Introduction to Feminism and Literary

Criticism

The following slides are some terms, ideas, and theories that will help you understand the readings for this week. Please take notes on your thoughts, observations, and any questions you have on the readings, as these will be the basis of our in-class

as well as online discussion for this week.

Feminism

• In its most basic form, feminism the movement for social, political, and economic equality for women and men.

• Feminism means that women have the right to enough information to make informed choices about their lives.

• Feminist beliefs, values, and practices continually evolve to reflect change, new ideas, movements, and historical research.

1st Wave (mid-19th C – 1920): Primarily concerned with

• Women’s vote

• Securing equal property and contract rights for women

2nd Wave (1960s – 1980s):

• “feminism” that is most popularly understood and (mis)represented in culture.

• “the personal is political”

3rd Wave (1980s – Present):

• Gender studies

• idea of multiple women’s experiences or “feminisms”

• Global and transnational feminisms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGEMscZE5dY

“Feminist Scholarship and the Social Construction of Women”

AndrocentrismWhat do we mean by great “human” truths?

•The practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of one's view of the world and its culture and history.

•Takes male values or practices as the norm, and then explains female values or practices as deviations from, or unsuccessful aspirations towards, male ways of doing things.

Patriarchy

• A male-dominated society.

• A system in which both men and women participate.

Sex vs. Gender

• Sex: Describes the biological identities of women and men.

• Gender: The socially constructed behaviors and characteristics that are associated with each sex.

• REMEMBER: Sex is biological; gender is cultural.

Essentialism• The essentialist view holds the belief that categories, or

individuals and groups of human beings, have innate, defining features exclusive to their category.

• This view sees identity as a fundamental, unchanging core of meaning that precedes and transcends culture and politics.

• Identity derives its sense and legitimacy, according to essentialist theories, through its grounding in nature and/or history, where “history” is seen as an unbroken line of development whose truth is unquestionable.

Two Theories on Identity:Essentialism v. Social

Construction

Throughout the semester, we are going to consider the ways in which literature influences the social construction of gender. This theory goes against essentialist notions of identity.

Binaries

• Essentialism often relies in binary thinking, which is a way of structuring the world in terms, ideas, identities and/or structures as two factors defined in opposition to each other.

• Examples: man/woman, white/black

Why is ‘culture and nature’, ‘truth and duplicity’, ‘reason and passion’, and ‘day and night’ associated with male superiority? 

Social Construction

• This is the belief that identity is not inherent within an individual, group, or thing, but is instead largely a creation of cultural, political, and historical forces.

• Social construction takes issue with the essentialist premise of identity as something inherent within an individual or group, foregrounding instead the complex process through which narratives of identity express broader social relations, including and especially relations of power.

Ideology

• The values and beliefs that bind a society together.

“Mythology”

• The “stories” a society tells in order to structure and make sense of the world.

• Shape and reinforce ideology.

Hegemony• The ability of dominant groups in society to

exercise control over weaker groups, not by means of force or domination, but by gaining their consent, so that unequal distribution of power appears to be both legitimate and natural.

• “Feminist critics find that the critical tradition reinforces – even when literature does not – images of character and behavior that encourage women to accept their subordination, either ignoring or degrading women, or praising them for such virtues as obedience, meekness and humility” (22).

Discourse

• The ways speech and writing work in conjunction with specific structures and institutions to shape social reality.

• Power = Knowledge