ENGLISH LITERARY

CRITICISM AND
THEORY
LECTURE 8:
FEMINIST CRITICISM &
GENDER STUDIES
First-Wave Feminism (1848-1918) – 19. cent.
 in the 19th century women were still dependent on
their parents and husbands financially
 they were not free concerning their property, body
and consciousness with limited options in life
 they mainly study at home (tutors), could not get a
university degree (or at some colleges from 1830s
in England; no sciences; first degree after the War)
 political fight for their rights (e.g. Mary
Wollstonecraft for the franchise, +John Stuart Mill)
 small victories: in 1857 the Matrimonial Course Bill
(Divorce Act) was passed
First-wave Feminism (1848-1918) – 20th cent.
 suffragettes: militant and violent protesters with
marching and hungerstrikes, fighting for political
rights in London (e.g. Emmeline Pankhurst) –
 in 1918: the right to vote was granted to women
 suffragists: more pacifists calling for reforms in
education, divorce, birth control, and fashion
 women worked in factories after men were
enlisted during First World War
 image of the ‘New Woman’: independent and
threatening (see also in Late Victorian Age - the
vamp, and Ibsen’s Nora)
‘Dark Age’ of Feminism (1920s-30s) and Woolf

 in 1918 the first election was a

disappointment
 women’s awareness should be developed
 moving from the political-social to the
critical phase / wave
 Virginia Woolf as a forerunner, questioning
woman’s place in culture and arts
 A Room of One’s Own: symbol of artistic,
spiritual and financial independence
Virginia Woolf, ”Professions for Women” (1942)
CP107-109
 she delivered it as a lecture to a working
women’s group
 her ”profession is literature” (other female
writers before her: Fanny Burney, Jane
Austen, George Eliot)
 writing is ”reputable and harmless”, cheap
 writing a review of a man’s book, she
encountered a phantom: ”The Angel in
the House”
Virginia Woolf, ”Professions for Women” 2
 she killed the phantom of male stereotypes in
self-defence in order to be able to become a
critic and a writer (”what is a woman?”)
 other difficulty for a female writer is to find the
right words describing womanhood – ”telling the
truth about my own experience as a body” and
as a passionate being
 it is a rock for female imagination
that it dashes itself against
 ”rooms of your own” are still bare, they should
be decorated and shared (question of language
and true relationship)
 Second-Wave Feminism (1960s-1980s)
 running parallelly with Women’s Liberation
Movement (students’ protests for civil rights)
 in criticism, the forerunner is Simone de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex (1949, tr. 1960):
”One is not born but rather becomes a woman.”
 concerned with critical theories, terms and the
canon; with images of women have in literary works
 studied categories:
 feminist(political) vs. anti-feminist
 female (biological) vs. male – SEXES
 feminine (cultural and social) vs. masculine – GENDERS
Feminist Criticism – 3 steps
 1. in 1960s the role models, the socially
and culturally acceptable versions of the
feminine are shown and collected --
GENDER STUDIES
 2. in 1970s the collected images are
analysed and criticised (rather attacked)
 3. in 1980s new critical theories are
applied (‘eclectic’) and the new canon is
constructed to explore the lost and
suppressed records of female experience
Feminist Criticism (proper) – Elaine Showalter

 shift from studying women as readers to writers

 female theory is needed – ”gynocriticism” puts
emphasis on pluralisms and differences
 she differentiates 3 phases of ”gynotexts”:
 feminine phase (1840-1880): women writers imitated
dominant male artistic norms
 feminist phase (1880-1920): radical and separatist
positions are maintained
 female phase (1920- present): concentrating on
female writing and experience
‘Feminist Canon’ in English Literature 1

 antecedents: great heroines in male

fiction
 revolutionary figures in Daniel Defoe’s Moll
Flanders and Roxana (1720s)
 melodramatic heroines of stereotypes in
Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa
(1740s)
 though first person narratives, male voice
of female characters
 ‘Feminist Canon’ in English Literature 2

 first great female novelists in the Romantic

and Victorian times
 Jane Austen’s irony and conventional happy
ending (marriage) in her ”muted discourse”
 the rebellious ”subversive discourse” of
the Brontës (questioning the happy ending
and openly writing about passion)
 ”the dominant discourse” of Woolf in her
novels (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse,
Orlando)
Feminist Criticism - trends
 Anglo-American critics are radical in their
concepts, redefining feminism, e.g. Elaine
Showalter, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
(The Madwoman in the Attic, 1979)
 British critics are concerned about social and
cultural implications, e.g. the Marxists Toril Moi
and Cora Kaplan
 French feminists are overtly theoretical with
interest in language and psychology, e.g. Julia
Kristeva, Hélène Cixous (The Laugh of the
Medusa)
 Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The
Madwoman in the Attic (1979)
 reading of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights as a
female version of educational novel, as the
construction of gender identity
 Catherine Earnshaw is taken out from her natural
surrounding (WH) and she is taught how to become a
lady, a woman, at the Lintons’ place – she is to accept
gender roles!
 stages in her womanhood: imprisonment, alteration,
marriage, sickness, self-starvation, madness, death
 her childhood mate, Heathcliff, returns and
accelerates her mental decline, hysteria (cf. Freudian
”return of the repressed”)
‘Feminine or Female Language’?
- language is male-centered, man made (not gender-
free) – it is gendered
- Hèléne Cixous on feminine writing (écriture
féminine): loosened grammatical structures, free play of
meanings, going beyond logic, rule-transcending
- Julia Kristeva (after Lacan’s Symbolic vs. Imaginary) -
symbolic aspect (prose) vs. semiotic aspect
(poetry)
 mother, chaos, freedom
 father, order, authority  dreams, linguistic
 control and repression unconsciousness
 the self is fixed and unified  floating signifiers
 male ”network of  random connections,
differences” slippage, improvisation
 phallus as the arch-signifier  ”visionary semiotic female”
 Third-Wave Feminism
 from the 1990s
 returning to the radicalism of the first wave
 calling for actions against violance, child abuse
and rape
 for motherhood support (welfare, child care),
criticising maternity leave policies
 organising protests, commemorating days,
awareness and alliance days (e.g. V-Day – Eve
Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues (1996)
 Gender Studies vs. Lesbian / Gay Studies
 in the 1990s Gender Studies of ”academic
feminism” got criticised as it became institutionalised
(‘white, middle-class, heterosexual, urban women’)
 ‘classic’ feminism marginalised and ignored the
differences of race, class and sexual orientation
 Lesbian Studies concerned about homophobia and
sexuality
 ‘radicalesbians’ believe in the existance of ”lesbian
continuum” in human history (sisterhood of women
helping each other, networks, unifying force)
 Queer Studies (abusive term): lesbianism in
dialogue with gay men – sexuality is more
fundamental in personal identity
Lesbian Criticism
 analyses texts are written by or about
lesbians or gays, with homosexual episodes
 to establish a canon of ‘classic’ lesbian / gay
writers (e.g. Oscar Wilde, K. Mansfield)
 attacks binary oppositions, e.g. male vs.
female, heterosexual vs. homosexual
 Judith Butler on the categories of gay vs.
straight mutually defining each other
 Eve Sedgwick on concealment vs. openness
in the ‘coming out’ of homosexuals
 Lesbian Criticism – Monique Wittig, ”One Is Not
Born a Woman” (1981) CP 110-113
 fundamental text in Lesbian / Gay Studies and Queer
Studies
 ”woman is a myth” – similarly to the genders, it is a
construct, being made up by men
 childbearing is ”the female creative act”
 in Marxism, ”women” and ”men” are political and
economic categories (classes)
 thus, ”a lesbian has to be something else, a not-
woman, a not-man” – like ”escapees”, or runaways
 lesbians are closer to the original spirit of feminism,
still fighting for women’s rights
 new definitions are needed, going beyond categories
of sexes and expressing differences