Page 271 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 23: Gynocriticism and Feminist Criticism: An Introduction

Differences among Women Notes
Another concern that has become important in feminist criticism is the differences among women
themselves. A model that presumes a universal feminine experience requires that women, unlike
men, be free from cultural and racial determination. Under such a model, the barriers to shared
experience created by race and class and gender are somehow cleared away when one is a woman.
Women critics of color, such as Barbara Smith, argue that it is incorrect to assume that there is one
universal feminine experience or writing. For example, the sexuality of black women tends to be
represented as natural, primitive, and free from traditional cultural inhibitions. Yet this assumption
has been invoked both to justify and to deny the sexual abuse of black women and the lack of
respect given to them. In general, Smith criticizes fellow feminists for excluding or ignoring
women of color. She also observes that both black and white male scholars working with black
authors neglect women.
Furthermore, it is not possible to discuss a universal experience of motherhood. Racism affects
women of color differently from the way it affects white women, especially in the effort to rear
children who can be self-sufficient and self-respecting. These troubles are inherent in a culture
that holds as natural the binary opposition white/black, wherein white is the privileged term.
This opposition is deeply rooted in the colonial history of Western civilization. Women of color
cannot be exempt from the insidious consequences of this binary opposition, and white women
cannot participate in productive dialogue with women of color whenever this traditional opposition
is ignored.
Lesbian Criticism
Another friction within the feminist movement involves lesbian feminist criticism. Just as women
of color have considered themselves excluded, lesbian feminists consider themselves excluded,
not only by the dominant white male culture but also by heterosexual females. Authors concerned
with this problem include Bonnie Zimmerman and Adrienne Rich. In fact, Rich provides a definition
of lesbianism so broad that it encompasses most of feminine creativity.
Feminist Psychoanalytic Criticism
In the 1970's a general movement toward psychoanalysis and toward women's reading men and
one another occurred within feminism. This movement is exemplified in the writings of such
feminists as Mary Jacobs, Jane Gallop, and Juliet Richardson. For feminist theorists, the limitations
of traditional theories accounting for the origins of oppression had been uncovered. Writers in the
1970's became very interested in, for example, the positioning of women within repressive sexual
and political discourses. Many feminist writers have become interested in the establishment of an
identity that involves both separation and connection, so that a binary relationship is not created
and one is not perceived as a threat. In such a new relationship, women would no longer need, for
example, to attempt to create an Oedipal triangle through their children. Each of the sexes might
develop less threatening relations to the other.
Reading Differences
In regard to women's reading men and one another, Annette Kolodny investigated methodological
problems from an empiricist stance. She concludes that women, in fact, do read differently from
men. Her "A Map for Rereading" (1980) examines how the two contrasting methods of interpretation
of men and women appear in two stories and how the differences between masculine and feminine
perspectives are mirrored in the reaction of the public to the two stories (Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
"The Yellow Wallpaper" and Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers"). Judith Fetterley's work also
presents a model for gender differences in reading. Her book The Resisting Reader (1978) argues
against the position that the primary works of American fiction are intended, and written, for a
universal audience and that women have permitted themselves to be masculinized in order to
read these texts. One of the first steps, Fetterley contends, is for women to become resisting, rather
than assenting, readers.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 265