AN INTRODUCTION TO FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM: AT A BRIEF

GLANCE

Dr. Saroj Malik

Associate Professor, English

Govt. P.G. College, Gohana (Sonepat)

A type of literary criticism that became a dominant force in Western Literary studies in the late
1970 ‟ s, feminist theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters.
Since the early 1980 ‟ s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of
ways and is now characterized by a global perspectives. It is nonetheless important to understand
differences among the interests and assumptions of French, British and North America,(United
States and Canada), feminist critics writing during the 1970 „ s, and early 1980 „ s, given the
context to which their works shaped the evolution of contemporary feminist critical discourse.

Feminist Literary criticism primarily responds to the way woman is presented in

literature. It has to basic premises: one, „woman‟ presented in literature by male writers from
their own viewpoint and two, „woman‟ presented in the writings of female writers from their
point of view. The first premise gives rise to kind of feminist criticism known as Phallocentrism
and the second premise leads us to another kind of feminist criticism known as Gynocriticism.
Theoretical foundation of feminist criticism is said to be laid by Simone de Beauvoir‟s book
titled The Second Sex. “In its earliest years, feminist criticism concentrated on exposing the
misogymy of literary practice: the stereotyped images of women in literature as angles and
monsters, the literary abuse or textual harassment of women in classic and popular male
literature and the exclusion of women from literary history”1, says Elaine Showalter and rightly
so. Three important books that deserve special mention in this regard are (i) Katherine
M.Rogar‟s The Troublesome Helpmate (1966) , and (ii) Mary Ellman‟s Thinking About Women
(1968) and (iii) Kate Millette‟s Sexual Politics (1969). These books provided a strong base for
the development of Anglo-American Feminist Criticism. The feminists believe that in order to
understand woman‟s position in the world, one has to understand the system of patriarchy. Men
all over the world looked at women from these point of view. And not only that they have also
taught and even women to took at themselves from male point of view.

Feminism is an ideology which seeks not only to understand the world but to change it to
the advantage of women. Simone de Beauvoir‟s phrase the second sex with reference to woman
cut ice. He opines that woman‟s idea of herself as inferior to man and dependant on him springs
from her realization that the world is masculine on the whole, those who fashioned it, rules it and
still dominate it today are men.2 Though the biological distinction between male and female is

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an accepted fact, the notion that woman is inferior to man is no longer acceptable to women in
general and feminists in particular. Simone de Beauvoir assets that „one is not born but becomes
a woman.‟3 The old prejudice against woman as being weaker than man in all respects is also
reflected in the language system – particularly in English, one notices the pronoun is largely
male oriented . Now there is not a single position in the society, including administration and
government which is not being occupied by woman. Today we have women Presidents. Prime
Ministers, Scientists, Commanders, Administrators and what not. Thus, the feminist movement
aims at overthrowing social practices that lead to the oppression and vitctimisation of women
lock, stock and barrel.

Margaret Atwood reacted against the so-called optimism of post-feminist era in the
1980s and after (it is presumed that feminist era ended in the 1970s and post feminist era began
in the 1980s) in the following words:

“It would be a mistake to assume that everything has changed the goals of the feminist
movement have not been achieved and those who claim we‟re living in post feminist era are
either sadly mistaken or tired or thinking about the same subject.”4

Feminist writers refuse to accept the images of women as portrayed by male writers.
They are of the view that women characters portrayed by men in literature are lacking in
authenticity. In other words, men have portrayed women as they find them not as women would
have perceived themselves. This kind of attitude prompted Carlo Christ to say that „women
have not experienced their own experience.‟5

The very concepts of masculinity and femininity are social constructs. Kate Millet in her
book, Sexual Politics maintains that sexual politics is a process whereby the ruling sex seeks to
maintain and extend its power over the subordinate sex. She suggest that social and cultural
contexts of a work of art should be taken into account in order to understand it in its proper
perspective. Thus, she like other feminist literary critics, is opposed to the ahistoricism of the
New Critics. To her a literary text is not a verbal icon independent of social and historical
reality. Analysing the works of Norman Mailer and Henry Miller, she exposes their patriarchal
bias and the sexual harassment of women. Feminist literary critics argue that if one studies
stereotypes of women, the sexism of male critics, and the limited roles women play in literary
history one would not learn what women have felt and experienced but what men have thought
women out to be. Elaine Showalter joins issue with Irving Howe on the interpretation of
Thomas Hardy‟s famous scene of the drunken Michael Henchard Selling his wife and infant
daughter for five guneas at a country fair in The Mayor of Casterbridge.

The emotional centre of The Mayor of Casterbridge is neither Henchard‟s relationship to

his wife, nor his superficial romance with Lucetta Templeman, but his slow appreciation of the
strength and dignity of his wife‟s daughter. Elizabeth Jane. Like the other women in the book,
she is governed by her own heart –man made laws are not important to her until she is taught by

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Herchard himself to value legality, paternity, external definitions, and thus, in the end of reject
him.

Hardy is really showing us the man at his best. Thus, Hardy‟s female characters in The
Mayor of casterbridge, as in his other novels, are somewhat idealized and melancholy
projections of a repressed male self.

Gynocritics seek to formulate a female framework for the analysis of women‟s literature
to develop new models based on the study of female experience rather than to adopt male models
and theories, Gynocritics take into account the feminist research done in the field of
authropology , history, psychology and sociology to formulate their critical principles. Working
as gynocritics, women had tried reading male create texts producing a literary category as the
women centered criticism. The feminist critique )as stated in the beginning of this chapter)
involves the feminist as a reader offering different interpretations of the images of women
projected in the male created texts. Women writers by way of challenging and recasting the
male gaze in literature, rewriter and recreate the male created text from the feminist perspective.

Christ weedon opens her book. Feminist Practice and Post structuralist Theory (188) with
a provocative statement. Feminism, is a politics, Notwithstanding this all feminisms are not
concerned with the radical identity politics of the day. Liberal, and Marxist feminisms postulate
an identity for women in relationship to men that assumes a humanist essence for womanhood.
Feminist critics have linked feminism with post modernism. It should be noted here that the
earlier Anglo American feminist critics were not very much concerned with literary theory.
Gradually this attitude changed. In the following words of R. Shimpson.

“By the mid-1970s feminist criticism was an international movement with a wide,
conflicting range of theoretical concerns. Indeed, the potential partners for a feminist critic are
a narrative of contemporary critical methods and the quarrels among them. To each partner, the
feminist critic brings her questions about women and gender”.6

There are different types of feminist crtitics such liberal humanists and
deconstructionsts. Deconstructionist feminist critics like Toril Moi questions the bourgeois
humanism of Elaine Showalter. Some feminist critics want to do away the gender difference for
it leads to the discrimination against woman. Julia Kristeva pleads for the deconstruction of
gender identities. Last but not the least feminism is said to have links with post modernism.

Feminist literary criticism has given us an opportunity to look at women in literature for
women‟s point of view. This reminds me of John Stuart Mill‟s observation:

“We may safely asset that the knowledge that men can acquire of women even as they
have been and are without reference to what they might be is wretchedly imperfect and
superficial and will always be so until women themselves have told all they have to tell.”7

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 To put in another way, feminist literary criticism can be said to have two dimensions-the
first is concerned wit5h women as a reader (i.e., woman as the consumer of male- created
literature) and the second is concerned with women as writer (i.e., woman as the creator of
literature ). Feminist literary criticism has given us an opportunity to look at „women‟ in
literature from women‟s point of view. This reminds me of John Stuart Mill‟s observation: “ We
may safely assert that the knowledge that men can acquire of women, even as they have been an
dare, without reference to what they might be, is wretchedly imperfect and superficial and will
always be so until women themselves have told all they have to tell. „

To sum up, I would say that feminist criticism is concerned with‟ woman as the producer
of textual meanings with the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women‟.

WORKS CITED

1. Elaine Showalter, ed. The New feminist Criticism: Essays on Women Literature and Theory
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1985):5

2. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex trans. H.M. Parshiey (London: Four square Books 1949)
298

3. Ibid. 273

4. Atwood,Margaret, Introduction to the Edible Woman: The Second words: Selected Critical Prose
(Toronto: Anansi, 1982) : 370

5. Christ, Carol, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1980: 5.

6. Catharine R. Stimpson, “Feminist Criticism,” Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of

English and American Literary Studies eds. Stephen Greenbalt and Giles Gunn (New York: The
Modern Language Association of America, 1992) : 191.

7. N. Geetha, “Exploiding the Canon: Feminist Writing and Intertextuality: Journal of Literary
Criticism 7.2 (Dec., 1994 ) 58

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