LITERARY CRITICAL THEORY:

VIEWING LITERATURE FROM VARIOUS

PERSPECTIVES - FEMINISTMs. Kym Mitchell

University High School

Feminist Criticism◦Critiques patriarchal (male dominated) language and literature by exposing how a work reflects masculine ideology

◦Examines gender politics in works and traces the subtle construction of masculinity and femininity

◦Examines the position, status and portrayal of females in the literary work

Feminist Criticism◦ Informed by the politics of feminism

◦ Interested in the political values and

implications of a text as they relate to

gender issues

◦Deconstructs old texts by asking new

questions (for example, why women are

presented a certain way)

◦Gender as a category of analysis

Look at fairytales & the way women are portrayed:

• Helpless

• Emotional

• Irrational

• Not very bright

• Unrealistic body proportions

• In need of men to save them

• Mostly white (European

standards of beauty)

• Long hair

• Thin

• Domestic

• Pretty girls are nice

• Mean girls in the form or witches

How to use Feminist Criticism

◦While reading

◦ note the way females are presented

◦ note language used to distinguish the

genders

◦ note the politics between genders

◦ note the status of women

◦Draw conclusions about the

representation of the genders

WOMEN’S RIGHTS &

FEMINIST CRITICISM

Brief Timeline Overview

◦ 1820 - 1880: Generally described as “the cult of domesticity,” women were largely assigned to domestic tasks and chores without receiving any recognition.

◦ 1844: Female textile workers in Massachusetts organize a labor movement for working women.

◦ 1848: Suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organize the first women’s right convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Many attendees sign the “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” which details the goals and issues of the women’s movement.

Timeline Continued

• 1872: Susan B. Anthony is arrested for trying to vote.

• 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment finally provides women the right to vote.

• 1941-1945: During WWII, women begin working in the factories now that to many men are fighting abroad.

• 1960s & 1970s: Emergence and crystallization of the Women’s Liberation movement and “Feminism” which endorse women’s increasing options beyond standard gender roles

Cult of Domesticity◦ True Women were to hold the four cardinal virtues:

◦ 1. Piety - believed to be more religious and spiritual than men

◦ 2. Purity - pure in heart, mind, and body

◦ 3. Submission - held in "perpetual childhood" where men dictated all actions and decisions

◦ 4. Domesticity - a division between work and home,

encouraged by the Industrial Revolution; men

went out in the world to earn a living, home

became the woman's domain where a wife

created a "haven in a heartless world" for her

husband and children.[1]

Roots of Feminism

◦Not until the early 1900s (Progressive Era) that the major roots of feminist criticism began to grow.◦ Women gained the right to vote

◦ Women became prominent activists in the social issues of the day◦ Health care

◦ Education

◦ Politics

◦ literature

Roots of Feminism

◦By not giving voice and value to

women’s opinions, responses, and

writings, men have therefore

suppressed the female, defined

what it means to be feminine, and

thereby de-voiced, devalued, and

trivialized what it means to be a

woman; and…

Roots of Feminism

◦…Men have made women the

“nonsignificant Other.”

History of Feminist Criticism

◦ Feminism in 1960s and 1970s

◦ Feminist critics began to examine the

traditional literary canon (a group of literary

works that are considered the most important

of a particular time period or place.)

◦ Stereotypes of women

◦ Sex maniacs

◦ Goddesses of beauty

◦ Mindless entities

◦ Jealous / Petty

◦ Old spinsters

Historical Roots of Feminism

◦According to feminist criticism, the roots of prejudice against women have long been embedded in Western culture.◦ Some say it originated with biblical narrative

where the fall of man is blamed on Eve, not Adam.

Feminism

◦ The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

◦Examines ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the oppression of women.◦ Economically

◦ Socially

◦ Politically

◦ Psychologically

Traditional Gender Roles

◦Patriarchy

◦ Any culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles.

◦Patriarchy is by definition sexist◦ It promotes the belief that women are innately inferior to

men

◦ “head of the tribe or family”

Traditional Gender Roles

◦ Men

◦Rational

◦ Strong

◦Protective

◦Decisive

◦Bread-winners

◦ Women

◦Emotional

(irrational)

◦Weak

◦Nurturing

◦ Submissive

◦Domestic

◦ Patriarchal gender roles are destructive for men as

well as women.

◦ Traditional gender roles dictate that men are supposed to

be strong:

◦ Physically powerful

◦ Emotionally stoic

◦ Men are not supposed to cry (considered a sign of weakness)

◦ Unmanly to show fear or pain

◦ Shouldn’t express sympathy for other men

◦ In a patriarchy, everything that

concerns men usually implies

something (usually negative) about

women.

◦All behaviors forbidden to men are

considered “womanish” (inferior,

beneath dignity of manhood)

◦ Men/boys who cry labeled as “sissies”

(cowardly, feminine)

◦Feminists don’t deny biological

differences

◦don’t agree that differences in

physical size, shape, and body

chemistry make men naturally

superior to women

◦more intelligent

◦more logical

◦better leaders

SEX: biological constitution as

female or male

GENDER: our cultural programming

as feminine or masculine

◦The inferior position long

occupied by women in a

patriarchal society has been

culturally, not biologically,

produced.

Goal of Feminism

◦Therefore, feminism’s goal is to

change these degrading views of

women so that all women will realize

they are not a “non-significant

Other” and will realize that each

woman is a valuable person

possessing the same privileges and

rights as every man.

Feminist Criticism

◦Asserts that most of our literature

presents a masculine-patriarchal

view in which the role of women

is negated or at best minimized.

Questions for Analysis – DON’T COPY

◦ Is the author male or female?

◦ Is the text narrated by a male or female?

◦ What types of roles do women have in the text?

◦ Are women marginalized?

◦ Are the female characters the protagonists or secondary and minor characters?

◦ Do any stereotypical characterizations of women appear?

◦ What ideas about the sexes is the author trying to reinforce?

◦ What are the attitudes toward women held by the male characters?

◦ What is the author’s attitude toward women in society?

◦ How does the author’s culture influence his or her attitude?

◦ Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the significance of such imagery?

◦ Do the female characters speak differently than do the male characters? In your investigation, compare the frequency of speech for the male characters to the frequency of speech for the female characters.

Questions Feminist Crit. Would Ask

The questions that follow are offered to summarize feminist approaches to literature. Approaches that attempt to develop a specifically female framework for the analysis of women’s writing (such as questions 6, 7, and 8) are often referred to as gynocriticism.

◦ 1. What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? How are women portrayed?◦ How do these portrayals relate to the gender issues of the

period in which the novel was written or is set? In other words, does the work reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology? (In the first case, we might say that the text has a patriarchal agenda. In the second case, we might say that the text has a feminist agenda. Texts that seem to both reinforce and undermine patriarchal ideology might be said to be ideologically conflicted.)

Questions Feminist Crit. Would Ask

◦ 2. What does the work suggest about the ways in which race, class, and/or other cultural factors intersect with gender in producing women’s experience?

◦ 3. How is the work “gendered”? That is, how does it seem to define femininity and masculinity? Does the characters’ behavior always conform to their assigned genders? Does the work suggest that there are genders other than feminine and masculine? What seems to be the work’s attitude toward the gender(s) it portrays? For example, does the work seem to accept, question, or reject the traditional view of gender?

Questions Feminist Crit. Would Ask

◦ 4. What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy and/or about the ways in which women’s situations in the world—economic, political, social, or psychological—might be improved?

◦ 5. What does the history of the work’s reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operations of patriarchy? Has the literary work been ignored or neglected in the past? Why? Or, if recognized in the past, is the work ignored or neglected now? Why?

Questions Feminist Crit. Would Ask

◦ 6. What does the work suggest about women’s creativity? In order to answer this question, biographical data about the author and historical data about the culture in which she lived will be required.

◦ 7. What might an examination of the author’s style contribute to the ongoing efforts to delineate a specifically feminine form of writing

◦ (for example, écriture feminine / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_f%C3%A9minine)?

◦ 8. What role does the work play in terms of women’s literary history and literary tradition?

Feminist Theory Key Terms –COPY THESE

• sociopolitical inequities

• patriarchal language / patriarchy

• masculine ideology

• gender politics

• traditional gender roles

• oppression

• subjugation

• psychological repression

• construction of masculinity and femininity

• positionings and marginalizationswithin works.

• marginalizing uses of traditional language (the presumptuousness of the pronoun "he," or occupational words such as "mailman")

◦ Marginalization - forced to the outskirts of what is considered socially and politically significant

•othering

•stylistic difference in women's writing: women tend to use reflexive constructions more than men (e.g., "She found herself crying")

• stereotypical representations of genders.

•Cult of Domesticity (Piety /Purity / Submission / Domesticity)

“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER”

BACKGROUND INFO

Biography

◦Though she is best known

for her short story “The

Yellow Wallpaper,”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

was a novelist, poet,

lecturer, social

commentator, and

journalist with a major

influence on countless

women past and present.

Biography

◦Born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, Gilman was the great-niece of 19th-century writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin).

◦After two of Gilman's siblings died, her mother was told not to have any other children.

◦Gilman's father soon left the family, perhaps from fear of killing his wife in childbirth.

Biography

◦ Gilman attended college, but dropped out and married artist Charles Walter Stetson.

◦ In 1885, the couple had a daughter named Katherine Beecher Stetson, but Gilman had

developed neurasthenia, an emotional disorder

characterized by fatigue and depression, now

known to be post-partum depression.

◦ Doctor Silas Weir Mitchell's unsuccessful prescription of a "rest cure" in 1887

prompted Gilman to write "The Yellow

Wallpaper," a harrowing tale of a

neurasthenic woman's growing insanity and

feminist awareness.

◦ Gilman later divorced her husband and earned a living by writing.

Biography

◦Gilman continued writing after her

happy remarriage to her cousin

George Houghton Gilman in 1900.

◦In 1932, she learned she had

incurable breast cancer.

◦Wanting to be in charge of her own

death, she committed suicide with

an overdose of chloroform on

August 17, 1935.

Setting: Victorian EraLate 1880s

◦A woman’s role = wife and mother

◦Women could not vote or own

property

◦Women were to be “pure, pious,

domestic and

submissive.”

Queen Victoria

1819 - 1901

Victorian Era

◦The Feminist movement had just begun as a radical, fringe ideology, largely dismissed by the mainstream.

◦Women could not live on their own; their husbands or fathers served as their guardians

Victorian Women:

◦Queen Victoria herself said: "I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety.

◦ Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to 'unsex' themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beingsand would surely perish without male protection."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Not a ‘typical’ Victorian lady

◦Gilman believed in women’s rights

◦Gilman believed that women must exercise their intellect or go mad

◦The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, was set in the Victorian era, and the story’s theme was contrary to the established beliefs of the period.

The Yellow Wallpaper – Rest Cure

◦ Silas Weir Mitchel, inventor of the rest

cure.

◦ Influential American neurologist Silas

Weir Mitchell developed the rest cure in

the late 1800s for the treatment of

hysteria, neurasthenia and other

nervous illnesses. It became widely

used in the US and UK, but was

prescribed more often for women than

men.

Rest Cure

◦ It was frequently used to treat anorexia nervosa.

The treatment kept some patients alive and

others out of asylums, though some patients and

doctors considered the cure worse than the

disease.

◦ The rest cure usually lasted six to eight weeks. It

involved isolation from friends and family. It also

enforced bed rest, and nearly constant feeding

on a fatty, milk-based diet.

Rest Cure

◦ Patients were force-fed if necessary - effectively

reduced to the dependency of an infant.

◦ Nurses cleaned and fed them, and turned them

over in bed.

◦ Doctors used massage and electrotherapy to

maintain muscle tone. Patients were sometimes

prohibited from talking, reading, writing and

even sewing.

Rest Cure

◦Mitchell believed the point of the rest cure

was physical and moral.

◦ It boosted the patient’s weight and

increased blood supply.

◦ It also removed the patient from a potentially

toxic social atmosphere at home.

◦ However, the implicit point was the

neurologist breaking his (almost always

female) patient’s will.

Rest Cure

◦ Some outspoken and independent women received the rest cure.

◦ These included writers Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

◦ They reacted fiercely against the treatment and doctors practicing it, and wrote about the experience.

◦ Later feminist scholars argued the rest cure reinforced an archaic and oppressive notion that women should submit unquestioningly to male authority because it was good for their health.