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Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University Unit 24: Features of Feminist Criticism

Unit 24: Features of Feminist Criticism Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
24.1 Working Definition
24.2 Concerns of Feminist Theories
24.3 Grey Areas in Feminist Theories
24.4 Possible Application
24.5 Summary
24.6 Key-Words
24.7 Review Questions
24.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Understand the concerns and features of feminist theories.
• Examine areas of sensitivity and difficulty.

Introduction

I’d like to begin by recalling a fragment of a conversation from Jane Austen’s last completed novel.
Persuasion. It is a conversation between two friends, Captain Harville and Anne Elliot on the
subject of constancy in love. As you will see, it begins with a reference to Captain Benwick, a
common friend of theirs, whose situation they are discussing. It goes on however well beyond the
personal. Captain Harville has just tried to tell Anne men’s feelings are as strong and long-lasting
as women’s. Anne has disagreed.
‘Well, Miss Elliot...we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would,
probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you — all stories, prose and verse. If I
had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side [of] the
argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon
woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs all talk of women’s fickleness. But, perhaps, you will
say, these were alt written by men.’
‘Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every
advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree;
the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.’ (Persuasion 1088-89)
Quite a few points jump out of this little snatch of conversation. First as Captain Harville suggests
at the start, there is no beginning and no end to the dialogue between women and men. It is
indeed one feature of human existence that cuts across ail barriers of time and space. Feminist
theories then are one set of manifestations of that dialogue. They do not live — sectioned-off— in
a curriculum for you and me to study and teach. They are the blood and bone of life’s ongoing
debate in all eras and cultures, between as it were ‘one half of the sky’ and the other. Next, the
logical development of this line of thought is that feminist theories —however intellectually
inaccessible some may seem at first — are not wholly or even largely the concern of the academy.
They are illustrations of how the world and the academy intervene in each other’s lives. Look at
the way in which the conversation veers and swings. Harville and Anne begin with a purely

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