Feminism Criticism

• Feminism

  • A belief that women universally face some form of oppression or exploitation.
  • A commitment to uncover and understand what causes and sustains oppression;
  • A commitment to work individually and collectively everyday life to end all forms of oppression
• First Wave Feminism -

  (Late 1700s - Early 1900s) Mary Wollstonecraft highlights inequalities between the the sexes. Feminists were active in the women's suffrage movement, which lead to the National Universal suffrage in 1920
• First Wave Feminism:

  Women widely are considered to be:

  - Intellectually inferior

  
  

  - Physically weak

  
  

  - Emotional, intuitive, irrational

  
  

  - Suited to the role of wife and mother
• Second Wave Feminism -

  (Early 1960s - Late 1970s) There are more equal conditions. N.O.W. (National Organization for Women) was formed for feminists in 1966. Simone de Beauvoir and Elain Showalter formed a basis for the distribution of feminist theories.
• Second Wave Feminism -

  • Women could attend school and university
  • Women did not receive equal pay for the same work
  • It was easier to gain a divorce but socially frown upon
  • Women's body were objectified in advertising
• Second Wave Feminism -

  • which occured in 1960-1980, came as a response to the experiences of women after World War II.
  • It dealt with inequality of laws and pioneered by Betty Friedan.
• Third Wave Feminism -

  (Early 1990s – Present) These decades deepened the equality of women, such as with a variety of jobs women can have and a variety of opportunities open to them.
• Third Wave Feminism -

  seeks to challenge or avoid what it seems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper- middle-class white women.
• Third Wave Feminism

  • Women seem to be more equal to men
  • Women are no longer obligated to marry or have children, and marriage is more equal.
  • The legal system is better at protecting women's right.
• Feminist Criticism  -

  • A type of literary criticism that critiques how females are commonly represented in texts, and how insufficient these representations are as a categorizing device. They focus on how femininity is represented as being passive and emotional the "caregiver," and the male is associated with reason and action - the "doer."
  • The ________ critique of literature seeks to raise the consciousness about the importance and unique nature of women in literature, and to point out how language has been used to marginalize women.
• Feminist Criticism Con't :

  • Feminist scholars wish to consider women as subjects, or points of interest to study.
  • They do not want to categorize women as "objects" as men often do.
  • They want to question why male dominance is the norm.
• Socialist Feminism -

  A central concern of --- --- therefore has been to determine the ways in which the institution of the family and women's domestic labour are structured by, and reproduce the sexual division of labour.
• Radical Feminism -

  • arose within the second wave in the 1960s.
  • focused on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power.
  • paid particular attention to oppression based on sex and female bodily disadvantage.
• Liberal Feminism -

  • Aims to achieve equal legal, political, and social rights for women.
  • It wishes to bring women equality into all public institution and to extend the creation of knowledge so that women's issues can no longer be ignored.
• Madwoman Thesis -

  • suggests that because society forbade women from expressing themselves through creative outlets, their creative powers were channeled into psychologically self-destructive behavior and subversive actions.
• Gynocriticism - involves three major aspects
• Depictions of Women by Men -

  • Its when men portray a woman-like character
  • man dressing like a woman
• French Feminism -

  • led by critics such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixousx, and Luce Irigaray, relies heavily on Freudian psychology and the theory of penis envy. French feminists postulate the existence of a separate language belonging to women that consists of loose, digressive sentences written without use of the ego.
• Three Phases :

  1.) Feminine Phase - female writers tried to adhere to male values, writing as men, and usually did not enter into debate regarding women's place in society.

  2.) The 'Feminist' Phase - the central theme of works by female writers was the criticism of the role of women in society and the oppression of women

  3.) The 'Female' Phase - women writers were no longer trying to prove the legitimacy of a woman's perspective. Rather, it was assumed that the works of a women writer were authentic and valid. The --- phase lacked the anger and combative consciousness of the feminist phase.