Feminist Criticism/ Feminism

❑ Introduction:
• The term “Feminism” was coined by the French philosopher and radical socialist
Charles Fourier in 1837.
• Feminism is a socio-political movement that advocates the political, economic,
personal and social equality of sexes.
• Feminism was originated in the USA and Europe; later it was spread in Asia, Africa
and Latin America, and gradually in other continents, and finally it was established
worldwide.
• In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published her groundbreaking book Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women should be eligible for education in
the same way that men are.
❑ Waves/Stages of Feminism: The history of the feminist movements is
divided into four waves.
1. First Wave (Suffragette Movement) : it takes place mainly in the USA and the UK
from the 1820s to 1940s when women being treated as second rate citizens in male-
dominated societies. its primary goal was to gain equal political and legal rights for
women and for the securing voting rights.
• The 19th amendment to the US constitution passes in the Senate on June 4, 1919
and Congress gives the right of vote to women in 1920.
• Women of the most of the European countries, such as Russia, Germany, Austria and
the UK receive the right to vote in 1918, Belgium in 1919, US and Canada in 1920.
2. Second Wave:
• The duration of second wave feminism starts in the 1960s and ends after a period of
three decades, in the 1990s.
• Sexuality and reproductive rights are dominant issues in this movement. After the
naming the first wave of feminism, Martha Lear also coins the term “second wave
feminism” in 1968.
3. Third Wave:
• The term “third wave feminism” was coined by American writer, feminist, and activist
Rebecca Walker.
• it supports reproductive rights, and fights against sexual violence and sexual
harassment in workplace, rape and gang rape, and unfair maternity leave policies. It
is global because “women are of many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and
cultural backgrounds”

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4. Fourth Wave: The world has faced the fourth wave feminism since 2012, which is based
on online technology.
• Feminism that is originated from social networking sites, such as Facebook and
Twitter, considers as the fourth wave feminism.
• In this movement, the social media becomes a real catalyst to fight against women's
harassment, professional discrimination, media sexism, and gender shaming.

First 1820s- Right to vote, Property rights,

Wave 1940 education, Divorce rights

Second 1960s- Equal pay, reproductive rights,

Wave 1990 sexual harrasment

Third 1990- Intersectionality, racism, Body

Wave 2000s positivity

Fourth 2012- Sexual harassment at workplace,

Wave now professional discrimination

❑ Feminist Criticism: Broadly defined, feminist criticism examines the ways in

which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the
economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.
1. Traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive; they
cast women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive. These gender
roles have been used very successfully to justify inequities, which still occur today,
such as excluding women from equal access to leadership and decision-making
positions.
• Patriarchy is belief that women are innately inferior to men. This belief in the inborn
inferiority of women is a form of what is called biological essentialism because it is
based on biological differences between the sexes. Getting beyond the patriarchy is
goal of every feminist.
❑ Sex vs. Gender: Feminism therefore distinguishes between the word sex, which
refers to our biological constitution as female or male, and the word gender, which
refers to our cultural programming as feminine or masculine.
• In other words, women are not born feminine, and men are not born masculine. Rather,
these gender categories are constructed by society, which is why this view of gender
is an example of what has come to be called social constructionism .

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 ❑ Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex 1949) : Men can act upon the world, change
it, give it meaning, while women have meaning only in relation to men. Thus, women are
defined not just in terms of their difference from men, but in terms of their
inadequacy in comparison to men.
• A woman is not a person in her own right. She is man’s Other: she is less than a man;
she is a kind of alien in a man’s world; she is not a fully developed human being the
way a man is.
❑ Some questions feminist critics ask about literary texts; Approaches that attempt
to develop a specifically female framework for the analysis of women’s writing (such
as questions 6, 7, and 8) are often referred to as gynocriticism.
❑ What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or
psychologically) of patriarchy? How are women portrayed? How do these portrayals
relate to the gender issues of the period in which the novel was written or is set?
❑ In other words, does the work reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology? (In the
first case, we might say that the text has a patriarchal agenda. In the second case,
we might say that the text has a feminist agenda.
❑ How is the work “gendered”? That is, how does it seem to define femininity and
masculinity? Does the characters’ behavior always conform to their assigned
genders?
❑ What might an examination of the author’s style contribute to the ongoing efforts
to delineate a specifically feminine form of writing (for example, écriture féminine)?

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