Margaret Atwood’s speech “Spotty Handed Villainesses” explores Patriarchy, feminism and “bad” women in literature. She uses wit and humour to disarm the audience and often uses anti-climatic statements to grab the audience’s attention. Margaret Atwood’s speech resonates through time with her critical study of feminism in a social context and the impact that feminism has had on literature. In the speech Atwood explores the moral dichotomy that exists in Women at the time. She shows how women can only be categorised as either an angel or a whore.
Selecia Pugh Group 2 Presentation 3/25/2010 Gender Criticism Feminism became a dominant force in Western literary studies in the late 1970s while Namoi Schor estimated that around 1985 feminism gave way to the term “gender studies” (Schor275). 1. She chose that day because it marked the publication of Between Men, a book that articulates the insights of feminist criticism onto those of gay-male studies. 2. Today gay and lesbian criticism is so much a part of gender criticism that it be equivalent to “sexualities criticism”.
The author prefaces her own reading of the Odyssey with an analysis of the issues posed by the earlier feminist readings on which she builds. Should the Odyssey be read as a "closed" text, that is, as one whose meaning is highly determined, or as an "open" text whose contradictions and ambiguities undercut its overt meanings? Siren Songs presents a feminist critique of the Odyssey in an accessible manner aimed at a more general audience. All Greek is translated, and critical terminology is clearly defined. Lillian Eileen Doherty is Associate Professor of Classics, University of Maryland, College Park.
As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories. The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and Angela Carter (1940–1992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalter’s idea that “women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine” (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (there’s some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
In this novel, Julia Alvarez manages to capture and express the true feelings of women which deconstructs the stereotypes through Yo. Feminism is defined as “a political movement that works to achieve equal rights for women and men” (Hirsch 113). For the past ages, women were seen in the society as inferior to men and were greatly excluded from education and the right to property ownership. A British feminist named Mary Wollstonecraft argues, “educational restrictions keep women in a state of ignorance and slavish dependence” (Blake 117). The shattering of classifications and stereotypes, and the subversion of traditional gender roles, and the concept of sisterhood or unity among women are among the main tenets of feminist criticism.
Contrary to its putatively gender-normalizing conclusion, Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina generates a narrative of sexual subversion and female authority. The repetitive occurrence of female protagonists inverting gender hegemonies from the prostitute to Fantomina’s mother to the convent, produces a ‘gynocratic’, or woman-centered novel. When juxtaposed alongside the nameless, beguiled admirers and the named, yet four-flushed BeauPlaisir, the narrative constructs a hierarchy of female over male, contradicting the possibility of its reinstating archetypal gender roles through its questionable inclusion of assault. While acknowledging seemingly anti-feminist sections, this essay will articulate how Haywood’s text empowers its atypical heroine through Haywood’s syntax and plot, her covert theme of naming and the conclusion itself. Despite her antithetical ideologies, Haywood remains centuries ahead while incorporating the very themes of contemporary pop culture: Woman Power.
Prof. Spivak’s reading of Jane Eyre traces hidden imperialist sub-text in Jane Eyre’s narrative of bourgeois female individualism. By tracing this, she challenges Anglo-American Feminist reading of Jane Eyre which celebrates Jane’s heroic narrative of self determination to the exclusion of Bertha Mason’s colonial genealogy. Bronte’s novel presents a superior representation of Jane ,the western woman and Bertha’s representation as subservient to Jane .This is a typical tendency of Anglo-American feminist literary criticism to privilege the individual narrative of
• Feminist critics are especially interested in issues concerning women’s culture. Also, they insist on the autobiographical side of the story, especially on the centrality of the act of giving birth. • An intertextual reading of the novel reveals echoes of several romantic poems, of various authors. It is a well-established notion that references to other texts add to the meaning of the work in question. In other words, if you consider ‘The Rime’ as a hypotext (= underlying text) to Frankenstein, your understanding of the novel may be enriched thanks to suggestion from Coleridge’s
Through a feminist critique of Othello, it is possible to examine the influences of sexism in the society by inspecting the construction of the patriarchy, the idea that gender is not the same as sex, and lastly, the construction of femininity within the play. Feminism, is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary to be “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”, and as A. Balu Vijayaraghavan said, by applying feminist criticism, one could “investigate how Shakespeare’s plays relate to the codes and conventions of the gender system specific to the early modern period”, as well as having an understanding of “how thoroughly Shakespeare shared the gender assumptions of his own time and the ways in which his plays must have disrupted these assumptions”. The
Seminar paper On Feminism in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar Course code: ENGL705 Course Title: Literary Theory Submitted by: SAYANTANI SARKAR ENROLL NO: A0710313014 Submitted to: Dr. Shweta Saxena Assistant Professor AMITY INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES AND RESEARCH AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH INTRODUCTION Simone de Beauvoir's gender theory is considered to be one of the pioneers of feminist thought. Her book The Second Sex is seen as a milestone in explaining how and why women were and are subjected to men's rule. While some of Simone de Beauvoir's insights might be seen today as self-evident (such as “one is not born a woman but becomes one"), other remain revolutionary till this day. Simone de Beauvoir argues that whenever there are two different human categories at the same time and place, there will always be one striving to subject the other to its rule. The burden of childbirth in ancient societies made women dependant on men's labor, and thus enabled the initial inequality.