Feminist criticism

The Feminist criticism started in 1970s, closely connected with civil rights movement. There was nothing like that before and the only female writers thought in schools were Jane Austen, Mary Anne Evans, Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather as school canon was overwhelmingly male, although declared universal. From the 18^th century, women started to attempt the pen. Banished from education and public life, they found refuge in literary forms despised by men, in diaries, letters and sentimental fiction.

The most criticized thing about Feminism is that it was only for the white, middle class women of Western Europe and America. Another problem is the subject of feminism – what actually is a woman? How come these rich white women can decide for the rest? Women suddenly became a matter of interpretation. Many people connect feminists with men-haters and lesbians which is not true (Gertrude Stein was a lesbian but not a feminist as people believe. She wore long hair but when she started to be connected with feminism, a new photo of her with short hair and masculine appearance came out.).

The first step in equality was to establish physical equality. The Victorians believed that woman hysteria is connected with their sexual organs that are moving inside the body, causing hysteria and instability and also claimed that women have smaller brains. In the film Hysteria the doctor cures hysteria with vibrators (the 5^th electrified thing, LOL) and with great success.

VIRGINIA WOOLF’s essay A Room of One’s Own is still a major feminist essay, claiming that if a woman should be a writer she needs to have her own room, an income and certain degree of independence. But it was considered too much, women got married, all property was their husband’s, they were at home all the time and they could do only the needle work and broidery in rich family, no wonder they got hysterical.

The right for vote and education is essential for an independent woman. It was not earlier that in 1873 that women could decide about the property they brought from their home (their clothes, broidery). The Czech Republic was surprisingly very progressive in that aspect, the first grammar school for women called Minerva was established in 1890 in Prague by Eliška Krásnohorská and we had female voters in 1918, whereas in Sweden the women gained their right to vote in 1971! The first woman with a diploma of University of Cambridge was the Queen Mother in 1945. In 1977 Germany finally repealed the law that gave men the right to decide about employment of their wives.

A French feminist SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR said: “One is not born a woman but becomes a woman.” But what about transsexuals? What actually is masculinity? Is a man automatically masculine? A female feminine? Women do not have to be necessarily feminine as men do not have to me masculine. Even in Bible angel Gabriel changes the gender and likes to be a young girl. What is considered masculine/feminine is already in society, we are raised in it.

The early subject of feminist was women’s experience under patriarchy, the long tradition of male rule in society which silences women’s voices. SANDRA GILBERT and SUSAN GUBAR in The Madwoman in the Attic examined the issue of what meant for women writers to entry the literature dominated by only two figures of female characters – the extreme images of angel and monster which male authors have generated for them. Men could be anything (heroes, old wise sages) but also ambiguous characters like Loki and Zeus (a ruler but also a rapist, a murderer.) Women could not be ambiguous, something between occurs only from 1970s above.

Before women can write, they must kill “the angel in the house” = an aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been killed, and similarly, kill the monster whose Medusa-face also kills female creativity. These two images invaded women’s writing to such extent that few women have definitely killed either figure. Frankenstein was written by a female authoress Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley but her only female character is an obedient faithful wife so she did not overcome the image of an angel in the house.

In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a girl is looking at the portrait of her mother which was made after its subject was dead = an image of a woman metaphorically killed into art. As a Aurora stares at it, the picture mingle with whatever she last read or heard, transforming into ghost, angel, fairy, witch – all extremes, male-defined masks altering her vision. Aurora becomes a poet and also must deconstruct the dead self that is a male opus and discover a living self, replace a copy with the individuality.

The angel-woman is symbolized by Virgin Mary and mother goddesses. In 19^th century, the eternal female principle of purity represented by Madonna in heaven was replaced by an angel in the house who is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity of heart. She has no story of her own but gives advice and consolation to others. A perfect wife would state that “A man must be pleased; but him to please is woman’s pleasure.” All conduct books from that time taught young girls to be submissive, modest and angelic. A Victorian angel-woman would become her husband’s holy refuge.

Women are also a symbol of death. They give life but also deliver male souls from one realm to another as nurses at death-bed and spiritual guides. Male anxieties about female autonomy probably go to everyone’s mother-dominated infancy. Men cannot control their own birth and death which scares them.

The monster-woman embodies female autonomy that endangers men who call these women witches, bitches and monsters. But monsters can be concealed behind the angel because women can create false appearances which make them even more dangerous. This secret ugliness is associated with their hidden genitals. Lilith was both the first woman and the first monster. Created not from Adam’s rib but, like him, from the dust, Lilith considered herself his equal. She flew to reside with demons and had hundreds of demon children. God threatened her to return upon killing her babies but she preferred punishment to patriarchal marriage. In patriarchal culture, female speech is angry revolt against male domination. The figure of Lilith is the price women have to pay for attempting to define themselves. Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene introduces a prototype monster: half woman, half serpent. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre features a mad woman. Jane grows up in orphanage and falls in love with the master. He is hiding his mad wife in the attic, locked, but why did she get mad in the first place?

Virginia Woolf was the first one to broke this concept in Orlando. The character of a young noble is described in feminine way with gender roles constantly switching. As a man he used to be very feminine but when he transforms into a woman, he hates female clothes and household matters. However, his identity is still the same, the gender change did not matter. Virginia Woolf came up with question how to write as a woman and how to write as a man?

How to use language based on gender opposition? Gender as a grammatical category is totally limited. Female aspect in language is totally missing, only derived from male words like fe-male, shepard-ess, waitr-ess. How to use male words to describe female? We automatically take masculine to be general, the same with concord where group consists of many females but just one male gives it male suffix – patriarchal language where female forms are only derivations of male forms.

French feminism is associated with JULIA KRISTEVA and HELENE CIXOUS. Some feminists argued that women’s body alone (birthing, lactation, menstruation) make them more connected with the physical world as a direct link between maternity and nature, whereas men flee to civilization. Men adopt violent posture towards the world they left because they separated from their mother. Women, on the other hand simply identify with their own mother. Women are more caring because their ties remain unbroken. For Freud, the father’s intervention between mother and son initiates the separation that preserves civilization. However, another theory finds in Post-structuralism an argument against all identity.

Common space in feminist theories

Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of commonality.

1.       Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically.

2.       In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is marginalized.

3.       All of western civilizations are deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.

4.       All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.

5.       Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are aware of these issues or not.

First wave of feminism (late 1700s-early 1900') - writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. The women's suffrage movement is established which leads passing of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote in US.

Second wave of feminism (1960s- 1970s) - building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism.

Third wave of feminism (1990s-present) - resisting over generalized and over simplified ideologies on white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism. Contemporary wave focuses also on marginalized populations' experiences.

Feminist criticism on Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perking Gilman

The story features a mad woman who often hopelessly sights “What can I do?” She does not have a traditional relationship with her child but we automatically expect that woman would do anything for her child. It does not have to be like that! As hopeless as she may be seen, she wants to write. Her husband does not want to let her, probably fearing her imaginative power that a woman should not have.

The protagonist is the monster of the house, whereas her sister is a nursing angelic figure. Her husband is supposed to be rational, logical, responsible but in the end he is the one who is totally hysterical and even faints. The protagonist calls him “that man” in the end and takes him as a total nuisance she has to step over every time. Critics say the story has happy ending – she get rid of the male influence - insanity as liberation! She finally sees the worlds as she wants to, even though it might be distorted.