norms. Feminist criticism aims to promote gender equality by raising awareness of these issues in literature and representation.

1. Feminist Literary
Criticism

2. History
• Launched in the twentieth century with
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
(1929)
• 1969 Kate Millett examined how women are
represented in text by famous men in Sexual
Politics

3. Basic ideas
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist
criticism, there exist some areas of commonality.:
• Women are oppressed by patriarchy
economically, politically, socially, and psychologically;
patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they
are kept so
• In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other:
she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from
male norms and values
• All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted
in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal
of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world

4. Basic Ideas
• While biology determines our sex (male or
female), culture determines our gender
(masculine or feminine)
• All feminist activity, including feminist theory and
literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to
change the world by prompting gender equality
• Gender issues play a part in every aspect of
human production and experience, including the
production and experience of literature, whether
we are consciously aware of these issues or not.

5. Feminist critics examine
• How women write their own experiences and
representations
• How women read about themselves
• How to make feminist readings visible to
readers
• How women writers have fared in given eras
• How traditional texts by women are
subversive of the social order

6. Key terms
• Ideology: dominant values, beliefs, ways of
thinking through which a culture understands
reality
• Patriarchy: male dominated power structures
• Misogyny=hatred of women
• Misandry=hatred of men
• The Other: Woman has often been
categorized as being “other”

7. Strengths
• For centuries, women
in literature, the roles
of men and
women, and how they
were represented was
not a focus in literary
criticism

8. Weaknesses
•If this is the only
theory applied to a
text, it can be very
limiting