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Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism. By Steven Nahill. Types of Criticism. Reader Response Poststructuralist/Deconstructionist Cultural/Myth Gender/Feminist Biographical Historical Criticism Psychological Formalist. What is Feminist Criticism?.

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Feminist Criticism

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  1. Feminist Criticism By Steven Nahill

  2. Types of Criticism • Reader Response • Poststructuralist/Deconstructionist • Cultural/Myth • Gender/Feminist • Biographical • Historical Criticism • Psychological • Formalist

  3. What is Feminist Criticism? • Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women." (Tyson). 

  4. Feminist Criticism • This school of theory looks at how our culture is inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346). 

  5. The Three Waves of Feminism First Wave Feminism • Time Period: Late 1700s-early 1900s • Primary Focus: Inequalities between the sexes concerning women's suffrage and basic rights to choose. • Notable Activists: Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

  6. The Three Waves of Feminism Second Wave Feminism • Time Period: Early 1960s-late 1970s • Primary Focus: Building on more equal working conditions necessary in America as a result of World War II.  • Notable Activists: National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966 established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.

  7. The Three Waves of Feminism Third Wave Feminism • Time Period: Early 1990s-Present • Primary Focus: Resisting the ideologies associated with established successes within the white, heterosexual, middle class. • Notable Activists:Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile feminism with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson 97).

  8. Feminist Perspective Questions (Q1) • To what extent does the representation of women (and men) in the work reflect the place and time in which the work was written?  • How are the relations between men and women, or those between members of the same sex, presented in the work? • What roles do men and women assume and perform and what are the consequences? • Does the author present the work from within a predominantly male or female sensibility? Why might this have been done, and with what effects?

  9. Feminist Perspective Questions (Q2) • How do the facts of the author’s life relate to the presentation of men and women in the work? • How do the events in terms of the degrees and separation of powers relate? • How do the other works by the author correspond to this one in their depiction of the power relationships between men and women?

  10. Feminist Perspective Questions (Q3) • How is the relationship between men and women portrayed? • What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)? • How are male and female roles defined? • What constitutes masculinity and femininity? • How do characters embody these traits? • Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?

  11. Feminist Perspective Questions (Q4) • What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? • What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy? • What does the work say about women's creativity? • What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy? • What role the work plays in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition? (Tyson)

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