Name : Anjali M. Rathod
Enrollment no. : 4069206420220024
Roll no. : 02
Batch : M.A. Sem. 3 (2022-24)
Paper no. : 204 - Contemporary Western theories and Film Studies
Email Address: rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : Smt. S.B. Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar - 364002
Feminist Criticism
Introduction :
Feminist literary criticism has almost gone through two centuries up to now. This literary criticism is based on the reflection of women’s situation by themselves in the long term and achievement of their specific and practical action. Thus, feminism is the source of feminist literary criticism. Feminism has experienced two waves. The First Wave, also called liberal feminism, usually refers to the social movement that women fought for their legal right to vote and the basic civil rights in America and Britain from 1890 to 1920. In the First Wave, women had successfully strived for their civil rights and the opportunity of attending higher education and finding jobs in specific industry areas.
More important was that this wave was a perquisite for the deeper and subtle social works by feminists later. The Second Wave also known as the Women’s Liberation Movement, which focused on the differences between female and male and discussed the origin and operation of gender discrimination in ideology, culture and society. Owing to this ideology of the feminists, the early development of the feminist literary criticism tried to seek a chance and approach to change the mechanism of literature between personal and political.
The Development of Feminist Literary Criticism
The modern feminist movement originates from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Over these years, the concept of being equal with male has developed into different stages and various feminist schools have come into being: radical feminism, liberal feminism, socialist feminism, black feminism, post-modem feminism and psycho-analytical feminism.
According to the schools of ideologies and thoughts, feminism can be mainly divided into four groups: Liberal feminism, Radical feminism, socialist feminism and Marxist feminism. Because of differences of historical and cultural inheritance, western feminist literary criticism mainly consists of American school, Britain school and French school. These schools were not totally isolated, instead they communicated, affected and promoted each other. No matter what kind of schools, they all made great contributions to the development and maturity of feminist literary criticism.
According to Lisa Tuttle, the final goal of feminist criticism is “to develop and uncover a female tradition of writing,” “to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective", “to rediscover old texts", “to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view” “to resist sexism in literature and to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style".
Feminist criticism is broadly divided into two categories; feminist critique and Gynocriticism.
1. Feminist Critique: Feminist critique studies women as a reader. Here women read literature produced by male writers. It studies the ideologies underlying literature and literary theories. It exposes the stereotypical images of women in Literature. It also unearths neglected, suppressed, obliterated women writers in literary history by male critics.
Feminist critics argue that the portrayal of women in literature is not authentic as this portrayal is presented by men from their own point of view. In short, this portrayal of women is what men think women are. It is a man’s conception of what a woman should be. Men look at women from their point of view and even teach women to look at themselves from men’s point of view. So it exposes such false depiction of women in literature, films, culture and other popular media.
2. Gynocriticism: Gynocriticism studies women as producer and creator of literature and arts. It studies the problems of female creative writers. Gynocritics develop new methods of studying women writers rather than adopting the models created by male writers. It also adopts theories of structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and Marxism for its purpose.
Women must free themselves from male literary tradition and discover the women writers buried in the past and create a separate literary tradition of women writers only. Women must use literature to express their own thoughts, experiences and feelings and emotions. Gynocriticism emphasizes that women should not rely totally on theories developed by male writers about literature and art. Instead, they should develop their own theory according to women’s creativity and female experiences. Women should develop their own language suitable/ proper to express female experiences, emotions and feelings.
Virginia Woolf (1882to 21941) is one of the most important feminist critics of 20thcentury. She continually wrote about the problems faced by women throughout the history. Her essay Shakespeare's sister examines how women faced social, cultural and economic problems to realize their literary ambitions. Their literary dreams were thwarted at every stage by patriarchal society and male domination. She begins the essay by saying that there is very little about the lives of women in history.
In fact, women do not have control over their lives. She questions what would have happened if Shakespeare would have a very talented, gifted and imaginary sister like himself. Probably, she could not have gone to school and never got any type of education. Nobody would have encouraged the literary talent and ambitions. Her parents could have forced her to marry at the early age to man of their choice. If she could have resisted her parent’s marriage proposal, she would have been blackmailed emotionally or given physical punishment and forced to marry at the very young age to a boy of their choice.
Suppose, she would have gone to London like Shakespeare to realise her literary ambitions, everybody would have poked fun at her literary ambitions. After trying hard and not getting any opportunity to realise her literary ambitions in London, circumstances and utter poverty could have forced her to commit suicide.
Room of One's Own is another seminal book in feminist criticism. The book discusses problems faced by women who want to be a creative writer. The title of the book is very significant as it indicates the general thesis of the book that if a woman wants to be a successful creative writer she must have her own room, a private space where she can write. If a woman wants to own her room, she must have financial freedom and independence.
Virginia Woolf further argues that women didn't have such financial freedom and hence they were unable to realise their literary ambitions. If they do have creative genius and talent they were kept away from education and hence financial freedom and independence. In case a woman overcame such hindrances and difficulties and became a successful creative writer she was harassed by the society. She would have not gotten any recognition from society. She explains how women were denied any opportunity for education while their male counterparts got every opportunity to get education and develop their creative ability.
Conclusion :
Feminist literary criticism is known as the critical analysis of literary works based on the feminist perspective. In other words, feminist literary criticism is a kind of literary criticism on the basis of feminist theory or the politics of feminism more precisely. In particular, it also can be explained as using ideological discourses and feminist rules to study language, structure and being of literature. “This school of thought seeks to describe and analyze the ways in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination in regard to female bodies by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature.”
Thank You… .
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