Lecture Series on

Contemporary Theories
Feminist Criticism: Lecture 1
By Dr. Pooja Agarwal
Department of English and Modern European
and Other Foreign Languages
(School of Languages)
 Feminist Criticism
Throughout the history of civilization, women have been subjugated by men.
Aristotle has written that a woman is a woman by virtue of some “lack.”
Women are seen as inferior beings. They are seen as being emotional and child-
like.
Women are marginalized and stereotyped by patriarchal discourse, (girls play
with dolls; boys don’t cry).
 Feminist Criticism
The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definitions of patriarchy:
• a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head
of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line.
• a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women
are largely excluded from it.
 Feminist Criticism
The proactive fight for equality goes back to the beginning of the 20th century.
This included the right to vote, and the right to own property. In England
women did not get right to vote 1928. A bill passed in 1918 only partially gave
the right to vote to women, in this case, women who owned property. Others
got this right in 1928.
The fight for the right to vote is known as the Suffragette Movement.
 Feminist Criticism
Many modern women in the US and Europe and even India, never question
their right to open a bank account, own property. These rights, however, were
hard won: for much of history, and even up to 40 years ago, middle-class
women were not allowed to handle money; even having a job was seen as a sign
of financial desperation.
As an example, UK did not allow equal heritance to women until 1922.
 Feminist Criticism
Just like women were denied the right to vote and the right to own property, yet
another right denied to them was equal pay for equal work.
Up until the WWII, women were largely confined to the domestic sphere. But
during the WWII, when men left home to fight, women sought employment in
production units and factories to earn their bread and butter.
But sadly, these women did not get paid equally.
 Feminist Criticism
Feminist Criticism has its roots in Feminism, which began as a political
movement, demanding equal rights and recognition to women.
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to
define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the
sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male
point of view, and that women are treated unjustly within those societies.
Efforts to change that include fighting against gender stereotypes and
establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and
outcomes for women that are equal to those for men.
 Feminist Criticism
Stereotyping: a fixed idea that many people have about a thing or a group that
may often be untrue or only partly true, and could be based upon prejudice.
(All women love to cook; Boys like to play with cars)
Backgrounding: the process by which a character’s voice is silenced, and the
character is not given due subjectivity
 Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism is concerned with “the ways in which literature (and other
cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social,
and psychological oppression of women” (Tyson 83).
This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently
patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in writing about
women, which can take explicit and implicit forms.
 Feminist Criticism
This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture:
“Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine,
where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects
only” (85).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization
such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon:
“...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency
to underrepresent the contribution of women writers” (Tyson 84).
 Feminist Criticism
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some
areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson (92):
Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and
psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are
oppressed.
In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined
only by her difference from male norms and values.
All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology,
for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the
world.
 Feminist Criticism
While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender
(scales of masculine and feminine).
All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate
goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience,
including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously
aware of these issues or not.

(Some of the content has been taken from open sources on Internet)