Detailed notes on what feminist readings are, how to approach texts through a feminist lens, and glossary with key terms. Awesome for understanding AO5, critical interpretations
Feminist ways of reading – a Feminist criticism
summary
What does Feminist reading take into account?
Feminist criticism has many branches - Who is the targeted audience of the text? –
but they all centre around the does the text assume a male or female reader?
struggle women face in society and - Do the literary representations of gender fall
‘the ways these struggles are into familiar cultural stereotypes? – e.g. is the
reflected and questioned’; stemming woman an ‘immoral, dangerous seductress’, or
from the male-centre of society, portrayed as ‘cute but essentially helpless’ etc.
extending to business, politics, and - Intentionally or not, does the author’s work
for this focus, literature and how this perpetuate the unequal power relations
perspective influences the way between men and women felt at the societal
artists write and perceive women. time of their writing?
Feminist critics highlight how - Does the language promote assumptions of
representations of women repeat men as superior and central but women as
cultural stereotypes to reinforce subordinate and ‘the other?’
‘social and cultural domination of
males’.
It also aims to change the negative Gender
connotations surrounding female Gender doesn’t have anything to do with how
independence. females and males really are, but with the way a
given culture of subculture sees them; how they are
Author Kate Millett discusses how culturally constructed. For instance, to say that
male writers find a ‘relationship women have two breasts is to say something about
between sex and power in which the their biological nature – to say that women are
distribution of power over the male naturally timid or sweet or intuitive or dependant or
and female partners mirrors the self pitying, is to construct a role for them: It
distribution of power over males and showcases how the speaker wants to see them.
What is traditionally described as feminine is as a
cultural construction, a role which has been
culturally assigned to countless women.
The same holds for masculinity, mostly with its
connotations of strength, rationality, stoicism and
self-reliance. Much like femininity, traditional
masculinity is an assigned role that does not have
anything to do with actual males. We can also see
this in the traditional representation of
homosexuality, in which maleness and masculinity
are uncoupled – e.g. male homosexuals are often
How has feminist reading changed 1970’s: There was a shift of attention in the
over time? 1970’s as feminist criticism’s became more:
Feminist criticism reading today is a Eclectic - began to draw upon findings and
product of the ‘woman’s movement’ approaches of other criticisms
in the 1960’s Change in focus from androtexts and
1960’s: It consisted of exposing gynotexts – shift from attacking the male
unequal male power and authority in world and instead exploring nature of the
society and consequently the female world through reconstructing lost or
repression of women that was supressed records of female existence and
reflected in literature. For instance, experience.
female goals and aspirations of that Growing necessity to construct a new
of the 1960’s society usually canon of woman’s writing
concerned finding a suitable Many novels written after the 1960’s represent
women from a more feminist perspective. For
Modern day – Feminist criticism has
instance, novels by Fay Weldon, Jeanette
evolved to explore other genders -
Winterson or Angela Carter.
LGBTQ
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