In Conclusion

Through this blog I wanted to look at every aspect of Feminist Criticism and analyze so that my audience would have a better understanding of it. With every blog entry I tried to communicate to my audience what feminist criticism was, how it was used, and the effects of it. With the information given in this blog and the articles and books recommended, i hope that they can get a full understanding of this criticism and learn about other criticisms as well. My main objective was to convey to my readers that women’s impact on literature has shaped the way that readers read and analyze a literary text. Through women’s struggles, hardships, and dedication to change the literary canon to make it equal and inevitably changed the way readers digest literature. The impact that women had on literature can be said to be the most influential impact that literature has ever had in analyzing literature. The drastic change in the literary criticism was because of the women’s movement in literature and the change in the canon. Feminist criticism made lasting effect on both literary analysis and the validation of women’s writings which initially prompted further types of literary criticism. Readers focus on the humanist approach to literature now and how the authors view of world from the way the author writes. Through the impact of feminist criticism, readers read the texts that represent male and female, black and white, and gay and straight views. These criticisms can represent these minority groups in a way that haven’t been represented before in literature and its all due to feminist criticism.

 

Vocabulary for Feminist Critcism

Gendersphere: The entire field of philosophy, discourse, and activism that attends to gender, including, but not limited to feminism, antifeminism, Men’s Rights Activism, and Feminist Criticism.

Feminism: A self-defining segment of the Gendersphere. A feminist is a person who is recognised as a feminist by other feminists.

Pro-feminism: Men who are unwilling to call themselves feminists (or who are not recognised as such by some feminists) because they are male, even though their views are indistinguishable from feminism.

Contrafeminism: That part of the gendersphere that is broadly in disagreement with or opposition to feminism.

Antifeminism: Extreme contrafeminism. An essentially oppositionist stance.

Men’s Rights Activism: A movement devoted to improving the position of men in society. While this is basically a positive stance, the movement is infested with antifeminism.

Feminist Criticism: My term for my own philosophical position, and for the similar views of other people. The phrase is deliberately ambiguous: A feminist critic could be a critic of feminism or a feminist who criticises. I want to carve out a position within gendersphere independent of of the other -isms, overlapping with both feminism and MRA, and critical of both. Arguably the phrase “feminist criticism” is obnoxiously gendered (see below), because feminist critics are also critics of antifeminism, however given the hegemonic position of feminism within the gendersphere I think it is justified. The word “criticism” should be taken in its constructive sense, there are many aspects of feminism that feminist critics will agree with. Feminist Critics accept the tools of feminism (gender analysis, etc.,) and apply them to feminism itself.

Typical: I use this word as a term of art, meaning behaviour, etc., which (a) is common among feminists (or some other group), (b) is unlikely to be challenged by other feminists, (c) if someone with otherwise good feminist credentials does challenge it, they are likely to have their status as feminists challenged by other feminists, and (d) those without feminist credentials who challenge it are likely to be regarded as antifeminists/MRAs (or the equivalent opposition group).

The ‘Bird in your Garden’ Test: A test for typicality. If all you need do to see a particular kind of bird is look out the window, that’s an indication that those birds are typical of where you live. If you have to travel 200 miles to visit a nature reserve to see them, then they’re not typical. Similarly if you can easily find an example of a particular argument or behaviour passing unchallenged among the usual suspects within the blogosphere, then that’s an indication that it is typical. If you can’t, then it probably isn’t.

The Avuncular Arm: A typical pro-feminist response to male victimisation. An avuncular arm slides around the survivor’s shoulder, and he is invited to “consider how we oppress women”. A collective form of self-flagellation, this is victim-blaming at its worst because it casts the survivor into the role of perp. It is one of the reasons why feminism is toxic to many male survivors.

The Odious Comparison: Typical feminist practice of unjustifiably or inappropriately comparing male oppression, suffering, etc., unfavourably with female suffering. If a feminist or pro-feminist wishes to discuss male oppression etc., within feminism, then it is de rigueur to genuflect to the Odious Comparison.

Selective Focus: Typical feminist practice of looking only at those oppressions which (according to the feminist) affect women worse, in order to justify the Odious Comparison. For example, in a discussion about violence, only sexual and domestic violence will be considered. (Note that I do not object to a focus upon these issues. It is the exclusive and frequently innappropriate focus which is problematic.)

Denial, Dismissal, Minimisation, and ignoring of male oppression, suffering, etc.: I really need a catchy phrase to describe this quadrumvirate of discourses. (The ‘four discourses’?) Note that this is not limited to feminism, but is characteristic of the mainstream. Hence it is an example of feminism embracing and extending a previously existing gendered discourse.

Subordination: The typical feminist practice of presenting men’s oppression and suffering as subordinate to women’s.

The Three Techniques, also Displacement, Incidentalisation, and Exclusion: Mainstream rhetorical techniques used to minimize male victimization, 

Lachrymosity: The tendency within both feminism and mainstream media to use tear jerking emotive language to describe female suffering and comparatively perfunctory language to describe male suffering.

Instanciation Not to be confused with “incidentalisation, which would be a better word for it, which is already taken. By “instanciation” I mean to portray instances of male victimization as incidents rather than as systems of oppression.

Holocaust Denial: How male victims and male oppression are rendered invisible by these techniques and discourses.

How Feminist Criticism that Effected other Criticisms

Through feminist criticism, when readers started to look at the roles of women in literature, readers started expanding to other minorities and races. Readers started analyzing other roles in literature and what impact and analysis other groups had on literature instead of the common, white male literature. All literary criticism helps the reader look at the literary context in a different perspective. When women were introduced to the literary canon readers started looking at others in that perspective. Racial and ethnic criticism, gay and lesbian theory and others have all become different ways in which readers analyze because of women. Through the knowledge of looking through texts through the lens of feminist criticism readers can use those same techniques when looking at other group criticisms.

During the 1970’s African American criticism flourished and readers started becoming interested in African American works but African Americans have always have had their own culture in art and history and their way of writing is very unique. African American writers focused their writing on the “interaction with their culture and issues of nationalism and the exposure of the unjust treatment of African American- a suppressed, repressed, and colonized subculture- at the hands of their white conquers.”  Through their struggles African Americans write about their oppression politically, socially and economically and their triumph time and time again. Like Women, African American writers are very new to the literary canon and their writings are new to the literary community. African Americans writing struggled to become recognized like feminist criticism because again the literary canon was made up entirely of  white American males. Through the African American Criticism readers understand their culture more and their struggles more. The main theme in African American culture is their struggle. Through their struggle come unique themes and motifs in their writing. African American criticism emphasizes the struggle, just as feminist criticism focused on the daily struggles of women and how they view the world and their morals. These two criticisms are a lot alike because they let the reader learn about their culture and their way of life. African American criticism is new to the literary community and due to its impact on literature readers analyze it differently and learn of different cultures. This criticism is a lot like feminist criticism because readers read it the same way.  For example when reading a literary text through the lens of feminist criticism readers are going to look at the role of women has in the story in comparison to men and the other characters and how women take care of certain issues, in the same way readers read African American criticism readers look at the criticism in the same way. Readers look at African American’s role in the story and how other characters and races in the story react to them. These two criticisms are a lot alike because they have struggled to be incorporated into the literary canon and had a major impact on it.

Feminist criticism was a leeway to gender criticism. Readers started to look at feminist criticism and seeing women’s roles in literature and wanted to look at the men’s role in literature. Readers look at “what it means to be a man and women and how men and women look at ethics, truth, personal identity, and society and how their opinions differ.” Gender studies came about after feminist criticism because readers look at women and how they viewed the world and what women thought were right and wrong,  “The goal of gender studies is to analyze and challenge the established literary canon. Women themselves, gender specialists assert must challenge the hegemony and free themselves from the false assumptions and the long-held prejudices that have prevented them from defining themselves.” Men and women both are very prominent themes in literature and understanding the way literature views men and women can let the readers analyze the literary context more and understand the authors view of the world. This criticism came right after feminist criticism became popular. These two criticisms are very similar because both criticisms copy off of each other and a lot because the characteristics of feminist criticism are similar to gender criticism. Looking at the role of women and men in stories is the main idea of gender criticism, the only difference from gender criticism and feminist criticism is that gender criticism focuses more on what makes a man a man and a woman a woman and how society views them and how society thinks that men and women should behave and the morals and values they should have, when readers read through the lens of gender criticism readers must look at the men’s role equally as much as the women’s role because this criticism is all about the equality between the two genders. A reader must look at how the characters and how they relate and interact with each other through the texts and initially how the author views the characters and their role in the story. With this criticism readers are able to learn about women’s struggles as well as men’s struggles and a reader can learn of the stories underling meaning and understand the text more, and because of feminist criticism, gender criticism made its way to the literary community and readers can learn more about them.

Gay and lesbian criticism is a new form of criticism. It has been adopted in the literary canon just of twenty years, it started in 1990 with such works “as Bonnie Zimmerman's The Safe Sea of Women (1990), Robert K. Martin's The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry (1979), and John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) have looked at history, either in its "true" form or in the form of texts, and have elaborated how homosexuality has been a topic or theme within it.” Gay and lesbian criticism is related to gender theory due to the examination of men in women’s roles in the story but it brings an element of sexuality into that comparison and gay and lesbian rely on gender identification and those stereotypes in order to formulate its ideas. It takes the sexuality and looks at literature through the lens of both homosexual and heterosexual ways, “Both gay and lesbian studies began as liberation movements, in parallel with the feminist and African American movements” . Gay and lesbian criticism can be linked with African American criticism and the feminist criticism because just as African Americans and women had to cope with prejudices and hardships in order to have rights, lesbians and gays go through the same prejudices with in our society and in literature. With lesbian and gay criticism readers can look at text through the same perspective as feminist criticism because of the similar themes that are in both criticisms, such as sexuality, relationships between men and women and ultimately the prejudices gay and lesbian writes went and go through still. Through the themes and motifs that gay and lesbian criticisms bring to the readers, readers are able to understand more fully the author and his intentions for his or her context and through this knowledge; readers can also know more of feminist criticism and look at it in a different context.

Queer theory is also a new type of criticism to the literary community. “The term queer, designates the combination of gay and lesbian studies as well as the theoretical and critical writings that concern all modes of variance, such as cross-dressing, from the normative models of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual desires” It is very similar to gay and lesbian criticism in that it focuses on the sexuality of men and women but it also focuses on the identify of men and women who are gay and their role in society and how society views them. A popular author who was known for incorporating these themes was Ernest Hemingway. “Through Ernest Hemingway’s life he wore feminine clothing and/or a feminine hairstyle and his sister Grace Hemingway dressed and treated the two children as twins of the same sex--sometimes male and sometimes female and in his fiction, it portrays sexually passive men and romantic situations in which sexual identity shifts and is unclear.  Furthermore, he offers a woman's point of view as few male authors can, giving uncommonly perceptive voices to female experiences”  through this example his writing can have the themes in queer theory. Because queer theory and gay and lesbian criticism are so similar they share the same similarities with feminist criticism, like prejudices and the need to change the literary canon to include all authors of all races, sexualities, classes, and gender.

The Literary Canon.

In simple terms the Literary canon is the books and poems and all literature that we read in school and study and analyze. Many controversies over the literary canon have persisted over the decades over who should be in it and how should students and teachers read it, who is able to be in the literary canon and who gets to pick which classics are able to be in it. Here is a article I found that goes in more depth about it and women and other minority groups being incorporated to it.  

The literary canon of a country or a group of people is comprised of a body of works that are highly valued by scholars and others because of their aesthetic value and because they embody the cultural and political values of that society. Works belonging to the canon become institutionalized over time by consistently being taught in the schools as the core curriculum for literary study. As critic Herbert Lindenberger, among others, has pointed out, the process of canon formation and evolution is influenced by cultural and historical change, and the English and American canons have regularly undergone revision throughout the centuries. In the twentieth century, for example, the English and American canons in the United States were challenged in the 1920s by Jewish intellectuals like Lionel Trilling and Oscar Handlin who became important Ivy League scholars, and again in the 1960s, when sweeping cultural change brought the concerns of women, minorities, gays, and Marxist liberals to the forefront of literary study.

Most recently, a reexamination of the American and English literary canons took place in the 1980s. Within academe, the European white male author model had already been thoroughly criticized during the 1960s and 1970s. Many works by women, gays, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and non-Europeans had made their way into college literature courses. However, the question of their permanent status as canonical works still remained to be decided: should they become a required and consistent part of the college curriculum, informed by the literary canon? This question has been hotly debated both by academics and non-academics since the early 1980s. 

While the issue of which works belong in the English and American literary canon has not been permanently settled, a spectrum of opinion has gradually emerged. Some conservative scholars insist that the classics of English and American literature taught since the beginning of the nineteenth century must remain at the core of the canon since they represent the notion of tradition. These critics would exclude noncanonical works on the basis that they are marginal and do not represent the best literary achievement of the culture. On the other end of the spectrum are radical scholars who would almost completely replace the classics of the canon with noncanonical and documentary works. They argue, for example, that the diary of a female garment worker from the early part of the twentieth century is more pertinent to today's students of English than is the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The majority of scholars fall somewhere in the middle, however, in that they advocate keeping a modest core of classics in the canon but supplementing it with the best of literature by women and minorities. With the aim of carrying on and refining this debate, critics have written much about inclusion criteria for both American and English works. Scholars like Lillian S. Robinson, Nina Baym, and Anette Kolodny have injected questions of gender and empowerment into the canon debate. There has also been discussion about the political aspects of the canon, with critics such as Patrick Williams and Karen Lawrence focusing on postcolonial aspects of minority literature.

Source: http://www.enotes.com/revising-literary-canon-criticism/revising-literary-canon

Looking at Hamlet through the Lens of Gender Criticism

To illustrate what I have been trying to discuss in several articles, I am going to look at texts who have previously looked at Hamlet by Shakespeare through the lens of feminist criticism. I tried to pick a text that many have read or at least could summarize in order to looks at the text more in depth. Elaine Showalter who I have mentioned a lot in my blog is a very popular feminist writer. One of her most popular works is “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism “and in this text she looks at the role that Ophelia plays in the play Hamlet.

Elaine Showalter defines Ophelia in many typical ways in her essay "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism." She discusses her significance in reference to how she reveals Hamlet's characteristics. Showalter touches upon the idea that Ophelia's character is one that is symbolic of the psychiatric theories of Freud. Showalter also attributes the characterization of Ophelia to not only the audience, but also to the actress that plays the part. Never does she suggest that Ophelia could be just that, "Ophelia." Her entire article is devoted to individual interpretation of the play in its entirety, focusing primarily on Ophelia. Showalter presents her own ideas by bringing together the ideas of many others such as Jacques Lacan, Susan Mountfort, Ellen Terry, and more. Showalter provides suffice evidence in addressing each argument, but in doing so, she never takes into account the possibilities of Shakespeare's reasoning.

                    Clearly, there is not one true answer to her madness, just as in real madness. It takes a building up of bottled feelings and emotions to drive a person insane. As stated earlier, many say that Ophelia's madness comes almost entirely from her "female love-melancholy." Although this could be part of the reason for her madness, the main reason for her madness seems to be a direct result of her father's murder. Not only would this be a valid conclusion after reading the play, but also because of the things that she says when she is in her mad state of mind. Before it can be decided that her madness is the result of her father's murder, the relationship that she had with her father must also be examined. Ophelia and her father have a very close relationship, one that involves much respect. This may not be characteristic of only Ophelia and her father but of the majority of families in this time period. This close relationship is also exemplified in the relationship that Hamlet has with his father and mother, a Rather than argue for her feelings, out of respect for her father's wishes, she says "I shall obey, my lord" (1.4.136). In doing this, the relationship that Ophelia has with her father, Polonius, is clearly more important to her than her feelings for Hamlet. If this is fact, then the feelings for her father are much stronger than her feelings for Hamlet. This can only reinforce the idea that her madness can be attributed to her father's murder. Not only does Ophelia have a very close relationship with her father, but also her relationship with Hamlet is one that involves fear due to his crazed actions. The way Hamlet handles her in the scene where she evokes his madness while Claudius and Polonius secretly watch, causes Ophelia to fear him. This is probably a side of him that she has never seen before. It frightens her because the words coming from his mouth are like words from a madman. Hamlet begins by telling her "I / did love you once," but then turns right around and almost spitefully tells her "I love'ngs and in answer, Ophelia sings to her this song: "'He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone, At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone." (4.5.29-32) Her singing is continuous and it suggests that it is not only his murder that has made her mad, but also the fact that he did not receive the proper burial that he deserved. He was not honored in his death as he, or any other dead person, should have been. Ophelia continues to sing these crazy songs when Laertes comes and sees her. He too is flabbergasted by the fact that his father never received an honorable burial, but when he sees Ophelia he becomes even more disturbed. She sings these mad songs to Laertes about her father's death. Ophelia goes on to sing "'And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death-bed, He never will come again." (4.5.187-191). Ophelia then continues her songs until she finally leaves. This scene is enough to suggest that Ophelia is not driven mad because of a love-melanchol

            Elaine Showalter does present a valid argument that many would accept as fact. Although she manages to do so in a very professional and unbiased manner, she seems somehow to ignore the fact that Shakespeare could have simply meant for Ophelia to be a young girl who was driven mad at the death of her father. In all seriousness, the combination of the two dramatic situations going on in her life are probably what led her to her madness, but one more so than the other. The fact is that without the interpretations and ideas of others, the play seems to ask to be read in a way that would point to her father's death as the main reason for her madness. Outside criticisms are what sway an audience into believing that there is more to it than what is written. This could be very true, but more often than not, the author's work serves as evidence enough for a valid interpretation of a work. Maybe Shakespeare meant to say exactly what he said.

Through this essay we can see Elaine Showalters views of Ophelia in Hamlet and how a text can be analyzed through the lens of feminist criticism.

Sources: http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=4486

The Women who Influenced Feminist Critcism

         The feminist movement and women’s impact in literature could have not been successful without women who went against the social norm and spoke of equal rights between men and women in society and even literature. Through these women’s ideas and beliefs women were able to write more freely. Remember, these are the two main women that were responsible for this movement but they were the most popular during the women’s movement period.

                                                              

 Virginia Woolf

 In 1919, the British scholar and teacher laid the foundation for present day feminist criticism in her seminal work a lecture given at Cambridge University, A Room of One’s Own. In this text, Woolf declares that men have and continued to treat women as inferiors. It is the male, she asserts, who defines what it means to be female and who controls the political, economic, social, and literary structures. Virginia Woolf also used female authors such as Jane Austen and Emily and Charlotte Bronte, she examines women and their struggles as artists, their position in literary history and need for independence. She also invents a female counterpart of William Shakespeare, a sister named Judith to at times sarcastically get her point across. Woolf proved to be an innovative and influential 20th Century author. In some of her novels she moves away from the use of plot and structure to employ stream-of-consciousness to emphasize the psychological aspects of her characters. Themes in her works include gender relations, class hierarchy and the consequences of war. Woolf was among the founders of the Modernist movement which also includes T.S Elliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. Virginia Woolf is said to be one of the started in the historical development we now know of as feminist criticism.

                                                                  

                                   

 Simone de Beauvior

With the publication of The Second Sex by the French author Simone de Beauvior, however feminist interests were once again surfacing. Beauvoir’s text declares that French society and western societies in general are patriarchal and controlled by males. Like Woolf, Beauvior believed that the male in these societies defines what it means to be human, including, therefore, what it means to be female. Since female is not male, Beauvior believed that she becomes other, an object whose existence is defined and interpreted by male, the dominant being in society. Always subordinate to the male, the female finds herself a secondary or nonexistent player in the major social institutions of her culture, such as church, government, and educational systems. Beauvior said that a woman must break the bonds of her patriarchal society and define herself if she wishes to become a significant human being in her own right and defy male classification as the Other. She must ask herself, “What is a woman?” Beauvior insists that a woman’s answers must not be “mankind,” for such a term once allows men to define women. This generic label must be rejected, for it assumes that “humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.” Beauvior insists that women see themselves as autonomous beings. Women, she maintains, must reject the social construct that men are subject or the absolute and that women are the Other. Embedded in this false assumption is the suppression that males have the power and define cultural terms and roles. Accordingly, women must define themselves outside the present social construct and being labeled as the Other.

            Through these ideologies we can see the similarities between their beliefs and the themes in literature that a reader can analyze a text through feminist criticism. These women are the two main women changed the way that women are viewed in literature and the way readers analyze it.

·         The main text used in this entry is the book Literary Criticism by Charles E. Bressler

Focusing the Lens of Feminist Criticism

          When looking at a text through a specific criticism, it’s like taking a lens and looking at a text through it. You can change your lens to different criticisms to look at different texts. As a reader when you look at a particular literary work through a criticism lense, a reader must know what the characteristics of that lense are and how to look at the text through it. The difference between feminism within writing and feminist criticism is that feminism in writing is a literary work written by an author who’s main objective is to look at the suppression of women’s rights and their daily struggles and looking at a text through feminist Criticism is taking any literary piece and looking at it through the common themes of women like their roles in society, how the author view women within their story. Typical questions when looking at a text through feminist criticism is "How do men and women differ?", "What is different about female heroines?" and "Why are these characters important in literary history?" These questions illustrate how to analyze a text through the lens of feminist criticism.

            Feminist criticism came about in the 1960’s and 1970’s within the third wave of feminism when women were changing the literary canon and looking at what we read and how we read it and started changing the way we look at literature. Feminist criticism is a relatively new way of looking at a text that radically changed the way readers analyze literature. Feminist criticism is defined as a distinctive and concerted approach to literature. This criticism is unique because women’s writing over the decades has been suppressed and many of the most popular works were written by men and women’s writing was done secretly in journals and only published through newspapers. Women’s writing has always been taken for granted that the representation reader, writer, and critic of Western literature is male, feminist criticism has shown that women readers and critics bring different perceptions and expectation to their literary experience, and has insisted that women have also told the important stories of our culture.