When we wrote these questions, we were hoping to help

you to understand the Feminist articles in the AQA

critical booklet.
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1. Read para 1 on P28 What do feminist critics consider?

Feminist critics consider the ideas of gender issues in literature. They consider the gender
roles in the piece of literature, where they question the representation of gender or judge the
heard/unheard voices and the value and attitudes which are presented in the text, this way
considering the gender roles generally. They do this to criticise the male dominated world of
literature where texts are based off a male point of view and highlight the struggles of
women in literature and society.

2. What are texts criticised for? (Same para).

They have gender as their central argument however can go around either criticising the
oppressive nature and attitude towards women in literature where they have marginal roles
compared to men, or they either focus on the empowering ideas of women in literature and
celebrate the assertion of voice by a female character in what is a patriarchal society.

3. Feminist critics often reposition the focus and either sympathise with the oppression of
women or celebrate the attempts of women to assert themselves. How would this affect how
you see the Queen in Snow White?

It makes us see the Queen in snow white as empowered and significant in the story of snow
white, as she is the main antagonist where she answers to no man and is the central force of
power in the kingdom. However, her invincible magical powers is utilised in making her the
“fairest of them all” which defeats the purpose of an empowered female character as she is
using her powers to resign to the female beauty stereotypes constructed by the patriarchal
male dominated society where women are just objects of beauty. Therefore in Snow white,
the queen’s attempt to assert herself cannot be celebrated in a feminist critic’s view as it is
her assertion of power by fitting into these female stereotypes that only diminishes a
woman's value in society as just their beauty and youth.

4. Some feminist critics use ideas from feminist literary criticism to read the text in a way that
is counter to the commonly accepted reading. How would this affect how you read the
stepmother and step-sisters in Cinderella?

This affects the way we read the stepmother and stepsisters in Cinderella as we see them
as oppressors rather than jealous sisters. The main objective of the stepmother and
stepsisters is to restrict Cinderella from ever socialising with a man to ensure they get all the
best bachelors possible due to Cinderella’s beauty which they are overpowered by. The
stepsisters and stepmother are established as ugly, namely the “Ugly stepsisters” with
physical imperfections described as a significant feature of their character. The commonly
accepted way of reading is to have pathos for Cinderella, as due to these ugly antagonists is
reduced to a maidservant. However, if we use feminist literary criticism, we sympathise for
the stepsisters as they have been characters created to oppose the feminine stereotypes
constructed by male writers to raise the value of Cinderella and create this idea that women
only value beauty and have a petty relationship over it. The fact that the sisters’ ugliness
reflect their personality is demeaning and that the most beautiful gets the happy ending
portrays how male authors see feminine characteristics in women as beautiful, submissive
and quiet to overpower other outspoken properties and through the feminist literary criticism
way of reading, we see the dynamic of the sisters in a different light.

5. On P28, what did feminism see very clearly?

Feminist saw very clearly that the constructed feminist stereotypes of women created an
obstacle for true equality between men and women.

6. What did Kate Millet say about private lives – para 1 of P29?

Kate Millet stated that the private lives of people are always interlinked with their
public/political lives. Private power based relationships are reflected publicly and politically.

7. List 3 questions feminist critics ask P29?

What sort of roles did female characters play?

What themes were these female characters associated with?

What are the implicit presuppositions in the given test?

8. List four common stereotypes

1. Eternally dissatisfied shrew

2. Cute but helpless
3. The immoral dangerous seductress
4. The self sacrificing angel

9. Helplessness – how is it presented, and how is independence presented?

Helplessness is presented as admirable and endearing, almost patronisingly from a male

reader’s perspective. Helplessness = dependence, where it is revered, however
independence marks dislike and rejection
10. P30 (P Barry) Why has the women's movement always been crucially concerned with
books and literature? How can books / stories be a mechanism of patriarchy?

Literature and books have significantly shaped the way women are portrayed in society. The
start of literature was very male dominated, giving female representation which was very
limited and a construction of female stereotypes. Characters very much provided role
models for gender roles in society, and these books based off male author’s point of views
did not create inspiring female role models but even further perpetuated stereotypes like the
eternally dissatisfied shrew, the helpless but cute women and what not. Children grow up
with books and stories and these stories educate/condition children and this is passed down
for generations, making books and stories a mechanism of patriarchy.

11. What is the difference between

‘Feminist’: a person who believes in politically and social equality of women

‘female’: a gender/sex with XX chromosomes

‘feminine’: A quality which is traditionally related to women/girls

12. How did feminist theorists change their focus in the 1980s? Three things

In the 1980s, the feminist theorists changed their focus and their way of criticism.

They first of all stopped attacking men for their positions in society compared to women but
started focusing on the nature of the women’s roles in society and reconstructing these
experiences. Second of all, they started taking in other kinds of criticism like Marxism to
widen their thinking and made their criticism more eclectic. Third of all, they tried to rewrite
the history of women in literature by giving hidden female voices a more prominent chance.

13. How do gender roles and constructions affect men? P33

Gender roles and constructions affect men by creating the same harmful stereotypes
women receive. Although male stereotypes are not demeaning and degrading as female
stereotypes, they also have an effect on men because it creates toxic masculinity.
Masculinity like femininity has constructed stereotypes like being strong, tough etc. This
affects men because they also have the feeling that they need to perpetuate these
stereotypes and must fit into this construct as it puts them on a higher pedestal.

14. Read “What feminist critics do” P Barry P31 – which three do you find most interesting?

Number 7 is interesting because it is a very valid debate and it is almost impossible to find
out after the generations and thousands of years of the world existing where we cannot
erase history of literature and politics between gender roles. It is intriguing to wonder if it is
wholly a social construct or if it is scientifically that genders are different.

Number 1 is also interesting because they are essentially taking very big action towards
literature as a whole. Literature is such a wide field and how they are rethinking the whole
concept of women in literature to encourage equality is inspiring
Number 9 also is meticulous and intriguing. Psychoanalysis allows everyone to read into the
hidden messages of texts and how tiny factors could be suggesting things.

Read either the eco section or the post –

colonial section of the anthology on your
own. Write your teacher a letter about
what you have found interesting:
I find the idea of eco criticism very interesting. It is a concept that is derived from a subject
that is very present and alive in the political world. Global warming and climate change has
made the whole ecocriticism movement very big and meaningful, as ultimately critics believe
that without earth there would be no point to literature, so I believe that the huge threat of
climate change in the recent decades made this criticism take off a lot.

I believe that however eco criticism is very radical. Although there are aspects on how
radical thinking came from “grassroots” and how every political idea has a foundation of
cultural religion, society etc, the ideas behind the questions they ask seem rather out there.
How nature can affect how society has been shaped, and how women and men may write
about nature differently are very political questions that have been related to nature and the
Earth and this way of thinking is unlike other political criticisms which focus on human nature
and how it has affected society rather than natural resources and other natural
environmental factors. This to me is very interesting because I have never encountered
political thinking like this.

Some ideas like how the human exploitative nature of the Earth can relate to our exploitative
nature towards other people I am intrigued by because I think that can be quite a good way
to portray human attitudes. Proof of humans selfishly taking resources and killing living
creatures to survive or to enjoy luxuries can reflect in human to human greed which also
relates to capitalism marxism and other criticisms. Exploitation of women because they are
deemed “inferior” and “helpless” also can be showed in the exploitation of nature and so
feminism can be interlinked to, making nature as an argument very powerful.

Marxism
On P20 What did Marx believe that Western capitalist economic systems are designed to
do?
Marx believed that capitalist economic systems were made to elevate the wealth and uphold
the status of upper class rich, while suppressing the lower class and restricting them to their
level of wealth. Marx thought that the class the person was born in reflected their whole
social life; if their grandfathers were labourers, generations would follow in suit of that level
of job while the rich benefitted off the cheap labour that they profited off of. Although
capitalism argues that anybody regardless of their background in wealth and status can
climb up the social ladder to change their economic status, Marxism argues that our cultural
base or the way the superstructure is organised like religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs,
education etc. conditions the way in which subjects of that base think and so human
thinking/place in the social ladder remains unchanged for quite some time. This whole idea
completely contradicts capitalism, arguing that the whole idea of freedom is fake; as our
“free thinking” is ultimately the product of teaching we get from our cultural base and so
undermining capitalist ideologies using materialist theories.

What does the Marxist critic keep in mind? Four things

1. They divide two parts of the work; the surface level ideas and the hidden ideas. This
way of thinking reflects actions of psychoanalysts and they then use the themes
which are not openly acknowledged to relate to Marxist ideas like oppression of the
poor and struggles between economic classes.
2. Another key aspect of Marxist critics is to relate the political ideas of economy and
class and other Marxist points to the class and status of the author. This can reflect
the conditioning of the cultural base that Marxist theories present and is another
example of the psychoanalytic nature of Marxist critics.
3. They also relate the genre of literary writing of the author to the period of time it was
written in. This is similar to the second point as it relates to the similar idea of
categorising the thinking of humans into the period of time they lived in which closely
relates to the theory of conditioning due to a “cultural base.”
4. Another point that critics refer to is the literary form. Marxist critics believe that the
structure and form of literary writing is a product of the political circumstances of that
time.

ON P20 Find the line that means this: Marxist readers ask whether the text they are reading
perpetuates the way things are in our society, or challenges them.

The Marxist critic is a reader who keeps in mind issues of power, work, oppression and
money, and in focusing on what the text reveals of the author’s values and social context,
Marxism questions whether the text supports the prevailing social and economic system or
undermines it.

H Bertens’ essay:

Find this line “‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
social existence that determines their consciousness’. Now find a line in the next paragraph
that means the same thing.
 Marxism is about how your social circumstances determine much, if
not all of your life.

Find these statements, then put them in your own words:

“minds aren’t free at all, they only Our thoughts and beliefs are portrayed as free as we do
think they are” have the freedom to think what we want. However these
houghts are not ideas we have freely chosen to believe but our
deas that our social circumstance has conditioned us to think is
your own ideas.
b) “capitalism alienates them from Capitalism makes labourers and lower class workers under the
hemselves egime of the upper class rich appear and act like objects and
units that are just things needed for the whole larger structure of
he economy to work.
c) “it reifies them” t objectifies them as less than labourers but pawns for the
upper class rich to profit off of.

P22 P Barry

In paragraph one,find a quote that shows what Marx and Engels thought about art and
literature:

They thought literature was a form of art and creativity with undertones of political ideologies
as the ideas underneath the surface hidden were the “better work of art” in their opinion.
They did not directly put their ideologies on a page of writing and separated propaganda
from literature, perceiving writing as a form of art.

All the same, Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class, and its prevailing
‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit assumptions, half-realised allegiances, etc.) have a major
bearing on what is written by a member of that class.

Explain why you agree or disagree:

- I think that political thinking based on cultural norms and bases that we are born into has
changed over time. I agree that back before the 20th/21st century, ideologies may have
been constricted to the members of a certain class due to the huge political revolutions
based on beliefs of the monarchy and such, and the ever changing rulers of countries due to
many empires being formed. This huge time period before the 20th/21st century, where
things more or less settled, provided a breeding ground for political ideas based on class
because people of certain classes were being treated differently and so formed large groups
of political ideologies as they all had alike thinking. This aligns with the Marxist theory of how
the social circumstance we are born into nurtures our political thinking and so affects the
writing of a person, as humans will write in a way where their political ideas deemed by
themselves as “right” due to their free thinking because no one would write about literature
which contradicts their own political thinking as they would think it is “wrong.” Similarly in the
21st century, we are also free to have our own political beliefs, however due to the spreading
of new political beliefs which may be contradictory to a certain cultural base, people are
more educated generally on other ideas which gives them more of a freedom to have more
radical thinking, being less restricted to a certain cultural belief. This way, the cultural base
derivation of political ideas is less prominent as it is not the cultural base that conditions us
of these ideas but ourselves as we have the freedom of social media and then internet to
learn from other cultural bases. Therefore I disagree in the context of the 21st century
because even though we are all members of a certain class, we have more freedom due to
new ways of information spreading, preventing ourselves from being restricted to one way of
thinking.

P24 P Barry on Krieger’s essay on Twelfth Night

Paragraph two: some people see the play as a call to avoid extremes – the extreme of
Orsino wallowing and the extreme of Malvolio resisting pleasure. What is this view of the
play ignoring?

The view of the play is ignoring the class each character lies in as there is no particular
pattern in how this action relates to their social class.

Describe the private world which these aristocratic characters can escape into:

Sir Toby: The drunken world where he can drink himself away from having the
responsibilities to care for anybody.

Olivia: World of bereavement where she detaches herself from everyone around her.

Orsino: The world of obsession due to love and this reflects on his wallowing which shows
the extreme psychological idea of this private world.

Explain what aspiration is

The desire to achieve something

Give three examples of aspiration in the world of the servant characters

a) The servants of Olivia both aspire to marry into rich families to escape their social class as
servants

b) Viola displaces two other servants from their access of privilege from Duke Orsino

c) Maria intends to humiliate Malvolio

In the last paragraph of this essay on 12th Night, P Barry says what the Marxist feature of the
essay is.

The marxist feature of the separation of class between servants and upper class characters
is demonstrated. The struggle of classes highlighted.
 P26 J Peck and M Coyle

How would a “crude” Marxist dismiss all literature?

Dismiss all literature as bourgeois luxury writing as middle class writers complaining about
their middle class issues.

P26 the issues raised in a text are too complex for the author – or the ideological code of
the period in which the text was written – to control and contain.

Can you think of any texts which mean more or something different to what their author
intended? Think about films, songs, books, poems….

Shrek = Intended to be a kid’s movie with fantastical fairy tale twists to make the stories have
comedy as they use classic childhood books which everyone can understand. The ideas of
princes, kings, princesses, magical creatures etc are presented towards a child audience
which resonates as it reflects what girls and boys both like. However, the idea of Shrek being
an ogre and therefore being classed a villain and evil by people in the kingdom shows the
underneath surface of society, segregating and isolating those who on the surface look evil,
hinting at stereotypical profiling in our society?