Feminist Theory
What unites the
various kinds of feminist literary theory is not so much a specific technique
of criticism but a common goal: to raise awareness of women’s roles in all aspects
of literary production (as writers, as characters in literature, as readers
etc.) and to reveal the extent of male dominance in all of these aspects. Women’s
attempts to resist the dominance of a patriarchal society have a long history
but the actual term ‘feminism’ seems not to have come into English usage until
the 1890s. In general, feminist criticism has also attempted to show that
literary criticism and theory themselves have been dominated by male concerns.
In fact, some feminists have reacted against all theory as an essentially
male-dominated sphere. Theory, for them, is associated with the traditional
male/ female binary opposition: theory being essentially in the male domain and
embracing all that is impersonal and would-be objective. Against this, they
have placed the female world of subjectivity and primal experience. There is
general agreement among most authors that, apart from recent developments,
feminist theory can be divided into two major stages: The First Wave and The
Second Wave.
The First Wave
The earlier
phase of modern feminist theory was very much influenced by the social and
economic reforms brought about by the Women’s Rights and Suffrage movements. Two
writers in particular stand out in this period for first raising many of the
issues which would continue to preoccupy later feminists: Virginia Woolf and
Simone de Beauvoir.
I. Virginia
Woolf (1882–1941)
Apart from her
novels, Virginia Woolf also wrote two works which contributed to feminist
theory: A Room with a View (1927), and Three Guineas (1938). In
the former, Woolf considered especially the social situation of women as
writers and, in the latter, she explored the dominance of the major professions
by men. In the first work she argued that women’s writing should explore female
experience and not just draw comparisons with the situation in society of men.
Woolf was also one of the earliest writers to stress that gender is not
predetermined but is a social construct and, as such, can be changed. However, she
did not want to encourage a direct confrontation between female and male
concerns and preferred to try to find some kind of balance of power between the
two. If women were to develop their artistic abilities to the full, she felt it
was necessary to establish social and economic equality with men.
II. Simone de
Beauvoir (1908–1986)
Simone de
Beauvoir is famous not only as a feminist but as the life-long partner of the
French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. She was a very active fighter for women’s rights
and a supporter of abortion. Her most influential book is, without doubt, The
Second Sex (1949). In this work, she outlined the differences between the
interests of men and women and attacked various forms of male dominance over
women. Already in the Bible and throughout history Woman was always regarded as
the ‘Other’. Man dominated in all influential cultural fields, including law,
religion, philosophy, science, literature and the other arts. She also clearly
distinguished between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, and wrote (famously) ‘One is not
born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ She demanded freedom for women from being
distinguished on the basis of biology and rejected the whole notion of
femininity, which she regarded as a male projection.
The Second Wave
The second wave
of feminist theory was very much influenced by the various liberationist
movements, especially in America, in the 1960s. Its central concern was sexual difference.
The theorists of this second wave criticized especially the argument that women
were made ‘inferior’ by virtues of their biological difference to men. Some feminist
critics, on the other hand, celebrated the biological difference and considered
it a source of positive values which women could nurture, both in their
everyday lives and in works of art and literature. Another area of debate has
been the question of whether white women and men perceive the world in the same
ways, and differently to black women. Another much disputed question has been whether
there exists a specifically female language. This has arisen from the sense
that one reason for the oppression of women has been the male dominance of
language itself. Some feminists have decided not to challenge dominance directly
but rather to celebrate all that has been traditionally identified as the polar
opposite of maleness. All that is disruptive, chaotic and subversive is seen as
female, in a positive, creative sense, in contrast to the restrictive, ordering
and defining obsessions of maleness.
I. Kate Millett
(1934–)
Kate Millett’s
book Sexual Politics (1969) was probably the most influential feminist
work of its period. Her central argument is that the main cause of the
oppression of women is ideology. Patriarchy is all-pervasive and treats females
universally as inferior. In both public and private life the female is
subordinate. Millett also distinguishes very clearly between ‘sex’ (biological
characteristics) and ‘gender’ (culturally acquired identity). The interaction
of domination and subordination in all relations between men and women is what
she calls ‘sexual politics’. Millett also reveals a special interest in
literature, arguing that the very structure of narrative has been shaped by
male ideology. Male purposiveness and goal-seeking dominate the structure of
most literature. To show up the extent to which the perspectives in most works
are those of the men, she deliberately provides readings of famous works of
literature from a woman’s perspective. However, she reveals a misconceived view
of homosexuality in literature (especially in the works of Jean Genet), which
she could only comprehend as a kind of metaphor for subjection of the female.
II. Sandra
Gilbert (1936–) and Susan Guber (1944–)
Gilbert and
Guber’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) is famous for its exploration
of certain female stereotypes in literature, especially those of the ‘angel’
and the ‘monster’. The title refers to the mad wife whom Rochester has locked
in the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. They have been criticised
for identifying many examples of patriarchal dominance without providing a
thorough criticism of it.
III. Elaine
Showalter (1941–)
One of the most
influential books of The Second Wave is Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of
their Own (1977), which provides a literary history of women writers. It
outlines a feminist critique of literature for women readers as well as identifying
crucial women writers. She coined the term ‘gynocriticism’ for her mode of
analysing the works of women writers. She also argues for a profound difference
between the writing of women and that of men and delineates a whole tradition
of women’s writing neglected by male critics. She divides this tradition into
three phases. The first phase was from about 1840 to 1880, and she refers to it as the ‘feminine’ phase. It
includes writers such as George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. Female writers in this
phase internalised and respected the dominant male perspective, which required
that women authors remained strictly in their socially acceptable place. From
this perspective, it is significant that Mary Anne Evans found it necessary to
adopt the male pen name of ‘George Eliot’. The Second Phase, the ‘feminist’
phase, from 1880 to 1920 included radical feminist writers who protested
against male values, such as Olive Schreiner and Elizabeth Robins. The Third
Phase, which she describes as the ‘female’ phase, developed the notion of
specifically female writing. Rebecca West and Katherine Mansfield exemplify this
phase.
IV. Julia
Kristeva (1941–)
The central
ideas of Julia Kristeva have already been outlined in relation to the influence
of Lacanian psychoanalysis on her work. She considered Lacan’s ‘symbolic’ stage
in a child’s development to be the main root of male dominance. When a child
learns language, it also recognizes principles of order, law and rationality
associated with a patriarchal society. Lacan’s pre-Oedipal ‘imaginary’ stage is
referred to by Kristeva as ‘semiotic’, and literature, especially poetry, can tap
the rhythms and drives of this stage. The pre-Oedipal stage is also associated
very closely with the body of the mother. When the male child enters the
‘symbolic’ order, however, the child identifies with the father. The female
child is identified with pre-Oedipal, pre-discursive incoherence, and is seen
as a threat to the rational order. As has been already explained, Kristeva advocates
a kind of anarchic liberation, in which ‘poetic’ and ‘political’ become
interchangeable.
V. Helène Cixous
(1937–)
Helène Cixous’
essay, The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), argues for a positive
representation of femininity in women’s writing.
Her mode of writing is often poetic rather than rational: ‘Write yourself.Your
body must be heard.’ There is a paradox at the heart of Cixous’ theory in that
she rejects theory itself: ‘…this practice can never be theorized, enclosed,
encoded – which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.’ Her notion of a specific écriture
féminine is intended to subvert the symbolic rational ‘masculine’ language.
Like Julia Kristeva, she also links écriture feminine to Lacan’s
pre-Oedipal ‘imaginary’ phase. She advocates also what she refers to as ‘the
other bisexuality’, which actively encourages and relishes sexual differences.
It must be said that her writing is full of contradictions: rejecting a
biological account of the female but nevertheless celebrating the female body;
including binary oppositions but denying their importance; encouraging a
specifically female form of writing but celebrating pre-linguistic, non-verbal
experience. It is a position which one is tempted to describe as full of much
sound and fury but signifying, in both Saussurean and Shakespearean senses,
nothing.
VI. Luce
Irigaray (1932–)
Luce Irigaray is
especially critical of Freud’s view of women. In Spéculum de l’autre femme (1974)
she argues that Freud’s ‘penis envy’ envisages women as not really existing at
all independently but only as negative mirror images of men. Male perception is
clearly associated with sight (observation, analysis, aesthetics etc), but
women gain pleasure from physical contact. The eroticism of women is fundamentally
different to that of men. For Irigaray, all this implies that women should
celebrate their completely different nature to men, their otherness. Only in
this way can they overcome the traditional male-dominated perception of women.
VII. Ruth
Robbins
The general concern of
Marxist Feminism is to reveal the double oppression of women, both by the
capitalist system and by sexuality within the home, and to explain the
relationships between the two. The ideas of Ruth Robbins provide a good example
of the combination of feminist concerns and Marxist principles. In Literary
Feminisms (2000), she advocates a Marxist feminism which explains ‘the
material conditions of real people’s lives, how conditions such as poverty and
undereducation produce different signifying systems than works produced in conditions
of privilege and educational plenty’.
No comments:
Post a Comment