FEMINISM

A LITERARY MOVEMENT

PRESENTED BY : AMEEN-UL-HAQ
ROLL NO: 3203
FEMINISM
A movement characterized by various ideologies aimed at
defining, establishing and defending equal political, economic,
cultural, and social rights for women.
HISTORY
Charles Fourier (1837) credited with having coined the word
feminism.
Feminist movement is divided into three waves.
 First Wave Feminism
 Second Wave Feminism
 Third Wave Feminism
BACKGROUND
“Women are unfinished men”
Aristotle
BACKGROUND
 Women widely are considered Intellectually inferior.
 Suited to the role of wives and mother.
 A married women’s property and salary were owned by her husband.
 Divorce available to men but far more difficult to women.
 Women had no right to their children if they left a marriage.
FIRST WAVE FEMINISM
 Started in the 19th and early 20th century.
 Women campaigned for suffragate movements.
 They raised their voices for equal right to vote and equal access to
Parliament.
 The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment
and marriage laws.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
 A Vindication to the Right of Women (1792).
 She is regarded as the foremother of British feminist criticism.
 She provided insights to suffragettes to fight the battle for women.

She held the view in this book is that “If the abstract rights of man will bear
discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not
shrink form the same test; though a different opinion prevails in this country”
VIRGINA WOOLF
 Her essay “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) asserted the importance of women’s
independence.
 She explicated how the patriarchal society prevented women form realizing their
creative potential.
 She stressed that gender is not predertmined but is a social construct.
 She felt it was necessary to establish social and economic equality for women.

“A women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
 Women could attend school and university.
 Women did not receive equal pay for the same work.
 It was easier to gain a divorce but socially frown upon.
 Women’s body were objectified in advertising.
 Rape and physically abuse within marriage were illegal but husbands were
rarely convicted.
SECOND WAVE FEMINISM
 Started in 1960-1980 as a response to the experiences of women after
WWII.
 Women may have legal rights but they are still; treated as inferior.
 It was characterized by a critique of patriarchy in constructing the
cultural identity of women.
 Many landmark works appeared making the powerful advocacy for
women’s liberation from masculine coded language.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
 The actual theoretical foundation of feminist criticism was laid by Simone de Beauvoir.
 She claims that feminity is not inherent but a social construct developed through the
long process of socialization.
 She says that inferiority of women was mainly due to three factors.
1. They were taught to help men.
2. Encouraged to externalize the aspects of feminity.
3. Women enjoyed lesser rights than men.
One is not born, but rather becomes a women.
KATE MILLET
 Her book “Sexual Politics”
 Millet distinguished between sex ( biological characteristics) and
gender (culturally acquired identity.
 The domination and subordination in all relation between men and
women is what she calls “Sexual Politics”.
 She also argues that very structure of most literature has been shaped
by male ideology.
ELAINE SHOWALTER
 A literature of their own.
 She argues profound difference between the women and men’s writing.
 She coined the term “gynocriticism” for her mode of analyzing the works of
women writers.
 Three stages:
1. ‘Feminine Phase’
2. ‘Feminist Phase’
3. ‘Female’ Phase’
JULIA KRISTEVE
 She considered Lacan’s symbolic stage in child’s development.
 Difference between language of man and woman.
 Order, law rationality associated with a patriarchal society.
 When male child enters the ‘symbolic’ order, however, the child
identifies with the father.
LUCE IRIGARAY
 Freud's Penis Envy”.
 Men’s perception is clearly associated with sight but women gain
pleasure form physical contact.
 The eroticism of women is fundamentally different to that of men.
THIRD WAVE FEMINISM
 Challenged second wave’s “essentialist” definition of feminity which
over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women.
 Focused on a multicultural emphasis strived to address problems
stemming from sexism, racism, social class inequality and
homophobia.
 Began in 1990s and extended into Postcolonial feminism, ecofeminism
and gender studies.
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN
 Feminist book of 2oth century.
 Advocates financial Independence, social condition and privacy of women.
 Women should have privacy and freedom in order to be able to write.
 Women should think and act freely.
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic
and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
HISTORY OF WOMEN
 Women were the slaves of society and property of their husbands.
 In Literature, women were the source of many beautiful thoughts but in real life they
are not.
 In the past, women faced many obstacles while writing something.
 Women were married at an early age of 15 then they had to take care of children all
the time.
 Because of having children women cannot make money and in the reason they are
poor.
“A women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”
ABSENCE OF LITEARY TOOLS
 Women in past did not have literary tools to express the experience of
women.
 Woolf argues that women should develop and use a famine syntax.
 Judith (Shakespeare sister) suffered from social oppression of gender
inequalities.
 If a women wanted to write a poetry she must have a room of her own and
500 pounds per year.
 Women did not write too much in the past because they were poor and did
not have money while men had money and access to whatever thing they
wanted.
Lock up your libraries if you like;
but there is no gate, no lock, and
not bolt that you can set upon the
freedom of my mind.
Virginia Woolf