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Feminism and Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism is a result of 1960s women's movement. It began in United States as
Women’s Rights Movement. This movement demanded equal rights and opportunities for
women in education, work place, politics and voting rights.
According to Toril Moi:
Female: matter of biology
Feminist: Political position
Feminine: A set of culturally defined characteristics.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) - Mary Wollstonecraft
Women and Labour (1911) - Olive Schreiner
A Room of one's own (1929) - Virginia Woolf
The Second Sex (1949)- Simone de Beauvoir
The Subjection of Women (1869) - John Stuart Mill
The Origin of Family (1884) - Friedrich Engels
These are some of the feminist works of both male and female writers.
Feminist criticism realises that in 19th-century fiction very few women work for a
living unless under dire necessity. The action is just focused on a choice
o f a marriage partner. Feminist criticism in 1970 started exposing the mechanics of
patriarchy – the cultural “ m i n d s e t ” i n m e n . T h e f e m i n i s t c r i t i c i s m f o c u s e d
o n criticising books written by male writers.
Feminist Criticism in 1980’s showed changes in the feminist literary perspective. Firstly,
Feminist Criticism became more eclectic. It began to draw upon the findings and approaches
from other kinds of criticism – Marxism, structuralism, linguistics and so on. Secondly, it
focused on exploring the nature of the female world instead of attacking male versions of the
world. It began to reconstruct the lost or suppressed records of female experience.
Elaine Showalter said that the change in the late 1970s was a shift of
a t t e n t i o n f r o m “androtexts” (written by men) to “gynotexts” (written by women). She also
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coined the term “gynocritics” = study of gynotexts. Showalter categorizes different phases in
women’s writing throughout the history.
Feminine phase (1840-80)
It is when the women writers imitated dominant male artistic norms and aesthetic standards.
Feminist phase (1880 – 1920)
It is a phase in which radical and often separatist positions are maintained.
Female phase (1920 onwards)
Female phase focused particularly at female writing and female experience.
Debates and disagreements in feminist criticism since the 1970’s focused on three particular
areas:
1. The Role of Theory
2. The Nature of Language
3. The value of Psychoanalysis
Feminist Criticism and the role of theory: There was a conflict as to what type of theory that
feminist criticism should highlight.
Anglo American Feminism
-has tended to be more skeptical about recent critical theory.
-interest in traditional critical concepts like theme, motifs and characterization.
Some of Anglo-American Feminists are:
Elaine Showalter
Sandra Gilbert
Patricia Stubbs
Rachel Brownstein
English feminist criticism:
is distinctly different from American.
It is socialist feminist in its approach
It is associated with cultural materialism and Marxism.
Major English Feminist Works are:
Consuming fiction (1987) Terry Lovell
Victorian writing and working Women (1985) Julia Swindell
Sea changes: Culture and feminism (1986) Cora Kaplan
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John Milton: Language, Gender, Power (1988)
Anglo-American Feminist criticism appeared in 1970s, the British Socialist feminist works
appeared in1980s.
French Feminism:
They adopted and adapted various critical theories like post-structuralism and psycho-analytic
criticism. It is clearly theoretical. It takes the perceptions of major post-structuralists, especially
Lacan, Faucault and Derrida. French feminism’s prime concern is Language and psychology.
The literary text is never a representation of reality or of personal experience.
Major French Feminists:
Julia Kristeva – 1974 – Women can never be Defined
Helene Cixus – The Laugh of the Medusa
Language – Feminine or Masculine
Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own states language if gendered. Jane Austen tried to
reject men’s language and devised language for her own use. Language needs to be a medium to
express one’s thought and feeling. It should be free from bias. But the language is constructed
by men to express their views alone.
Dale Spender in Man Made Language (1981) highlights that language is not a neutral
medium. He says that language is influenced by patriarchal domination.
Ecriture Feminine:
French theorists have proposed Ecriture Feminine. It was coined by the French theorist Helene
Cixous in her work “The Laugh of the Medusa”. The word “ecriture” means “writing” in
French.
Julia Kristeva has mentioned two different aspects of language in her essay “The System and
the Speaking Subject”. One is symbolic aspect and the other is Semiotic aspect. The symbolic
aspect is associated with authority, order, repression and control. This aspect reminds us of the
structuralists who insist in orderly strict structures. The Semiotic aspect is characterized not by
order and logic. It is linked with the maternal rather than the paternal. Kristeva sees Semiotic as
the language of poetry as opposed to prose.
Feminist Criticism and Psychoanalysis:
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Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics in 1969 condemns Sigmund Freud as a prime source of the
patriarchal attitude against which feminists must fight.
Freud defended:
Juliet Mitchells’ Psychoanalysis and Feminism in 1974 defends Freud by differentiating
between sex and gender.
Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) writes “one is not born a woman; rather, one
becomes a woman”.
