The Feminist Criticism
began as a kind of revolution against the traditional literary criticism which
was male centered. We must now focus on a woman centred inquiry, considering
the possibility of the existence of a female culture within the general culture
shared by men and women. It redefines women's activities and goals from a woman
centred point of view. The term implies an assertion of equality and an
awareness of sisterhood and the communality of women. It also refers to the
broad based communality of values, institutions, relationships, and methods of
communication. Women's culture particularly implies full independence from the
central and influence of male dominated organisations/ institutions. In this
respect the Black American woman thinker Barhara Smith points out that “Black
women writers constitute an identifiable literary tradition thematically,
stylistically, aesthetically, and conceptually. They manifest common approaches
to the act of creating literature as a direct result of the specific political,
social and economic experience they have been obliged to share. In this
respect, Showalter says
that the first task of a gynocentric criticism must be to plot the precise
cultural locus of female literary identity and to describe the forces that
intersect on individual woman writer's cultural field.
There are two distinct
modes of feminist criticism. The first mode is ideological. It is concerned
with the feminist as reader, and it offers feminist readings of text which
consider the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and
misconceptions about women in criticism, and woman as sign of semiotic systems.
Feminist criticism is an expression of liberation of womanhood from patriarchal
dominance. It is a librating intellectual act. Adrienne Rich points out that "A radical critique of literature, feminist in
its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we live, how we
have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language
has trapped as well as literature us, how the very act of naming has been till
now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name-and therefore,
live afresh.”
Showalter
traces the history of women's literature into three phases :
Showalter observes the
first phases taking place from 1840 to 1880; she calls this "the Feminine
phase” and declares that it is characterized by women's views in an effort to
equal the intellectual achievements of the man 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 second
feminist phase follows from 1880 to 1920, wherein women are historically
enabled to reject the accommodating postures of femininity and to use
literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood. This phase is
characterized by Amazon Utopias,
visions of perfect, female-led societies of the future. This phase was
characterized by women's writing that protested against male standards and
values, and advocated women's rights and values, including a demand for
autonomy.
And the third phase (1920 till around 1960) is one of the most inspiring
self-discoveries. Showalter remarks that “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”. Significantly, She does not offer a
characteristic sign or figure for this female phase, suggesting a welcome
diversity of experience that is too broad to be encompassed in a single image.
Undoubtedly, She advocates approaching feminist criticism from a cultural
perspective in the current female phase, rather than from perspectives that traditionally
come from an androcentric perspective like psychoanalytic and biological
theories.
Feminism in Indian
literature, particularly in Indian English writing, is a by-product of western
feminist movement. Showalter is an influential critic for her conceptualization
of gynocriticism, which is a woman-centric approach to literary analysis. Her A Literature of their Own particularly
discusses the female literary tradition. In this attempts she observes that literary subcultures like black, Jewish,
Anglo-Indian tend to pass through these proper stages; Imitation of the modes
of the dominant tradition and internalization of the artistic and social
values, Protest against these standards and values and a call for autonomy, and
self discovery turning
inward free from some of the dependency of identity. She points out
that although women writers since the beginning have shared a covert solidarity
with other women writers and their female audience; there was no expressive
communality or self-awareness before the 1840s. Even during the feminine phase,
women writers did not see their writing as an expression of their female
experiences. Yet the repressive circumstances gave rise to innovative and
covert ways to express their inner life.
Feminist criticism is
concerned with the interpretation and reinterpretation of views. It may
initiate the principles and theory of feminist criticism. Like American
criticism all feminist is in some respect revisionist, questioning the adequacy
of accepted conceptual structures. Sandra
Gilbert, a champion of feminist revisionist criticism, remarks: all
the disguised questions and answers that have always shadowed the connection
between textuality and sexuality, genre and gender, psychosexual identity and
cultural authority. Generally, the
revisionary feminist criticism is based upon existing models. It is dressed
with Correcting, modifying, supplementing, revising, humanising, and also
attacking male critical theory. This accounts for its slow progress. Male
critical theory implies a concept of creativity, literary history, or literary interpretation
based entirely on male experience and put forward as universal.
Showalter is also a
specialist in Victorian literature. Her most innovative work in this field is
madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in women's writing and in the portrayal
of female characters. Her inspiring attempts Inventing Herself (2001) is a
survey of feminist icons, seems to be the culmination of a long-time interest
in communicating the importance of understanding feminist tradition. Her early
essays and editorial work in the late 1970s and the 1980s survey the history of
the feminist tradition within the wilderness of
literary theory and criticism. Working in the field of feminist literary theory
and criticism, which was just emerging as a serious scholarly pursuit in
institutions in the 1970s, Her writing reflects a conscious effort to convey
the importance of mapping her discipline's past in order to both ground it in
substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that is able to inform a rout
for future feminist academic pursuit.
Feminist Criticism
began as a part of general movement of women's liberation. It is widely
different from male centric criticism concerning with varied aspects of
womanhood. The concept of the inscription of the female body and female
difference in language and view is a significant, theoretical formulation in
French feminist criticism. Feminist criticism in each country has a different
centre, which is undoubtedly related with one or the other aspect of womanhood.
Showalter remarks that English feminist criticism, essentially Marxist,
stresses oppression; French feminist criticism, essentially psycho-analytic,
stresses repression; American feminist criticism, essentially textual, stresses
expression. All are struggling to find a terminology that can rescue the
feminine from its stereotypical associations with inferiority. Gynocritics
reveal that they are concerned with something solid, enduring and real about
the relation of women to literary culture. This criticism attempts to construct
a female framework for the analysis of women's literature and focus on female
subjectivity, female language and female literary career. A gynocentric
criticism would also situate women writers with respect to the variables of
literary culture, such as modes of production and distribution, relations of
author and audience, relations of high to popular art, and hierarchies of
genre."
The debate over
language is one of the most exciting areas in feminism. A woman feels
suffocated when she is forced to speak something in male dominated language. To
her it is like speaking or writing in a foreign tongue, a language with which
she may be uncomfortable. French feminists advocate a revolutionary change in
linguistic and stylistic patterns. Chantal Chawaf also points out: “Feminine language must, by its very nature,
work on life passionately, poetically, politically in order to make it
invulnerable.” In
fact Culture determines the nature and character of writing by women. In this
connection Showalter remarks that Indeed, a theory of culture incorporates
ideas about women's body, language, and psyche but interprets them in relation
to the social contexts in which they occur. The ways in which women
conceptualize their bodies and their sexual and reproductive functions are
intricately linked to their cultural environments. Female cultural experience
differs from the male cultural experience.
Showalter further says
about women's language that cannot be explained in terms of two sex specific
languages but need to be considered in terms of styles, strategies, and
contexts of linguistic performance. Women have to cultivate linguistic and
stylistic devices which artistically and effectively express feminine
sensibility and individuality. The formation of such a language would have a
mark of their feminine identity and would impart them a distinct status in the
society. Women must express themselves both body and soul in language, a
feminist language. We must do away with all sorts of prejudices, biases and
narrowness of outlook in relation to women. They must enjoy full emancipation
of expression according to their choice and must carve out a space for
themselves in the use of language.
In the feminist phase
which denotes political involvement, women thinkers questioned the stereotypes
and challenged the restrictions of women's language, denounced the ethic of
self-sacrifice and used their fictional dramatization of oppression to bring
about social and political changes. They embodied a declaration of independence
in the female tradition and stood up to the male establishment in an outspoken
manner. In her essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, She
says that a cultural theory acknowledges
that there are important differences between women as writers: class, race
nationality, and history are literary determinants as significant as gender.
Nonetheless, women's culture forms a collective experience within the cultural
whole, an experience that binds women writers to each other over time and space.
The theory of culture
as a factor affecting women's writing is inclusive of the theories of biology,
language and psyche. The influence of all these factors is guided by the
cultural situation of a woman. The
culture of women is not a sub-culture of main culture, but they are part of
general culture itself. If patriarchal society applies restraints on them, they
transform it into complimentarily. Women form muted group and men form dominant
group in the society. All language of the dominant group is all acceptable
language so; the muted group has to follow the same language. The part of the
circle representing the muted group which does not coincide with the other
circle represents that part of women's life which has not found any expression
in history. It represents the activities, experiences and feelings of women
which are unknown to men. This 'female zone’ is also known as 'wild zone' since
it is out of the range of dominant group. Women could not share their views on
experiences belonging exclusively on the wild zone.
