Transcript Feminist Literary Theory - Senior English 2013-2014

Feminist
Literary Theory
ENG 4U
Diversity
• Feminist literary theory is difficult to define
because feminism itself is difficult to define.
• The term “feminism” does not claim to
account for all women’s experiences in exactly
the same way because women have different
experiences based on race, religion, sexual
orientation, class, age, heritage, geographic
location, physical appearance, etc. There is
great diversity within feminism.
Feminism
• However, feminists do agree that women, as a group,
have historically been oppressed on the basis of their
sex. Feminists, whether male or female, advocate for
women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and
economic equality to men.
The Feminist Lens
Critics who apply the lens of feminist theory to literature are
concerned with the myriad ways that gender can be “read.” They
examine:
1. Women’s Representation
a) Archetypes (Stereotypes)
b) Oppression and Internalized Oppression
c) From Object to Subject
2. Women Writers and the Literary Canon
3. Women’s Language
4. Women’s Reading
Representation
How are women represented in literature and film?
1. Archetypes
+++Positive Archetypes+++
Women as Sources of Life and Bounty
• The Earth
Goddess Gaia
• The Virgin Mary
• The Earth
Mother
+++Positive Archetypes+++
The Platonic Ideal
Laura (Petrarch)
Beatrice (Dante)
• The Muse
Calliope
- - - Negative Archetypes - - The Femme Fatale
- - - Negative Archetypes - - The “Career Girl”
Patriarchy
• Any culture that
privileges men by
promoting
traditional gender
roles, and
penalizing women
when they stray
from those roles.
Traditional Gender Roles
MEN
WOMEN
• Thinkers
• Feelers
• Strong
• Weak
• Providers
• Caregivers
• Protective
• Nurturing
• Assertive
• Submissive
Traditional Gender Roles
• The belief that gender roles are natural has been traditionally
used to justify:
•Why women shouldn’t own property
•Why women shouldn’t get an education
•Why women shouldn’t work outside the home
•Why women shouldn’t vote
•Why women shouldn’t hold the same positions as men
•Why women shouldn’t earn the same wage as men
Biological Essentialism
• Belief that women are born inferior
• Based on biological differences between
the sexes that are part of our unchanging
essence as men and women
Biological Essentialism
• Feminists don’t deny biological differences
• However, they disagree that differences in
physical size, shape, and body chemistry make
men naturally superior to women
• more intelligent
• more logical
• better leaders
Sex and Gender
SEX: biological constitution as
female or male
•”between the legs”
GENDER: our cultural programming
as feminine or masculine
•”between the ears”
2. Oppression
• The root of the word "oppression" is the element "press."
The press of the crowd; pressed into military service; to
press a pair of pants; printing press; press the button.
• Presses are used to mold things or flatten them or reduce
them in bulk, sometimes to reduce them by squeezing out
the gases or liquids in them.
• Something pressed is something caught between or among
forces and barriers which are so related to each other that
jointly they restrain, restrict or prevent the thing’s motion
or mobility. Mold. Immobilize. Reduce. (Marilyn Frye)
The Birdcage
Analogy
Consider a birdcage. If you look very
closely at just one wire in the cage, you
cannot see the other wires. If your
conception of what is before you is
determined by this myopic focus, you
could look at that one wire, up and down
the length of it, and be unable to see why
a bird would not just fly around the wire
any time it wanted to go somewhere…It
is only when you step back…you can see
that the bird is surrounded by a network of
systematically related barriers, no one of
which would be the least hindrance to its
flight, but which, by their relations to each
other, are as confining as the solid walls of
a dungeon.
Sexism
is systemic. It
consists of all
the wires of a
birdcage, not
just one.
Individual Wires
Personal Actions &
Experiences
Institutional Wires
Laws and Cultural
Practices
Ideological Wires
Beliefs and Social
Mores
3. Internalized Oppression
• Occurs when women begin to believe what
dominant society tells them about themselves
(i.e. that women are ‘naturally’ less intelligent
than men, that their worth is measured by
their looks, that their only value in life is as a
wife and mother)
• Internalized sexism is when women take up
arms against each other and themselves. It is
self-hatred.
Women as Objects
• Art historian John Berger introduced the
concept of “The Gaze” in Ways of Seeing (1972):
Women must continually watch herself. She is almost continually
accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a
room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely
avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood
she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.”
Women’s Representations :
The Gaze
This act of surveillance, of men looking and
women being seen, Berger insists, is intrinsic to
relations between the sexes:
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This
determines not only most relations between men and women, but also the
relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male:
the surveyed female. She turns herself into an object – and most particularly
an object of vision: a sight.
Thus, men gaze at women, and women begin to
see themselves through men’s eyes. They
internalize the gaze that turns them into objects.
Women Writers
and the Literary
Canon
The Literary Canon
Definition:
The literary canon is a canon
of books that has been
considered “the greatest
literature of all time,” and
the most influential in
shaping Western culture.
These works are considered
the pinnacle of “high art”
(that is, art of the highest
and most noble merit).
Feminists Question the
Literary Canon
1. Why has the literary canon consisted mainly of male
writers (and here we should qualify, "of white, middleclass and upper middle-class male writers")?
2. What have been the standards by which the works of
women (along with non-white males and the
economically-disenfranchised) have been judged? Who
created these standards and who benefits from them?
3. Can women, or minorities, or working-class writers be
comfortably added to the canon? Does the conception
of a literary canon change as such writers are
introduced?
Feminists Question the
Literary Canon
4. Does the existence of a literary canon serve any
useful purpose? Does it serve the interests of
women or other marginalized groups of people
(minorities and homosexuals, for example?)?
5. To what extent does the notion of a literary canon
marginalize women?
6. Is it inevitable that there be a literary canon, or does
the attempt to canonize some writers and exclude
others serve an often unacknowledged political
purpose?
Feminist Literary Critics
• Feminist literary critics assert that most of our
literature presents a masculine-patriarchal
view in which the role of women is negated or
at best minimized.
• Feminists ask: what is left out when women’s
experiences are left out of written
culture?Whose stories are told, and whose are
ignored?
Feminist Literary Critics
• Feminist literary critics show that writers of
traditional literature have ignored women and
have transmitted misguided and prejudiced views
of them
• Feminists ask: What happens when women’s only
representations in literature are generated by
men? When their own voices are silenced? When
someone else “tells their story”? When they are
turned into an “object” (one who is studied)
rather than a “subject” (one who studies)?
Feminist Literary Critics
• Feminist literary critics attempt to stimulate the
creation of a critical environment that reflects a
balanced view of women’s experiences and
values
• Feminists: look at all women’s stories, not only
the wealthy and literate few; they look at stories
in both the oral and written tradition; they value
first-person testimony and subjectivity
(traditionally “female”) rather than privilege
logic and reason (traditionally “male”)
Feminist Literary Critics
• Feminist literary critics: attempt to recover the
works of women writers of past times and to
encourage the publication of present women
writers so that the literary canon may be
expanded to recognize women as thinkers and
artists
Feminist Literary Critics
• Feminist literary critics: urge transformations
in the language to eliminate inequities and
inequalities that result from linguistic
distortions.
Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask…
• Is the author male or female? How does that
shape the way you understand the characters?
• Is the text narrated by a male or female?
• What types of roles do women have in the
text?
Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask…
• Are the female characters the protagonists or
secondary and minor characters? Are they
static or dynamic?
• Do any stereotypical characterizations of
women appear? Do they challenge or
reproduce stereotypes?
• What are the attitudes toward women held by
the male characters?
Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask…
• What are women’s attitudes towards each
other? Towards themselves?
• What is the author’s attitude toward women in
society?
• How does the author’s culture influence his or
her attitude?
• Who holds power in the story? Who does not?
Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask…
• What happens when women in the story
challenge the status quo? What consequences
or limitations do they face?
• Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the
significance of such imagery?
• Do the female characters speak differently
than the male characters? Compare the
frequency of speech for the male characters to
the frequency of speech for the female
characters.