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Unit 23: Gynocriticism and Feminist Criticism: An Introduction

23.5 Feminist Criticism: An Introduction Notes

Any survey of feminist criticism is fraught with difficulties, the most serious of which is the
avoidance of reductionism. This introduction to feminist work attempts to identify key figures,
central concerns, and general "movements." Such an attempt is a strategic move to organize a vital
and growing body of work into some sort of scheme that can be collated and presented. Despite
the existence of American, French, and British "feminisms," for example, no such clear-cut schools
or movements exist in a fixed way. The various writers included in this essay, and the various
trends and movements discussed, share many positions and disagree on many important points.
Such agreements and disagreements have less to do with nationality than with the rapid changes
occurring in feminist criticism. Three general perspectives on feminism are summarized here, as
reflected in the work of American, French, and British writers. The work of two pivotal feminist
writers, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, is discussed at some length, and there is also an
attempt to isolate a few general trends and issues within the feminist movement.
Feminism has diverse goals, many of which overlap in the work of individual writers. This work
is filled with pitfalls and temptations: Because women have been participants in their cultures,
feminine thinking and writing cannot be separated from the methods of the cultures in which they
have lived. Nor can a woman be separated from her race or sexual orientation. Furthermore,
feminist criticism may be combined with other methods of criticism, such as deconstruction,
psychoanalytic criticism, and Marxist criticism. Generally, however, feminist writers are concerned
with encouraging the equality of women-political equality, social equality, and aesthetic equality-
and researching the impact of gender upon writing-determining how the writing of women differs
from the writing of men.
Gender Systems

Feminist critics have produced a variety of models to account for the production, reproduction,
and maintenance of gender systems. They discuss the female writer's problems in defining herself
in the conventional structures of a male-dominated society, structures that restrict the possibilities
of women and impose standards of behavior upon women personally, professionally, and creatively.
Again, to generalize, once women experience themselves as subjects, they can attempt to undermine
the social, cultural, and masculine subject positions offered them.
Feminist critics may, for example, reexamine the writing of male authors (an approach associated
with American feminists) and, in particular, reexamine the great works of male authors from a
woman's perspective in an attempt to discover how the great works reflect and shape the ideologies
that hold back women. In this reexamination, feminist critics will carefully analyze the depictions
of female characters to expose the ideology implicit in such characterizations. They may also seek
to expose the patriarchal ideology that permeates great works and to show how it also permeates
the literary tradition. This particularly American approach is seen in the work of Kate Millett,
Judith Fetterley, and Carolyn Gold Heilbrun.

In particular, the place within feminism of women of color is a controversial issue, as
black writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki
Giovanni, and others challenge and enter the canon. Other practitioners of gynocriticism
include Patricia Meyer Spacks and Susan Gubar.

Gynocriticism
A second approach used by American feminists is termed "gynocriticism." This method of inquiry
takes as its subject the writings of women who have produced what Elaine C. Showalter, who
coined the term "gynocriticism," calls "a literature of their own." A female literary tradition is

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