Feminist

Literary
Criticism
SILANG EXTENSION
 Feminist Criticism
It is the literary analysis that arises from the
viewpoint of feminism, feminist theory, and/or
feminist politics.
A critical theory that explores the bias in favor of
the male gender in literature, and which re-
examines all literature from a feminist point of
view.
 Feminist Criticism
Uses the principles and
ideology of feminism to
critique the language of
literature.
Elaine Showalter
 Elaine Showalter
Born on January 21, 1941
American literary critic,
feminist, and writer on cultural
and social issues.
Developed the practice of
gynocritics.
 Elaine Showalter
Founder of
Feminist Literary
Criticism in
United States
Academia.
 Two Sections of
Feminist Criticism
The Woman as Reader or
Feminist Critique
The Woman as Writer or
Gynocritics (la gynocritique)
 The Woman as Reader or
Feminist Critique
Concerned with the exploitation
and manipulation of the female
audience, especially in popular
culture and film, with the analysis
of woman as sign in semiotic
systems.
 The Woman as Writer
The program of gynocritics is to construct a
female framework for the analysis of
women’s literature, to develop new models
based on the study of female experience,
rather than to adapt male models and
theories.
Aims to understand the
specificity of women’s writing
not as a product of sexism
but as a fundamental aspect
of female reality.
Primary concern is to see “Women
as producer of textual meaning with
the history, themes, genres, and
structures of literature by women.”
 History of Feminist
Literary Criticism
First Wave- concerned with women’s authorship and
representation of women’s condition within literature
Second wave- concerned with exclusion of women to
literary canon
Third wave- theoretical works in women’s studies
 Feminist literary criticism may
use any of the following methods:
Deconstructing the way that women are described, especially
if the author is male. This applies to both fictional characters
in novels, stories, and plays, and women characters in
nonfiction including biography and history.
Deconstructing how one's own gender influences how one
reads and interprets a text, and which characters and how
the reader identifies depending on the reader's gender.
 Feminist literary criticism may
use any of the following methods:
Deconstructing how women autobiographers
and biographers of women treat their subjects,
and how biographers treat women who are
secondary to the main subject.
Describing relationships between the literary
text and ideas about power and sexuality and
gender.
 Feminist literary criticism may
use any of the following methods:
Critique of patriarchal or woman-marginalizing language,
such as a "universal" use of the masculine pronouns "he" and
"him."
Noticing and unpacking differences in how men and women
write: a style, for instance, where women use more reflexive
language and men use more direct language (example: "she
let herself in" vs. "he opened the door").
 Feminist literary criticism may
use any of the following methods:
Examining how relationships between men and
women and those assuming male and female
roles are depicted in the text, including power
relations.
Examining the text to find ways in which
patriarchy is resisted or could have been resisted.
 ‘One is not born a woman; rather,
one becomes a woman’.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex