READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM

Literary and Critical Theories

 Lou Myers
The cover of the book is a cartoon by Lou Myers
(1915 –2005)
Literary criticism has always involved three
inescapable elements:
the author,
the work,
and the reader. (Weele 125)

Reader-response criticism regards the third of

these elements as the most crucial for criticism, for
criticism always begins in the first instance with
reading. (Weele 125)
 As its name implies, reader-response criticism
focuses on readers’ responses to literary texts.
Reader-response criticism is a broad, exciting,
evolving domain of literary studies that can help
us learn about our own reading processes and
how they relate to, among other things, specific
elements in the texts we read, our life
experiences, and the intellectual community of
which we are a member. (Tyson 153).
Reader-response criticism covers a good deal of
diverse ground such as psychoanalytic criticism
(when it investigates the psychological motives
for certain kinds of interpretations of a literary
text), feminist criticism (when it analyzes how
patriarchy teaches us to interpret texts in a sexist
manner), structuralist criticism (when it
examines the literary conventions a reader must
have consciously or unconsciously internalized in
order to be able to read a particular literary text).
(Tyson 153-154).
 READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM

Reader-Response theory, which did not receive much attention

until the 1970s, maintains that what a text is cannot be
separated from what it does. For despite their divergent views of
the reading process, reader-response theorists share two beliefs:
1. that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our
understanding of literature

2. that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented

to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make
the meaning they find in literature.

This second belief, that readers actively make meaning, suggests

that different readers may read the same text quite differently.
(Tyson 154).
In fact, reader-response theorists believe that
even the same reader reading the same text on
two different occasions will probably produce
different meanings because so many variables
contribute to our experience of the text.
Knowledge we’ve acquired between our first and
second reading of a text, personal experiences
that have occurred in the interim, a change in
mood between our two encounters with the text,
or a change in the purpose for which we’re
reading it can all contribute to our production of
different meanings for the same text. (Tyson 154).
 THE HOUSE
The two boys ran until they came to the driveway. “See, I told
you today was good for skipping school,” said Mark. “Mom is
never home on Thursday,” he added. Tall hedges hid the house
from the road so the pair strolled across the finely landscaped
yard. “I never knew your place was so big,” said Pete. “Yeah, but
it’s nicer now than it used to be since Dad had the new stone
siding put on and added the fireplace.”

There were front and back doors and a side door which led to
the garage which was empty except for three parked 10-speed
bikes. They went in the side door, Mark explaining that it was
always open in case his younger sisters got home earlier than
their mother.
Pete wanted to see the house so Mark started with
the living room. It, like the rest of the downstairs, was
newly painted. Mark turned on the stereo, the noise
of which worried Pete. “Don’t worry, the nearest
house is a quarter of a mile away,” Mark shouted.
Pete felt more comfortable observing that no houses
could be seen in any direction beyond the huge yard.
The dining room, with all the china, silver and cut
glass, was no place to play so the boys moved into the
kitchen, where they made sandwiches. Mark said
they wouldn’t go to the basement because it had
been damp and musty ever since the new plumbing
had been installed.
“This is where my Dad keeps his famous paintings and
his coin collection,” Mark said as they peered into the
den. Mark bragged that he could get spending money
whenever he needed it since he’d discovered that his
Dad kept a lot in the desk drawer.
There were three upstairs bedrooms. Mark showed Pete
his mother’s closet which was filled with furs and the
locked box which held her jewels. His sister’s room was
uninteresting except for the color TV, which Mark carried
to his room. Mark bragged that the bathroom in the hall
was his since one had been added to his sisters’ room for
their use. The big highlight in his room, though, was a
leak in the ceiling where the old roof had finally rotted.
(This passage, taken from a psychological study conducted by J.A.Pichert and R.C.Anderson, is
used by Lois Tyson to teach reader-response theory. Tyson 155)
Imagine that you are a home buyer and circle any detail, positive or negative, that you think
would be important if you were considering buying the house described in the passage.

Positive Qualities Negative Qualities

• tall hedges (privacy) damp, musty basement

• finely landscaped yard new plumbing amiss
• stone siding rotting roof
• fireplace leak in bedroom ceiling
• garage
• newly painted downstairs
• nearest house ¼ mi. away (privacy)
• den
• 3 upstairs bedrooms
• New bathroom added to bedroom
 Now reread the passage and underline any detail, positive or negative, that you
think would be important if you were casing the house in order to rob it.

Positive Qualities
• tall hedges (safe from observation)
• no one home on Thursdays
• finely landscaped yard (those folks have money)
• 3 10-speed bikes in garage, side door always left
open
• Nearest house ¼ mi. away (safe from observation)
• many portable goods: stereo, china, silver, cut glass,
• paintings, coin collection, furs, box of jewels, tv set
• cash kept in desk drawer (Tyson 156).
 «The house of fiction has in short not one
window, but a million – a number of possible
windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of
which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its
vast front, by the need of the individual vision and
by the pressure of the individual will.»

Henry James, Preface to the New York Edition of

Portrait of a Lady (Bressler 72)
According to the nineteenth-century novelist,
essayist, literary critic, and short story writer
Henry James (1843-1916), this house
represents the literary form – a story, a novel,
a poem, or an essay – with each window being
an individual reader’s distinct impression of
that literary work. (Bressler 73).
Reader-Response critics, Reader-oriented
critics, reader-critics, or audience-oriented
critics believe that a literary work’s
interpretation is created when a reader and a
text interact or transact. They assert that the
proper study of textual analysis must consider
both the reader and the text, not simply a
text in isolation. For these critics,
Reader + Text = Poem (Meaning)
 Meaning can emerge only with a reader
actively involved in the reading process with the
text. Meaning is context dependent and
intricately associated with the reading process.
Their chief interest is what occurs when a text
and a reader interact or transact. During this
exchange, reader-oriented critics investigate and
theorize whether the reader, the text, or some
combination finally determine the text’s
interpretation. (Bressler 80).
 Transactional Reader-Response Theory

Often associated with the work of Louise Rosenblatt, who formulated

many of its premises, transactional reader-response theory analyzes the
transaction between text and reader.
In the 1930s, Rosenblatt, literary theorist, author, scholar, and professor
of literacy, further developed Richards’s earlier assumptions concerning the
contextual nature of the reading process. She asserts that both the reader
and the text must work together to produce meaning.
Rosenblatt does not reject the importance of the text in favor of the
reader; rather she claims that both are necessary in the production of
meaning. She differentiates among the terms text, which refers to the printed
words on the page; reader; and poem, which refers to the literary work
produced by the text and the reader together.
Unlike the New Critics, she shifts the emphasis of textual analysis away
from the text alone and views the reader and the text as partners in the
interpretative process. (Tyson 157-158, Bressler 78)
 Louise M. Rosenblat

For Rosenblatt, a text is not an autotelic artifact, and

there are no generic literary works or generic readers.
Instead, there are millions of potential individual readers
of the potential millions of individual texts.
Readers bring their individual personalities, their
memories of past events, their present concerns, their
particular physical condition, and all of their personhood
to the reading of a text.

Rosenblatt asserts the validity of multiple interpretations

of a text shaped not only by the text but also by the
reader. (Bressler 78).
The Reader, The Text, the Poem, written by
Rosenblatt, was published in 1978 and became a
pivotal force in helping to cause a paradigm shift in
the teaching of literature by changing the focus from
the text alone to a reader’s individual response to a
text as a key element in the interpretive process.
According to Rosenblatt, the reading process involves
both a reader and a text. The reader and the text
participate in or share a transactional experience:
The text acts as a stimulus for eliciting various past
experiences, thoughts, and ideas from the reader,
those found in both our everyday existence and in
past reading experiences. (Bressler 78-79).
Through this transactional experience, the reader
and the text produce a new creation, a poem.
For Rosenblatt and many other reader-oriented
critics, a poem is defined as the result of an event
that takes place during the reading process, or
what Rosenblatt calls the “aesthetic transaction”.
A poem is created each time a reader transacts
with a text, whether this transaction is a first
reading or any one of countless rereading of the
same text. For Rosenblatt, readers read in one of
two ways: efferently or aesthetically. (Bressler
79).
 When we read for information, we are engaging
in efferent reading. During this process, we are
interested only in newly gained information. When
we read efferently, we are motivated by specific
needs to acquire information.
When we engage in aesthetic reading, we
experience the text. We note its every word, its
sounds, its patterns, and so on.
When reading aesthetically we involve
ourselves in an elaborate give-and-take encounter
with the text. (Bressler 79).
In order for the transaction between text and
reader to occur, our approach to the text must
be, in Rosenblatt’s words, aesthetic rather
than efferent. When we read in the efferent
mode, we focus just on the information
contained in the text. Without the aesthetic
approach, there could be no transaction
between text and reader to analyze. (Tyson
158).
“The playwright is nothing without his audience. He is
one of the audience who happens to know how to
speak” Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (1949) is a play

about a travelling salesman who kills himself so that
his son will receive his life-insurance money. This is an
example of an efferent reading of the text. Willy
Loman’s plight is powerfully evoked by the contrast
between his small house and the large, orange-colored
apartment buildings that surround it. This is an
example of an aesthetic reading of the text. (Tyson
158)
 In “Death of a Salesman” we might say, for
example, that the text’s determinate meaning
includes the fact that Willy habitually lies to Linda
about his success on the job, about how well liked
he is, and about how important his role in the
company has been.
The play’s indeterminacy includes issues such as
how much (or how little) of the truth Linda knows
about her husband’s career, at what point she
realizes the truth (if ever she does), and why she
doesn’t let Willy tell her the truth about his
shortcomings when he tries to do so. (Tyson 159).
What differentiates Rosenblatt’s and all reader-
oriented critics from other critical approaches
(especially New Criticism) is their purposive shift
in emphasis away from the text as the sole
determiner of meaning.
No longer is there one correct interpretation and
no longer is the reader passive. On the contrary,
the reader is an active participant along with the
text in creating meaning. It is from the literacy
experience that meaning evolves. (Bressler 79-
80).
These questions lead reader-oriented critics to a further narrowing and
developing of terminology:

What is a text?
Is it simply the words or symbols on a page?
How can we differentiate between what is actually in the text and
what is in the mind of the reader?
Who is this reader?
Are there various kinds of readers?
Is it possible that different texts presuppose different kinds of readers?
What about a reader’s response to a text?
Are the responses equivalent to the text’s meaning?
Can one reader’s response be more correct than another reader’s, or
are all responses of equal validity? (Bressler 81).
Although readers respond to the same text in a variety
of ways, why many readers individually arrive at the
same conclusions or interpretations of the same text?
What part, if any, does the author play in a work’s
interpretation? Can the author’s attitudes toward the
reader actually influence a work’s meaning? If a
reader knows the author’s clearly stated intentions for
a text, does this information have any part in creating
the text’s meaning, or should an author’s intentions
for a work be ignored?
The concerns of reader-oriented critics can be best
summarized in one question:
What is and what happens during the reading
process? (Bressler 81).
• The reader, including his or her view of the
world, background, purpose for reading,
knowledge of the world, knowledge of
words
• The text, with all its various linguistic
elements
• Meaning, or how the text and the reader
interact or transact so that the reader
can make sense of the printed material
(Bressler 81).
Prince’s concerns about the reader place him in the reader-oriented school
of criticism, though such an approach relies heavily on textual analysis.
Narratology is the process of analyzing a story using all the elements
involved in its telling, such as narrator, voice, style, verb tense, personal
pronouns, audience, and so forth.
In the 1970s, Gerard Prince helped develop a specific kind of structuralism
known as narratology.
Prince noted that critics often ask questions about the story’s point of view –
omniscient, limited, first person – but rarely ask about the person to whom
the narrator is speaking, the narratee. Prince argues that the narrative
itself, the story, produces the narratee. Prince believes it is possible not only
to identify the narratee but also to classify stories based on the different
kinds of narratees created by the texts themselves. Such narratees may
include the real reader (person actually reading the book), the virtual reader
(the reader to whom the author believes he or she is writing), and the ideal
reader (the one who explicitly and implicitly understands all the nuances,
terminology, and structure of the text). (Bressler 83).
Second group of reader-oriented critics follow
Rosenblatt’s assumption that the reader is
involved in a transactional experience when
interpreting a text. Both the text and the reader
play somewhat equal parts in the interpretative
process. For them, reading is an event that
culminates in the creation of the poem. Many
adherents in this group – Wolfgang Iser, Hans
Robert Jauss, Roman Ingarden – are often
associated with phenomenology. (Bressler 83).
Phenomenology is a modern philosophical tendency
that emphasizes the perceiver. For phenomenologists,
objects can have meaning only if an active
consciousness (a perceiver) absorbs or notes their
existence. In other words, objects exist if we register
them in our consciousness.
Rosenblatt’s definition of a poem directly applies this
theory. The true poem can exist only in the reader’s
consciousness, not on the printed page. When a
reader and text transact, the poem and, therefore,
meaning are created; they exist only in the
consciousness of the reader. (Bressler 84).
Reading and textual analysis now become an
aesthetic experience, in which both the
reader and the text combine in the
consciousness of the reader to create the
poem. So, the reader’s imagination must
work, fill in the gaps in the text and conjecture
about characters’ actions, personality traits,
and motives. The ideas and practices of two-
reader-oriented critics, Jauss and Iser, serve to
illustrate phenomenology’s methodology.
(Bressler 84).
Toward the end of the 1960s, The German critic Hans Robert
Jauss emphasizes that a text’s social history must be
considered when interpreting the text.
He espouses reception theory and asserts that readers from
any given historical period devise for themselves the criteria
whereby they will judge a text. Jauss argues that because each
historical period establishes its own horizons of expectation,
the overall value and meaning of any text can never become
fixed or universal; readers from any given historical period
establish for themselves what they value in a text. A text, then,
does not have one and only one correct interpretation because
its supposed meaning changes from one historical period to
another. A final assessment about any literary work thus
becomes impossible. Jauss declares that although the text itself
remains important in the interpretive process, the reader plays
an essential role. (Bressler 84).
• The German phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser borrows and amends
Jauss’s ideas. Iser believes that any object – a stone, a house, a poem
– does not achieve meaning until an active consciousness recognizes
or registers this object. He declares that as soon as a text is read, the
object and the reader (the perceiver) are essentially one.
Iser differentiates two kinds of readers. The first is the implied
reader, who “embodies all those predispositions necessary for a
literary work to exercise its effect… consequently, the implied
reader… has his or her roots firmly planted in the structure of the
text” (Iser, 1978). In other words, the implied reader is the reader
implied by the text, one who is predisposed to appreciate the overall
effects of the text.
The actual reader is the person who physically picks up the text and
reads it. This reader comes to the text shaped by particular cultural
and personal norms and prejudices. (Bressler 84-85).
Similar to Jauss, Iser disavows the New Critical stance that
a text has one and only one correct meaning and asserts
that a text has many possible interpretations. For Iser, texts
do not possess meaning. When a text is concretized, ( the
phenomenological concept whereby the text registers in
the reader’s consciousness) the reader automatically views
the text from his or her personal worldview. As texts do
not tell the reader everything that needs to be known
about a character, a situation, a relationship, or other such
textual elements, readers must automatically fill in these
“gaps”, using their own knowledge, worldview. In addition,
each reader creates his or her own horizons of expectation
–that is, expectations about what will or may or should
happen next. (Bressler 85).
So,
Filling in the text’s gaps = making sense of the
text = continually adopting new horizons of
expectation
According to Iser, each reader makes “concrete”
the text; each concretization is, therefore,
personal, allowing the new creation to be unique.
The reader is an active, essential player in the
text’s interpretation, writing part of the text as the
story is read and concretized and, indispensably,
becoming its coauthor. (Bressler 86).
 Wolfgang Iser

• As a literary text can only produce a response when it is read, it is virtually

impossible to describe this response without also analyzing the reading process.
Reading is therefore the focal point of this study, for it sets in motion a whole
chain of activities that depend both on the text and on the exercise of certain
basic human faculties. Effects and responses are properties neither of the text
nor of the reader; the text represents a potential effect that is realized in the
reading process (Iser ix).
• Aesthetic response is therefore to be analyzed in terms of a dialectic
relationship between text, reader, and their interaction. It is called aesthetic
response because, although it is brought about by the text, it brings into play
the imaginative and perceptive faculties of the reader, in order to make him
adjust and even differentiate his own focus (Iser x).
• «Central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its
structure and its recipient» (Iser 20).
• «The literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the
aesthetic: the artistic pole is the author’s text and the aesthetic is the realization
accomplished by the reader» (Iser 21).
 Subjective Reader-Response Theory
Psychological Reader-Response Theory
The third group of reader-oriented critics place the
greatest emphasis on the reader in the interpretative
process.
For these psychological or subjective critics, the
reader’s thoughts, beliefs, and experiences play a
greater part than the actual text in shaping a work’s
meaning.
Led by Norman Holland and David Bleich, these
critics assert that readers shape and find their self-
identities in the reading process. (Bressler 86).
Similar to Rosenblat, Holland asserts that the reading
process is a transaction between the text and the reader.
The text is indeed important because it contains its own
themes, unity and structure. A reader, however, transforms
a text into a private world, a place where the reader works
out his or her fantasies, which are actually mediated by the
text so that they will be socially acceptable.
For Holland, all interpretations are subjective. Unlike New
Criticism, his reader-oriented approach asserts that no
“correct interpretation” exists. From his perspective, there
are as many valid interpretations as there are readers
because the act of interpretation is a subjective experience
in which the text is subordinated to the individual reader.
(Bressler 86).
Norman Holland uses Freudian psychoanalysis
as the foundation for his theory and practices
formulated in the early 1970s. He believes
that at birth we receive from our mothers a
primary identity. We personalize this identity
through our life’s experiences, transform it
into our own individualized identity theme
that becomes the lens through which we see
the world. Textual interpretation becomes a
matter of working out our own fears, desires,
and needs to help maintain our psychological
health. (Bressler 86).
Norman Holland’s central thesis is that people
deal with literary texts the same way they deal
with life-experience. Each person develops a
particular style of coping what Holland calls
an identity theme. (Tompkins xix).
Dynamics described three parts:
Fantasy,
defense (or form),
meaning
• Fantasies may be conscious and unconscious. A
fantasy usually combines several wishes.
• A literary text transforms fantasy by defenses. In
literature, form transforms fantasy toward an
acceptable meaning. Dynamics also dealt with
form as small verbal details.
• Conscious meaning is only the tip of the iceberg.
 NORMAN HOLLAND
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“The text has a direction; it begins, progresses,

and ends. But a skilled reader also gives the text
meaning by making connections between all
parts of the text, regardless of direction or
position…. The skilled reader abstracts recurring
images, incidents, characters, forms and all the
rest into certain themes” (Holland 28).
(Holland 28-29).

In the Dynamics model, a literary text transforms the fantasy

by defenses. That is, in ordinary life, our minds transform the
raw drives of id into socially or personally acceptable actions
by defenses such as repression, denial, reversal or
sublimation. So in literature, form transforms fantasy toward
an acceptable meaning. (Holland viii).
The dynamics of literary response is not taking place within a
text which a person introjects but between a person and a
text. (Holland xi).
David Bleich is the founder of “subjective criticism”. He agrees with
Holland’s psychological explanation of the interpretive process, but Bleich
devalues the role of the text plays, denying its objective existence.
Bleich argues that meaning does not reside in the text but is developed
when the reader works in cooperation with other readers to achieve the
text’s collective meaning. When each reader is able to articulate his or
her individual responses about the text within a group, then, can the
group, working together, negotiate meaning. Such communally motivated
negotiations ultimately determine the text’s meaning.
For Bleich, the starting point for interpretation is the reader’s responses
to a text, not the text itself. However, these responses do not constitute
the text’s meaning because meaning can not be found within a text or
within responses to the text. Rather, a text’s meaning must be developed
from and out of the reader’s responses, working in conjunction with
other readers’ responses and with past literary and life experiences. So,
Bleich differentiates between the reader’s responses to a text and the
reader’s interpretation or meaning, which must be developed
communally in a classroom or similar setting. (Bressler 86-87).
For Bleich and his adherents, the key to
developing a text’s meaning is the working out of
one’s responses to a text so that these responses
will be challenged, amended, and then accepted
by one’s social group. When reading a text, a
reader may respond to something in the text in a
bizarre and personal way. Through discussion,
these private responses are pruned away by
members of the reader’s social group. The group
decides on the acceptable interpretation of the
text. Only through negotiations with other
readers and other texts – intertextuality – can
one develop the text’s meaning. (Bressler 87).
Reading is an activity, something you do.
(Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class?)
 IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS?
The answer this book gives to its title question is
«there is» and «there isn’t».
• There isn’t a text in this or any other class if one
means by text “an entity which always remains the
same from one moment to the next”.
• But there is a text in this and every class if one
means by text the structure of meanings that is
obvious and inescapable from the perspective of
whatever interpretive assumptions happen to be in
force. (Fish vii)
 Social Reader-Response Theory
Affective Stylistics
• Interpretive community is a term coined by Stanley Fish
to designate a group of readers who share the same
interpretive strategies. Fish, a contemporary reader-
oriented critic, has coined the term affective stylistics or
reception aesthetics to describe his reading strategy.
Fish argues that meaning inheres in the reader, not the
text. A text’s meaning resides in the reading community
to which a reader belongs, or what Fish calls the
interpretive community. This community or (these
communities) ultimately invests meaning. (Bressler 88).
Unlike the New Critics, Fish declares that the
objectivity of a text is an illusion because the
text is a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which
the reader writes the actual text. The reader
determines the form and content of the text.
Not the text but the reader is preeminent.
(Bressler 88).
The term Reader-oriented criticism allows for
so much divergence in theory and methods.
Such an eclectic membership denotes the
continued growth and ongoing development
of reader-oriented criticism.
As reader-oriented critics use a variety of
methodologies, there is no particular list of
questions. Nevertheless, by asking the
following questions, one can participate in
both the theory and practice of reader-
oriented criticism: (Bressler 88).
• Who is the actual reader?
• Who is the implied reader?
• Who is the ideal reader?
• Who is the narratee?
• What are some gaps you see in the text?
• Can you list several horizons of expectations and show how they change from a
particular text’s beginning to its end?
• Using Jauss’s definition of horizons of expectation, can you develop (first on
your own and then with your classmates) an interpretation of a particular text?
• Can you articulate your identity theme as you develop your personal
interpretation of a particular text?
• Using Bleich’s subjective criticism, can you state the difference between your
response to a text and your interpretation?
• In a classroom setting, develop your class’s interpretive strategies for arriving
at the meaning of a particular text.
• As you interpret this text, can you cite the interpretive community or
communities to which you, the reader, belong? (Bressler 88).
Because all reader-oriented critics agree that the
individual reader creates the text’s meaning,
reader-oriented criticism declares that there can
be no correct meaning for any text; instead many
valid interpretations are possible.
What the reading process is and how readers
read are major concerns for all reader-oriented
critics. The answers to these and similar questions
are widely divergent. (Bressler 89).
Iser’s gap theory, Rosenblatt’s transactional
theory, and Fish’s rather relativistic
assumption that no text can exist until either
the reader or an interpretive community
creates it are significant.
Do African-Americans read differently from
European Americans? How do women read?
How do men read? In other words, different
schools of criticism such as feminism, gender
studies, have embraced the principles of
reader-oriented criticism. (Bressler 90).
“Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest, tell me who?”
[…]
“Thou, queen, art the fairest in all the land.”
[…]
“Thou, queen, art fair, and beauteous to see,
But Snow White is lovelier far than thee!”
[…]
“Thou, queen, art the fairest in all this land:
But over the hills, in the greenwood shade,
Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
There Snow White is hiding her head; and she
Is lovelier far, O queen! than thee.”
[…]
“Thou, lady, art loveliest here, I ween;
But lovelier far is the new-made queen.”
Grimm, J.L.C. and Grimm W.C., “Snow White”
in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, London: CRW
Publishing Limited, 2004: 199-208
Midwinter – Invincible, Immaculate. The Count and his wife go riding, he on a grey
mare and she on a black one, she wrapped in the glittering pelts of black foxes; and she
wore high, black, shining boots with scarlet heels, and spurs. Fresh snow fell on snow
already fallen; when it ceased, the whole world was white. “I wish I had a girl as white
as snow,” says the Count. They ride on. They come to a hole in the snow; this hole is
filled with blood. He says: “I wish I had a girl as red as blood.” So they ride on again;
here is a raven, perched on a bare bough. “I wish I had a girl as black as that bird’s
feather.”
As soon as he completed her description, there she stood, beside the road, white skin,
red mouth, black hair and stark naked; she was the child of his desire and the Countees
hated her. The Count lifted her up and sat in front of him on his saddle but the
Countess had only one thought: how shall I be rid of her?
The Countess dropped her glove in the snow and told the girl to get down to look for it;
she meant to gallop off and leave her there but the Count said: “I’ll buy you new
gloves.” At that, the furs sprang off the Countess’s shoulders and twined round the
naked girl. Then the Countess threw her diamond brooch through the ice of a frozen
pond: “Dive in and fetch it for me,” she said; she thought the girl would drown. But the
Count said: “Is she a fish, to swim in such cold weather?” Then her boots leapt off the
Countees’s feet and on to the girl’s legs. Now the Countess was bare as a bone and the
girl furred and booted; the Count felt sorry for his wife. They came to a bush of roses,
all in flower. “Pick me one,” said the Countess to the girl. “I can’t deny you that,” said
the Count.
So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn;
bleeds; screams; falls.
Weeping, the Count got off his horse, unfastened his
breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl.
The Countess reined in her stamping mare and watched
him narrowly; he was soon finished.
Then the girl began to melt. Soon there was nothing left of
her but a feather a bird might have dropped; a bloodstain,
like the trace of a fox’s kill on the snow; and the rose she
had pulled off the bush. Now the Countess had all her
clothes again. With her long hand she stroked her furs.
The Count picked up the rose, bowed and handed it to his
wife; when she touched it, she dropped it.
“It bites!” she said.
Carter, Angela. “The Snow Child” in The
Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage Books,
2006: 105-106.
• “Mary Cassatt and Me”, 1976 by Miriam
Schapiro
• Schapiro made “femmages”, collages which
addressed feminist concerns by combining
fabric, ribbon, wallpaper, and other
traditionally “feminine” materials. (Doss 187 )
Born in Toronto, Canada in 1923,
Miriam Schapiro, painter, sculptor,
printmaker and “femmagist”, is
known as a leader in both the
Feminist Art Movement and the
Pattern and Decoration Movement.
Definition of "Femmage":
1. It is a work by a woman.
2. The activities of saving and collecting are
important ingredients.
3. The theme has a woman-life context.
 Feminine materials in Schapiro’s work can be compared with Susan Glaspell’s
one-act play, “Trifles” (1916). So, in order to understand these works beter,
please first read the extract from the play and analyze the quotation.

Sheriff: Nothing here but kitchen things.

[…]
Lewis Hale: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
[…]
Mrs. Hale: I’d hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticising.
[…]
Mrs. Peters: She said she wanted an apron.
Mrs. Hale: Do you think she did it?
Mrs. Hale: Well, I don’t think she did. Asking for an apron and her little shawl. Worring about her
fruit.
[…]
Mrs. Hale: Mrs. Peters, look at this one. Here, this is the one she was working on, and look at the
sewing! All the rest of it has been so nice and even. And look at this! It’s all over the place! Why,
it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!
(After she has said this they look at each other, then start to glance back at the door. After an
instant Mrs Hale has pulled at a knot and ripped the sewing.)
Mrs. Peters: Oh, what are you doing, Mrs Hale?
Mrs Hale: (mildly) Just pulling out a stitch or two that’s
not sewed very good. (threading a needle) Bad
sewing always made me fidgety.
Mrs Peters: (nervously) I don’t think we ought to touch
things.
Mrs Hale: I’ll just finish up this end. (suddenly stopping
and leaning forward) Mrs Peters?
Mrs Peters: Yes, Mrs Hale?
Mrs Hale:What do you suppose she was so nervous
about?
[…]
 “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great
care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her
husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences. […] Her
husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. She wept at once,
with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm
of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would
have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair.
Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that
haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees
that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of
rain was in the air. […] countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
[…]
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull
stare in her eyes.
[…]
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it,
fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and
clusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled
the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her…. When
she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her
slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath:
“Free, free, free!” […] “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept
whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips
to the keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the
door! I beg; open the door – you will make yourself ill. What
are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking
in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.
Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that
would be her own […] She arose at length and opened the
door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish
triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like
a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and
together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting
for them at the bottom.
 Some one was opening the front door with
a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who
entered, a little travel-stained, composedly
carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had
been far from the scene of accident, and did
not even know there had been one. He stood
amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at
Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the
view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had
sied of heart disease –of joy that kills.
Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (1894) is about a
woman, Mrs. Mallard, struggling with heart trouble.
Her sister Josephine tells her the news of her
husband’s death. She weeps at once. She can see in
the open square trees, which can be the symbol for
freedom, and new spring life, symbol of rebirth. She
can taste the delicious breath of rain in the air. She
hears the notes of a distant song and sparrows. She is
rediscovering life. However, at the end of the story,
she dies when she sees her husband, Brently Mallard,
alive. The end of the story may be tragic but a
woman’s understanding of what the freedom is
apparently more effective.
I belong to that classification of people known
as wives. I am a wife. And, not altogether
incidentally, I am a mother.
Not too long ago a male friend of mine
appeared on the scene fresh from a recent
divorce. He had one child, who is, of course,
with his ex-wife. He is looking for another
wife. As I thought about him while I was
ironing one evening, it suddenly occurred to
me that I, too, would like to have a wife. Why
do I want a wife?
I would like to go back to school so that I can
become economically independent, support
myself, and, if need be, support those dependent
upon me. I want a wife who will work and send
me to school. And while I am going to school, I
want a wife to take care of my children.
[…]
I want a wife who will take care of my physical
needs. I want a wife who will keep my house
clean.
[…]
I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean,
ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and
who will see to it that my personal things are
kept in their proper place so that I can find what
I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who
cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I
want a wife who will plan the menus, do the
necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals,
serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning
up while I do my studying. I want a wife who will
care for me when I am sick and sympathize with
my pain and loss of time from school.
I want a wife who will not bother me with
rambling complaints about a wife's duties.
If, by chance, I find another person more
suitable as a wife than the wife I already have,
I want the liberty to replace my present wife
with another one. Naturally, I will expect a
fresh, new life; my wife will take the children
and be solely responsible for them so that I
am left free.
When I am through with school and have a
job, I want my wife to quit working and remain
at home so that my wife can more fully and
completely take care of a wife's duties. My
God, who wouldn't want a wife?
The speech “Why I Want a Wife?”, a legendary feminist satire, was
delivered by Judy Syfers delivered on August 26, 1970.
Bety Friedan, an extract from “That Has No
Name” (1963)
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years
in the minds of American women. It was a strange
stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that
women suffered in the middle the twentieth
century in the United States. Each suburban wife
struggled with it alone. As she made the beds,
shopped for groceries, ate peanut butter
sandwiches with her children, lay beside her
husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of
herself the silent question – “Is this all?”
In this presentation, all the
works of art as the examples
reflecting the gender issue are
given to indicate the application
of Reader-Response Criticism to
the literary texts.
Reader-response theory does not aim
for uniformity of interpretation, nor
does it assume that uniformity is
possible; it does, however, help to
account for the diversity of
interpretations and to encourage
participation in a community of
interpreters. (Weele 146).
 Works Cited

• Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Fourth Edition. New Jersey:
Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
• Carter, Angela. “The Snow Child” in The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage Books, 2006: 105-106.
• Doss, Erika. Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Fish, Stanley. Is There A Text in This Class? : The Authority of Interpretive Communities. London: Harvard
University Press, 1980.
• Grimm, J.L.C. and Grimm W.C., “Snow White” in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, London: CRW Publishing Limited,
2004: 199-208
• Holland, Norman H. The Dynamics of Literary Response. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
• Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. London: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1987.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader The Text The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.
• Tompkins, Jane P. Ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1992.
• Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1999.
• Weele, Michael Vander. “Reader-Response Theories” in Contemporary Literary Theory: A Christian
Appraisal. Eds. Clarence Walhout and Leland Ryken.