Feminism – Literary Critism

Ratna Wati , Elisa Permatasari,

Sakti Sundarti, Rid Iclasia
 Who Is the Critism?


The criticsm is elaine showalter and he
critizise about Thomas Hardy in writter as a
reader and Elizabeth Barrow and Muriel
Spark in writter as a writter.
 What is Feminist Critism ?

Feminist criticism is the literary and

critical theory that explores the bias in favor
of the male gender in literature, and which
reexamines all literature from a feminist
point of view. [ Stephen, Martin. 2013, English Literature; A student Guide,
pg. 30]
 What is Feminist Critism ?

In feminist critique in woman as a reader

elaine said that “woman as the consumer of
male produced literature and with the way
in which the hypothesis of a female reader
chanfges our apprehension of a given text.
Awakening us to the significance of its
sexual codes.
 Writers in Feminist critism
• Simone de Beavouir’s – social construction
of gender and distinguishing between sex
and gender
• Kate Millett’s – Sex-role stereotyping and
Patriarchial
• Elaine Showalter - feminist critique,
gynocritics and Female Culture
 In Toward a Feminist Poetics Showalter divides
feminist criticism into two sections:

1. The Woman as Reader or Feminist

Critique
2. The Woman as Writer or Gynocritics and
Female Culture
The Woman as Reader or Feminist Critique

“Feminist critique,” which focuses on “woman

as reader – with woman as the consumer of a
male-produced literature,” and

She provides an exemplary feminist critique of

Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge to
demonstrate that “one of the problems of the
feminist critique is that is male-oriented.
 The Woman as Reader or Feminist Critique

Let's see in hardy's essay

“to shake loose from one's wife; to discard the drooping rag of woman, with her
mute complaints and maddening passivity; to escape not by a slinking
abandonment but through the public sale of her body to a stranger, as horses are
sold at a fair and thus to wrest, through sheer amoral wilfulness, a second chance
out of life. It is with this stroke, so insidiously attractive to male fantasy, that the
mayor of casterbridge begins”.
 The Woman as Reader or
Feminist Critique

• On that scene hardy said that the drunken husband

(Michael Hendcard) selling his wife and his infant
daughter for five guineas at a country fair.
 The Woman as Writer or Gynocritics

“Gynocritics,” which “is concerned with woman

as writer – with woman as the producer of textual
meaning.”
Showalter presents gynocritics as a way “to
construct a female framework for the analysis of
women’s literature and the problem of a female
language; the trajectory of the individual or
collective female literary career and literary
history".
Gynocritics ; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
Muriel Spark

In this chapter, Elaine Showalter explains that ‘gynocritics must also

take into account personal histories in determining women’s literary
choices and careers.

In order to support her statement, the feminist analyst shows how

Elizabeth Barrett’s husband, Robert Browning, influenced her
(Elizabeth’s) work as an artist. Showalter affirms that it is known
‘how susceptible women writers .

Barrett Browning’s letters of the 1850s the painful, halting, familiar

struggle between her womanly love and ambition for her husband
and her conflicting commitment to her own work.
 Three Phases of Feminism

1. The Feminine phase (1840–1880):

2. The Feminist phase (1880–1920):
3. The Female phase (1920— )
 The Feminine phase (1840–1880):

• it is characterized by “women [writing] in

an effort to equal the intellectual
achievements of the male culture…
• The distinguishing sign of this period is the
male pseudonym… [which] exerts an
irregular pressure on the narrative,
affecting tone, diction, structure, and
characterization.”
 The Feminist phase (1880–1920):

• Helena Cixous: “Censor the body and

you censor breath and speech at the
same time.
Write yourself. Your body must be heard.”
• . . . wherein “women are historically
enabled to reject the accommodating
postures of femininity and to use literature
to dramatise the ordeals of wronged
womanhood.”
 The Female phase (1920— )
• “women reject both imitation and protest—
two forms of dependency—and turn
instead to female experience as the
source of an autonomous art, extending
the feminist analysis of culture to the
forms and techniques of literature”.
 The Term
• Feminine: a set of cultural characteristics
given by the society
• Feminist: a political position referring to a
woman striving for an equality of right
• Female: a matter of biology
 What does the writer want to
show through the short story ?
The writer does make clear that the
problem is sexism and that clarity help us
female and male have been socialized
from birth on to accept sexist thought and
action. As a consequences, females can
be just as sexist as men and while that
doesn’t excuse or justify male domination.
 Halllo
• http://historiacultural.mpbnet.com.br/fem
inismo/Toward_a_Feminist_Poetics.htm
• (sebagian text feminism di fc ada disini)
• Thanks
 Daftar Pertanyaan mngg kmren

• Who is the writers in this critism ?

• What does the writers criticize in this writing ?
• What theory does the critics use in his critism ?
• What do you know about the theory of formalism ?
• What does the writers want to show through the short
story ?