Feminist Criticism

Feminist Literary Criticism

For this unit of the semester, it's helpful to recall assumptions of the New Criticism:

The boundaries between self and other, text and world are considered firm.
The critic is/should be a neutral observer.
The literary work is regarded as a self-enclosed universe with its own logic. It stands apart from the world but illuminates the world.
The literary work should be studied for its distinctively literary elements, and for how they operate in relation to each other in the world of the work. The work is valuable for its own sake, not for any extrinsic purpose.

Basic Tenets of Feminist Criticism

With roots in the 1800s, and coming into its own in the 1970s-90s, Feminist Criticism (along with several other important types of criticism and theory) specifically takes issue with New Critical assumptions. Feminist critics hold that, rather than view the literary work as something which contains the world or is a world unto itself, we should view the work as contained by the world. In other words, many felt the New Critics had gone too far in separating literature from its contexts, its physical circumstances, the real-world material conditions under which it is made, read, and studied.

Feminist critics, for example, have re-valued the political, social, geographical, and historical contexts within which literature exits. Boundaries between the text and the world, the text and the critic, the text and the reader are considered fluid, shifting, and porous. Who the critic, reader, and writer are and where they are located in the world influences how a work is read and what it means. The critic is interested in what a text does to the reader, and what the reader projects into the text. The work is read for its extra-literary values, or for values that, at the least, are not exclusively literary. This means that the critic's focus begins to include or even to center on the gender, race, nationality, and social class of the writer, the critic, the reader, or characters within a work. The way a work is shaped by its cultural contexts and the way in which cultural contexts shape the work are key subjects of study.

Additional questions and issues for Feminist critics:

Does a given literary work promote or undermine women's issues and social justice? Much Feminist criticism is intent upon examination of texts with the purpose of improving real lives—no "knowledge for knowledge’s sake." Many Feminist critics might not ask what a work means, but what does it do to make the world a better place for real people?
What issues exist in a given literary work of specific importance to women and women’s perspectives, values, categories, epistemologies, and experiences?
The Feminist critic does not assume herself to be objective and ideology-free or neutral. The life, social location, biases etc. of the critic are openly admitted and even considered a part of the critical work being done. Traditional criticism and research assumes objectivity and an a-political stance while in fact being profoundly shaped by male ideology and tradition. It is not gender-neutral. Feminist work makes explicit its political bent.
How are female perspectives and experience represented in literary works by writers of either gender? How is the "feminine" component of traditional binary systems regarded in any given work?
How does a given work critique the dominant culture and its institutions? How does The Great Gatsby or a poem by Ai comment upon the dominant culture and its institutions?
What nonlinear, interdisciplinary tools and approaches can be applied to a literary work? And how might we mix the traditionally feminine world of the personal and the domestic with the traditionally masculine world of public research and study? A Feminist university instructor might take an unorthodox, "unmasculine" approach to teaching literature by developing assignments which blur the personal and the academic, the creative and the scholarly, the intuitive and the intellectual. She may openly promote feminist values as well.
How has a given work been read or misread by male critics? Where have particular works by women been placed in the cannon and why? The feminist critic may bring to light aspects of a text formerly unacknowledged or misunderstood as a result of the male-dominated critical tradition. In other words, the critic may "re-vision" the work (Adrienne Rich).
How does the gender of the reader or writer affect how a work means? How is writing itself gendered? Feminist readings examine the social and biological bases of gender, the very “mechanisms within which gender operates” (Warhol).
What are unacknowledged gender biases in any literary work? What do androcentric texts do to women, and how do they structure our experience?
What does it mean, in a given story or poem, to be a man or woman? How is gender in a work constructed? Are gender roles in the work equal? traditional? nontraditional? How do characters in the work match or not match common gender stereotypes?

Brief Note on Feminist Research

Many feminist critical assumptions are equally important to feminist research methods. Feminist research:

seeks to empower the persons being researched (rather than reduce them to passive objects of study), and may involve them in the research more completely;
seeks to promote political change for women;
openly acknowledges researcher biases;
might be more qualitative than quantitative;
blurs the boundary between the personal and the public; between intuition and reason; between researcher and world.

Sources for the information on this page are available upon request.