Feministic Theory in Literature

Feminist literary criticism is informed by feminist philosophy. The criticism employs feminist concepts and philosophies to analyze literature vocabulary, with the primary goal of examining and explaining how literature portrays the male dominance paradigm by the manipulation of political, societal, technological, and psychological powers in literature. However, while feminist literary criticism has the potential to transform the way literary texts are interpreted and studied, there have been feminism myths that suggest feminist critics are obsessed with destroying male critics. Due to the stereotypes, one might wonder whether the feminism theory is fully articulated or not. On the other hand, any demand for a theory can be perceived as a threat to the need for authenticity by feminists. Today, the feminist literary criticism results from the movement by women in the 1960s. It renewed the past tradition of action and thought in the classic literature, and diagnosed the issues of inequality of women to propose solutions. The women movement was literary in nature because it recognized the importance of women’s images that literature had publicized. As a result, women questioned their authority as well as rationality, and it is for this reason that the male writer feels criticized by the female counterpart. However, while this might look as an issue for male writer, the main focus of the feminist critique is on the woman a reader that consumes the literature produced by males. Therefore, this paper is an argument that feminism theory as used in feminist literary criticism is a criticizing form where the female reader alters the uneasiness of a particular text and awakens it for the importance of sexual codes. It probes the philosophical suppositions of literary occurrences by focusing on the images and stereotypes of females in literature, the mistaken belief about women, their omission as well as the manipulation and mistreatment of the female audience. While the feminism stereotypes believe that the feminist critics are obsessed with terminating male critics, this paper argues that the feminist critics seeks to look for errors of the past literature that was dominated by males.

Literature Review

Preface

The stereotype regarding the feminist literary criticism that views feminist critics as destroyers of male critics can be addressed through gynocritics. The literature review thus explains what gynocritics is and how it can be used to counter the assertion. Moreover, the literature is reviewed concerning the Feminism Phase through which feminist criticism follows as well as the role of feminist theory in feminist literary criticism. The review is concluded by restating the thesis that feminist critics do not have the obsession to destroy the male critics, but to look for the errors in the literature, especially the text in the patriarchal society.

Literature Body

Gynocritics. One of the major issues that face feminist critique is that it is preoccupied with the males, which means that its focus in on male even when critiquing patriarchy. However, gynocritics can be used as a means to construct a framework for women to analyze their literature, which established new models founded on the study of the experience by women as opposed to the adaptation of male theories and models. According to Showalter (1979) the concern of gynocriticis woman as a writer, who produces the textual meaning that has themes, history, genres and women structures to shun the inevitability of models and theories by male, thereby seeking a model that is purely for females. The male critics undervalued and often overlooked the writing of women in the past, however, the female tradition in writing has continued from one decade to the next as depicted by three phases namely, the feminine phase, feminist phase and the female phase (Showalter, 1984).

Feminism Phase through which feminist criticism follows. During the feminine phase, the women writers tried to equal the male dominated writing culture, which led to male pseudonym as they prohibited women from writing. In the feminist phase, women used literature to illustrate the tribulations of the mistreated womankind. Writers like Elizabeth Robin wrote works that clearly were against the values of males. Instead, the women writers envisioned a future society that was led by women. During the last phase, the female phase, female writers differentiated male writing from female writing based on language, and it is a phase featured by self-discovery of women. Virginia Woolf is one of the feminist writers of the 20th century that shows the history of women literature in a society that was patriarchal where they lacked a room for their own. According to Woolf (2003), women were consistent victims of male’s anger, hostility and misunderstanding. Mary Wollstonecraft was another feminist writer that raised her voice strongly against the manner in which the patriarchal society dominated over women (Taylor, 2003). 

Role of feminist theory. Since the 1980s, feminist criticism has become more heterogeneous as it started drawing upon the approaches and findings of different criticism such as Marxism, and structuralism. Males are no longer attacked because the focus of the criticism started exploring the nature and outlook of the female world (Martin, 1982). Feminist theory has a very significant role in feminist literary criticism. According to the Anglo-Americans, characterization, theme and motif are notable concepts. The lives of women and their experiences were represented in the literature, and can be gauged and assessed against reality. Therefore, the major emphasis of feminist criticism is on close reading of the texts and their explication (Bondi, & Rose, 2003). On the other hand a different approach has been taken by the French feminism, which was psychoanalytic and post-structuralist criticism that focused on language, psychology and representation of the philosophical problems before concentrating on the text. The English feminism aligned with Marxism.

Literature Review Conclusion

Feminist theory is very important in the understanding gender inequality nature through the examination of the social roles, chores, interests and experiences of women in different fields. The feminist literary criticism is informed by feminist theory in assessing the manner in which literature undermines or reinforces women’s political, economic, social and psychological aspects. As represented in various literature especially those authored by male writers, many aspects of culture are inherently patriarchal. Therefore, it is wrong to assert that feminist literary criticism has been geared towards destroying the male critics, but it is important to note that the critique strives to uncover the implicit as well as the explicit misogyny in male literature concerning women. It is worth noting that feminist criticism has followed the three feminism phases including the feminine phase, feminist phase and the female phase. Many grounds for feminist theories do not show the manner in which the concepts destroys the male critics, but illustrates the manner which there has been inequality in gender in the literature, a discrimination that can be said to have originated from the male counterpart.

The patriarchal society has oppressed women due to the patriarchal ideologies economically, socially and politically against women. In all domains where patriarchy is superior, the woman is marginalized and often defined by her distinction from values and norms of the men. According to the feminist criticism, civilization in the entire western culture is strongly rooted in male dominated ideologies as evidenced in the manner the Bible depicts Eve as the source of death and sin. Therefore, other than basing the criticism on literature and the manner in which it portrays the woman, feminine criticism does not destroy the male critics because the male writers in this case are viewed as oppressors.

































References

Bondi, L., & Rose, D. (2003). Constructing gender, constructing the urban: a review of Anglo-American feminist urban geography. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 10(3), 229-245.

Martin, B. (1982). Feminism, criticism, and Foucault. New German Critique, (27), 3-30.

Showalter, E. (1979). Towards Feministic Poetics. Women writing and writing about women. Londres: Croom Helm, 22-41.

Showalter, E. (1984). Women's time, women's space: Writing the history of feminist criticism. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 3(1/2), 29-43.

Taylor, B. (2003). Mary Wollstonecraft and the feminist imagination (Vol. 56). Cambridge University Press.

Woolf, V. (2003). Women and writing. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.