Chapter 8: Feminisms and Gender Studies - PowerPoint Presentation

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Chapter 8: Feminisms and Gender Studies

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to LiteratureSlide2

I. Feminisms and Feminist Literary Criticism: Definitions

Patriarchal culture

Feminism as a political approach like Marxism

There is no longer a single set of assumptions or a homogenous feminismSlide3

II. First-, Second-, and Third-Wave Feminisms

First-wave (19th century)—political rights (Wollestonecraft, Stanton)

Second-wave (post-World War II)—gender equality (de Beauvoir, Millet, Friedan, Gilbert and Gubar)

Third-wave (1990s to present)—broader group of women included (Anzaldúa, hooks, Sandoval, Rebecca Walker, Rich)

Role of Third-Space women, maternalist studies (especially black maternalist studies)—Morrison, Alice Walker, O’Reilly Slide4

III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed?

Showalter’s three phases of feminism: the “feminine” (women writers imitate men), the “feminist” (women advocated minority rights and protested), and the “female” (focus is now on women’s texts)

Showalter’s four models of sexual difference: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural

Essentialist and constructivist feminismsSlide5

III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed?

A. Feminism and Psychoanalysis

French feminism and

l’ecriture feminine

Influence of Freud and Lacan

Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva

B. Feminists of Color

Feminists of color, like lesbian feminists, have different concerns than mainstream white heterosexual woman, often competing; new voices, such as modern slave narrative; postcolonialism and the subaltern woman (Spivak); Anzaldúa, “The New Mestiza” Slide6

III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed?

C. Marxist and Materialist Feminisms

Lower-class women have a different view of feminist goals as opposed to middle- and upper-middle-class women; debate between Marxist and materialist feminisms

D. Feminist Film Studies

“Male gaze”; social construction of female identity (Marx); Mulvey and de Lauretis

IV. Gender Studies

Gender Studies: false binaries; Queer Theory; Sedgwick and WarnerSlide7

IV. Gender Studies

False binaries

Queer Theory

Sedgwick and WarnerSlide8

V. In Practice

A. The Marble Vault: The Mistress in “To His Coy Mistress”

Grotesque attack on female body disguised as a love lyric

B. Frailty, Thy Name Is Hamlet: Hamlet and Women

Hamlet cannot resolve his Oedipus Complex to become a mature man

He loathes the female body

Heilbrun on Gertrude: how we read Gertrude determines how we read HamletSlide9

V. In Practice

C. “The Workshop of Filthy Creation”: Men and Women in

Frankenstein

Femininity = Life, Masculinity = Death; Victor appropriates female role but fails

1. Mary and Percy, Author and Editor

In Mary’s life, due to her miscarriages and the suicides of family members, death and life were horribly mixed; novel is artistic resistance by a woman against a patriarchal family, husband, and society; Percy’s role is debatable

2. Masculinity and Femininity in the Frankenstein Family

Family, gender, and parental roles are skewed

3. “I Am Thy Creature. . .”

Victor fails at being a father to the Creature: “’I was thy Adam’”Slide10

V. In Practice

D. Men, Women, and the Loss of Faith in “Young Goodman Brown”

Hawthorne’s women characters are superior to his male characters; story’s sexuality

E. Women and “Sivilization” in

Huckleberry Finn

Strong women characters like Mrs. Loftus; Jim’s maternalism

F. “In Real Life”: Recovering the Feminine Past in “Everyday Use”

Motherhood and sisterhood; quilt as symbol of black women’s creativity and family history; narrator: a womanist