Literary Criticism

Class #8

•Feminist Criticism

• The premise that unites all feminist critics is “the assumption that Western culture is fundamentally patriarchal, creating an imbalance of power that marginalizes women and their work.” “The feminist critic works to expose such ideology and, in the end, to change it so that the creativity of women can be fully realized and appreciated.” (Dobie 97)

• Feminist literary theorists in particular examine how gender coding and gender inequity are produced, distributed, perpetuated--AND questioned, challenged, and rewritten--in literary texts. (http://www.colorado.edu/English/engl2010mk/2004feminism.html)

•Key words

Sex GenderEssentialism Social construction

Nature Culture

Biology

Anatomy

Genetics

Physiology

-Product/illusion created by language

-arbitrary signifiers divided into binary opposites

essential, eternal, natural, god-given, unchangeable, and true

variable, mutable, not necessarily correlated with anatomical or genetic determinants

Compiled from http://www.colorado.edu/English/engl2010mk/2004feminism.html

Feminist Political position

Female

(=Sex)

Biology

Feminine

(=Gender)

A set of culturally defined characteristics

(Barry 122)

The feminine phase

(1840-1880)

-Women writers imitated dominant male

artistic norms and aesthetic standards

(Charlotte Brontë, mary Ann Evans);

-Sometimes, men’s names were adopted

to hide female authorship (Currer Bell,

George Eliot)

The feminist phase

(1880-1920)

-A stage of protest; adopting radical and separatist positions

-Condemning unjust depictions of women by male writers

-Separate female utopias envisioned

The female phase

(1920-)

Gynocriticism: focusing on female writing and female experience; new frankness regarding sex

Elaine Showalter

(Barry 123; Dobie 99)

Gynocriticism• “the history, styles, themes, genres, and

structures of writing by women; the psychodynamics of female creativity; the trajectory of the individual or collective female career; and the evolution or laws of a female literary tradition” (qtd. in Barry 123)

Food for Thought

• 1. What’s Showalter’s definition of “woman’s writing” based on? Sex or gender?

• 2. What’s the purpose and value of gynocriticism?

• Feminist Theory

American feminism

E. ShowalterGilbert/Gubar

-favored literary realism

-literature as representations of women’s experience

-use historical data and non-literary material

British feminism

C. Belsey -socialist (Marxist, cultural materialism) in orientation

-analyzing power structures between gender and class

-literature is a tool for social change

French feminsim

H. Cixous

J. Kristeva

L. Irigaray

-influenced by psychoanalysis (Lacan)

-Cixous: l’écriture feminine

-Kristeva: symbolic vs. semiotic aspects of language

(Barry 124-26; Dobie 100)

• Feminism & Language

l’écriture feminine• (1) “it is at the level of sexual pleasure [jou

issance] in my opinion, that the difference makes itself most clearly apparent in as far as woman’s libidinal economy is neither identifiable by a man nor referable to the masculine economy” (Cixous, “Sortie,” 291).

• (2) Though masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts, woman does not bring about the same regionalization . . . . Her libido is cosmic, just as her unconscious is worldwide. Her writing can only keep going, without ever inscribing or discerning contours, daring to make these vertiginous crossings of the other(s) ephemeral and passionate sojourns in him, her, them, whom she inhabits long enough to look at from the point closest to their unconscious from the moment they awaken, to love them at the point closest to their drives; and then further, impregnated through and through with these brief, indentificatory embraces, she goes and passes into infinity. (Cixous, Norton 2052)

• (3) She alone dares and wishes to know from within, where she, the outcast, has never creased to hear the resonance of fore-language. She lets the other language speak—the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death. To life she refuses nothing. Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible . . . I am spacious, singing flesh, on which is grafted no one knows which I, more or less human, but alive because of transformation” (Cixous, Norton 2052)

Symbolic Semiotic Father

Language

Mother

The chora

(the pre-language, or “imaginary” state in Lacan)

authority, logic, order, repression, control, fascism

Displacement, slippage, condensation

Self as fixed and unified Self as a free-flowing, plastic entity

Prose

Consciousness

Poetry

The Unconscious

Kristeva

(Barry 129)

Food for Thought• 1. Do you agree that women use languag

e in ways that are different from those of men? Why or why not?

• 2. Do women have a different pattern of reasoning?

• 3. Do women see the world in a different way?

(Dobie 101)

• Feminism & Psychoanalysis

Social Castration

• Phallus: emblem of social power

• Phallucentrism = Logocentrism = center of Western civilization

• “Social Castration”: signifies women’s lack of social power

• Feminism & Reading

• “In order to disclose the arbitrariness of patriarchal hegemony, feminist critics engage in a dialogical opposition to traditional models and values” (Furman 71).

• “Infidelity . . . is a feminist practice of undermining the Name-of-the-Father. The unfaithful reading strays from the author, the authorized, produces that which does not hold as a reproduction, as a representation”

(Gallop 1982; quoted in Furman 71)

• Feminism & Deconstruction

• “Thinking in terms of binary opposition always implies the subordination of the second element to the first, and reversing the older of the pairing only repeats the system which was at work in the initial opposition.” (Furman 75).

• “From a Derridian position, the feminist endeavor cannot be conceived in terms of male or female, feminine or masculine; it can only be thought of beyond such polarities as a kind of sexual plurality” (Furman 75).

• Feminist Literary Criticism

in Praxis

• The Controversy of Women in D. H. Lawrence’s Novels

(1) When Anna and Will are married in The Rainbow, Tom Brangwen, Anna’s stepfather, “wanted to make a speech.”

• For the first time in his life, he must spread himself wordily.

• “Marriage,” he began, his eyes twinkling and yet quite profound, for he was deeply serious and hugely amused at the same time, “Marriage,” he said, speaking in the slow, full-mouthed way of the Brangwens, “is what we’re made for.”

• “Let him talk,” said Alfred Brangwen, slowly and inscrutably, “let him talk.” Mrs. Alfred darted indignant eyes at her husband.

• “A man,” continued Tom Brangwen, “enjoys being a man: for what purpose was he made a man, if not to enjoy it?”

• “That’s a true word,” said Frank, floridly.

• “And likewise,” continued Tom Brangwen, “ a woman enjoys being a women: at least we surmise she does.”

• “Oh, don’t you bother,” called a farmer’s wife.

• “You may back your life they’d be summising’,” said Frank’s wife.

• “Now,” continued Tom Brangwen, “for a man to be a man, it takes a woman.”

• “It does that,” said a woman grimly.

• “And for a woman to be a woman, it takes a man,” continued Tom Brangwen.

• “All speak up, men,” chimed in a feminine voice.

• “Therefore we have marriage,” continued Tom Brangwen. (qtd. in Beynon 117)

• (2) Birkin tells Ursula: “And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.” Birkin is convinced that subjection is “the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your will to the higher being.” (from The Rainbow, qtd. in Beynon 126)

• (3-1) D. H. Lawrence’s programme for womanhood:

• “Let her learn the domestic arts in their perfection. Let us even artificially set her to spin and weave. Anything to keep her busy, to prevent her reading and becoming self-conscious.”

• (3-2) “Make her yield to her own real unconscious self, and absolutely stamp on the self she’s got in her head. Drive her forcibly back, back into her own true unconsciousness.”

• (3-3) “When once she . . . knows that the loneliness of waiting and following is inevitable, that it must be so; ah, then how wonderful it is! How wonderful it is to come back to her, at evening, as she sits half in fear and waits! How good it is when the night falls! How richly the evening passes!”

• (from Fantasia of the Unconscious, qtd. in Beynon 126)

Chinese/Taiwanese Texts

• Group Activity:

Identify feminist issues

• 「飛龍在天」• （男）人在江湖 身不由己• 人生在世只有兩字 一字情 一字義•  

• （女）你的愛親像阮的天 阮的愛只乎一個你• 咱的心永遠永遠不分開•  

• （男）好男兒不驚出身低 男子漢志在出頭天 • （女）咱的緣前世就註定 咱的愛今生來完成•  

• （合）手牽手 心逗陣• 把握好時機 親像飛龍 飛上天

http://csf.kh.edu.tw/csf7/%A5D%C3D%AC%E3%B2%DF%A4%E5%A5%F3/90%A6~%AB%D7%A4j%A5D%C3D/4-1%A9%CA%A7O%A5%AD%B5%A5%B1%D0%A8|%BF%C4%A4J%A5x%BBy%B1%D0%BE%C7.htm

• 獨夜無伴守燈下 清風對面吹• 十七八歲未出嫁 當著少年家• 果然標緻面肉白 誰家人子弟• 想要問伊驚歹勢 心內彈琵琶•

想要郎君作尪婿 意愛在心裡• 等待何時君來採 青春花當開• 聽見外面有人來 開門該看覓• 月娘笑阮憨大呆 被風騙不知

望春風

http://csf.kh.edu.tw/csf7/%A5D%C3D%AC%E3%B2%DF%A4%E5%A5%F3/90%A6~%AB%D7%A4j%A5D%C3D/4-1%A9%CA%A7O%A5%AD%B5%A5%B1%D0%A8|%BF%C4%A4J%A5x%BBy%B1%D0%BE%C7.htm

• 看我 72 變 ( 主唱 蔡依林 )

• 夢裡面　空氣開始冒煙 矇矓中完美的臉　慢慢的出現 再見 醜小鴨 再見　 我要洗心革面 人定可以勝天　夢想近在眼前 ＊今天、新鮮、改變、再見 　美麗極限　愛漂亮沒有終點 　 追求完美的境界　人不愛美天誅地滅 　別氣餒　 舊觀念拋到一邊 　現在就開始改變　麻雀也能飛上青天＊ 無所謂　管它缺不缺陷 讓鼻子再高一點　空氣才新鮮 再見單眼皮再見　腰圍再小一點 努力戰勝一切　 缺點變成焦點 Rap ： 什麼正面側面對面　只是完美弧線愛現 那個腰圍再小

一點　把妳缺點變成優點 再見面　要你們傻了眼 無所謂正面側面都是完美弧線 再見醜小鴨再見　自卑留給昨天 女大要十八變看我七十二變 Repeat （＊）

• 許願池的希臘少女 ( 主唱 蔡依林 )

• 左岸的一座 白色環形階梯 • 浪人正在 用和絃練習憂鬱 • 晨曦下的少女 聽著吉他旋律 • 在許願池邊 巴洛克式的嘆息 • 少女手中 的銀幣 想要愛情 她的祕密 地中海 湛藍

色的希臘婚禮 • 蒙馬特邱陵 叼煙斗男性 低頭穿越 前方蜿蜒的孤寂

對著空氣收集 他新詩的下一句 • 遠方少女 跟他一樣在猶豫 少女手中 的銀幣 沉入池

裡 她的表情 像漣漪 那麼透明美麗 • 吉他換成 了快樂 的圓舞曲 詩人決定 了標題 許願

池的希臘少女

•請台北的女性主義者試著離開台北

• http://www.cyberbees.org/blog/archives/000576.html• 編按：＜蜂報＞投稿，全文照登

作者：一位性觀念保守的職業婦女• 首先，我要表明，我是一位性觀念非常「保守」的職業婦女，連服裝也非常保守～基本上只要會透露胸

罩或胸罩肩帶的外衣，我絕不會買～這跟我的出生環境有關。•

我自小到大被貫輸的「保守」價值觀約束著我，養育我長大的南部小城鎮，至今仍是保守的大本營，儘管，婚外情與外遇的「八卦」悲劇，在我的家鄉流傳得繪聲繪影、沸沸揚揚，但是，父權的眼光仍是女性服裝尺度的嚴厲法官！

• 在那裡，女性可以是也應該是生育的機器，在那裡，「重男輕女的時代已過去」是一句謊言，因為公公婆婆的明言暗示，都會逼著兒子與媳婦自己「努力」生出男孩以傳宗接代，才能稍微抒緩那股說不出的壓力。

• 在那裡，嫁為人婦的女性想要經濟獨立很困難，因為妳不能擺脫母職的束縛，與丈夫、公公、婆婆、整個家族以及鄉里間對婦女角色的規範。另外，連男人失業都比比皆是，何況被視為只能「相夫教子」與「伺養公婆」的婦女？

• 在那裡，媳婦若常回娘家會遭到責罵，因為這違反「媳德」，儘管公婆說不出一套足以令人信服的道理。在那裡，嫁出去的女兒就如同潑出去的水，若表現出絲毫爭取家族財產或遺產的主動意圖，結果很可能是被娘家斷絕往來。婦女運動團體在台北推動修法，以使女兒擁有娘家遺產的繼承權，在那裡，並不適用。

• 在那裡，公婆與媳婦的衝突與鬥氣，每天在每個家庭上演，但是，除非丈夫有本事在外面賺大錢買房子，否則，戰爭不會結束，週而復始。在那裡，這句「家和萬事興」是最諷刺的神話，雙方都有滿腹的怨氣，都可向旁人與親友數落三天三夜而不止。在那裡，自組小家庭，是每個媳婦最大的夢想，但是，貧窮是最大的阻礙，尤其在目前經濟不景氣的時候。

• 在那裡，各種封建時代所遺留的父權壓迫與性別壓迫仍繼續維持，這不是在台北搞婦女運動的中產階級婦女或學者所能理解的情況，至少，她們最迫切需要的，並非「情慾多元」或「情慾解放」？就更談不上最近鬧得風風雨雨的「人獸交」了！

• 寫這篇文章的目的，並不是要反對「情慾多元」或「情慾解放」的主張，我其實是何春燹教授名著＜豪爽女人＞的忠實讀者與觀念傳播者，雖然，我至今始終鼓不起勇氣付諸實踐。我只是要誠摯地建議何春燹教授和其它女性主義學者，試著離開台北，去接觸更廣大的非都會婦女，她們的現實壓迫「趕不上」妳們的理論論述？

References

• Beynon, Richard, ed. D. H. Lawrence: The Rainbow and Women in Love. Cambridge: Icon Books, 1997.

• Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Ed. Vincent B Leitch. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2001. 2035-56.

• Cixous, Hélène. “Sorties.” Modern Criticism and Theory. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 286-93.

• Dobie, Ann B. Theory into Practice. Thomson/Heinle, 2002.

• Furman, Nelly. “The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender Principle?” Making A Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. Eds. Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn. London: Routledge, 1985.