Feminist criticism appeared in Europe and America in the late 1960s. In fact, most scholars were women, so this movement could easily make its way and became influential. It aims at exploring women's role in the western cultures:
" One serious cultural obstacle encountered by any feminist writer is that each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere ......... women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, erratic, orphaned of any tradition of its own " 1
Such a trend was taken into account, rejected by male critics and writers, so their task was definitely hard to prove their ideas and their existence as critics; they had to reread women's works. The feminist criticism could be diverged into two divisions; The Anglo Americans who emphasized on recovering, reprinting and revaluating the work. The other division is a French stress upon the literary language by the female.
The French feminist critics were influenced by the Structuralism and the post-Structuralism specially the work of Derrida and Lacan. Some of the feminist critics sought for literary language that is fluid, while others were traditional in their methods and styles. But the women's participation in literature has been limited and for a lot of time excluded completely.
The Feminism, as a term, has many aspects; it is not devoted to literature only. The cultural feminism is one of those aspects which celebrates the woman culture and claims for its analysis. It defends the traditionally ascribed traits to woman such as subjectivity, compassion, closeness to other and reliance on others. The cultural feminists argue for the existence of female institutions as well as the male's. In 1974 Adrienne Rich called for...
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A Dictionary of, Modern Critical Terms, ed. Roger Fowler, (London and New York: Routledge and kegan Paul, 1973).
The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural criticism, ed. Joseph Childers and Gray Hentzi, (New York: Chicheste, 1995).
Other sources are available at, http://www.colambia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023106/0231063253.HTM
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/literature/faculty/toril
http://www.frontlist.com/detail/0198186754
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198186754/ref=aseabsolutsearch05/1030033463-6627077
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
Feminist theory, which occurred from feminist doings, marks to twig the kind of masculinity disproportion by scrutinizing women's mutual roles and lived participation; it has industrialized patterns in a range of self-controls in mandate to answer to problems such as the mutual making of femininity and masculinity. Some of the past whereabouts of feminism have been scorned for fascinating into report only antediluvian, conventional, experienced evaluations. This operated to the contraption of genealogically limited or multiculturalist treatments of feminism.
Davis, Marion. "Literary Analysis: Turn of the Screw." StudentPulse. VOL. 1.NO.11 (2009): n. page. Print.
Feminism is a group of movements and ideologies that have a common goal: the political, economic and social equality of the sexes ("Feminism," 2015). Historians have debated the origin of feminism (Rampton, 2015). Did it begin with the greek poetess Sappho? Or with the french author, Christine de Pizan, who is regarded as the the first woman to take up her pen in defense of her sex (Beauvoir, 1953, p. 105)? Women throughout history have challenged society's attitudes when it comes to the female gender and their contributions overtime have made a great impact for women all around the world today. It was around the eighteenth century when Mary Wollstonecraft, often distinguished as the first feminist philosopher, advocated for the same respect and rights for the female sex. However, it was not until the late nineteenth century, that the feminist movement, or rather a series of movements, emerged.
Gendered strategies, in the criticism of early fiction, made feminine fiction incapable of excellence. By using conventional heterosexual relationships in their prefaces, authors only succeed in supporting the masculine control over fiction. The appraisals women gained only reinforced their inferior status. "Criticism placed female authors in a specific and confined critical sphere, while it located male authors in an other, more respected field" (375). By aligning their works with popular male literature, women inadvertently strengthened male authority. Women were only granted recognition in terms of their limited social stature. It is these gendered values and strategies that makes the history of the novel and feminine achievement difficult to assess.
The feminist perspective of looking at a work of literature includes examining how both sexes are portrayed
Feminism has tackled gender inequality in the workforce, within politics, education and various institutes. Within the 20th century some of these issues faced in western culture have been completely reformed due to certain feminist movements that have encouraged women to fight for equal rights. (Crofton: 2011: 272-273) The first and second waves of feminism have proven to be successful by increasing equal rights between men and women. (Kaplan: 1992: 7) Despite these successes which include allowing there is still the fact of the matter remains that women are still objectified by their gender. ()The generalization of gender roles, have proven to be challenging within the feminist movement, this is often due to the objectification of women in the media. Also as feminism, is an ideology it has various schools of which have conflicting ideas of the ‘empowerment of women’ making it difficult to clarify on what is not acceptable in establishing women’s rights. (Fraser: 2014)
In the context of a tumultuous time for the United States that was undergoing drastic changes socially, politically and ideologically, Kate Chopin published her first novel At Fault in 1890. Probably not aware of her role as one of the forerunners of the feminist movement in the late nineteenth century, Chopin embarked on expressing what women do feel, experience and suffer in their everyday lives. The first seeds of feminism, effectively, started essentially with the emergence of a group of women writers in England as well as in the United States who dared to speak about women from the standpoint of women and targeting a female audience. In spite of the fact that women had been taught to keep quiet, repress their voices and “internalize the codes of genteel womanhood” (Showalter 177), women writers during the nineteenth century attempted to reconstruct themselves as free individuals and refashion the image of the ideal woman. This was possible through writing that enabled them to “break new ground[s] and create new possibilities” (Showalter 19). G.H Lewes defines “female literature” as the articulation of women’s experience which “guides itself by its own impulses to autonomous self-expression” (qtd. in Showalter 13). Following women’s awareness of the unequal treatment they receive from men, their
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Literary Terms , New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Lugones, Maria C. and Elizabeth V. Spelman. Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for “The Woman’s Voice.” Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy. Edited by Marilyn Pearsall. Wadsworth Publishing Company: California. 1986. 19-31.
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.
Virginia Woolf, one of the pioneers of modern feminism, found it appalling that throughout most of history, women did not have a voice. She observed that the patriarchal culture of the world at large made it impossible for a woman to create works of genius. Until recently, women were pigeonholed into roles they did not necessarily enjoy and had no way of
Peterson, Linda H. "What Is Feminist Criticism?" Wuthering Heights. Ed. Linda H. Peterson. Boston: Bedford Books, 1992. 330-337.
Habib, M. A. R. "Feminist Criticism." A History of Literary Criticism: Fron Plato to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 667-707.
Being a Feminist and having a Feminist point of view in observing every cultural, social and historical issue had been translated as having a feminine centered and anti-masculine perception. Unlike the general and common knowledge about feminism, it is not only an anti-masculine perception towards social and individual issues. Feminism according to Oxford dictionary is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes that more commonly known as the pursuit of equality for women’s rights. On the other hand, in studying literary books as it will be in this paper, the mentioned definition is not applicable. Therefore, in this paper Feminist criticism will be used in order to study some characters’ lives in “Like water for chocolate” and “Season of Migration to the north” novels. Feminist criticism according to Oxford dictionary is a type of literary theory that points out different genders, races, classes, religions that are depictured in literature and will be used in this paper.