Page 276 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes personal concern. Their friend has given up mourning for his dead fiancee and found a new love.
But Harville does not let the matter rest here. He goes on to speak of books, their writers and of all
those engaged in the arts. He moves, in other words, from the world of ordinary life to the
academy in which literature is taught, assessed and marketed. Harville and Anne go back (after
the extract cited here) to talk of the personal once more. Thus this suggests the way in which
feminist theories ‘happen’. For instance, the critical establishment for a very long time said that
Austen (though she lived through the Napoleonic wars) never alluded to the ‘great world outside’
and wrote only about the sheltered world of family life Yet look at how revolutionary ideas are
quietly being nudged into place here. The notions that the literary establishment is not just male
but likely to be male-biased as well, that women have been historically disadvantaged because
education, history and literature have always been the preserve, and that therefore the academy
(which produces and disseminates these studies) is suspect, are the stuff of which women’s
revolutions have been made. All these notions are articulated in this conversation.
Sometimes a revolution may happen in an obviously public arena : the Votes for Women movement
in the Britain of the 1920’s or the campaign for parliamentary seats for women in the India of the
1990’s. At other times it may happen quietly in the give-and-take of a private conversation. That
feminist theories seem to go underground at times, or speak largely in private space, is itself a
comment on the way in which women have been silenced or marginalised at all times and in all
places. Also look at the specifically literary aspects considered here. Literature concerns both
women and men. So it is not only a case of men imbibing its gender-biases but also of women
writers and readers being unknowingly conditioned by these biases. In this context therefore
Anne is right to rule out an unmediated, ad hoc use of literature as a key to understanding life.
Feminist theories try to identify such biases and then negotiate them by sensitising readers to their
existence and organising strategies of resistance against such biases. Besides, examine the tone of
this exchange again. Yes, the man and the woman are in an adversarial relationship in terms of
ideas, but no, there is no hostility. Does this context of friendship help advance the feminist argument
through means of friendly persuasion or does it retard the argument since persuasion can reduce
radicalism ? Woolf for instance is criticised for using persuasive, feminine charm to win over her
readers. Logically, if culture-conditioning is granted, the debate is not between women and men, but
between feminists and anti-feminists. Finally look once more at the conversation, not for the tone
this time but for the structure, or the way in which it orders its thoughts. At the molecular level —
the level of the sentence — do you think you would know it was written by a woman if you had no
prior information that the author is Austen ? Some theorists claim there is such a thing as ‘a woman’s
sentence.’ It is shaped so as to be deliberately personal, supple and easy as a response to the more
public, ponderous and relatively hostile sentence of a man. Others suggest this kind of discrimination
is itself an extension of gender-bias. What do you think ?

24.1 Working Definition

24.1.1 Sex and Gender
I wouldn’t like to offer you — even if I could construct it — a hard and fast definition of the nature
of feminist theories. That would set parameters to an experience which I still think is exciting
because its chief business is the stretching of parameters and the disturbing of received wisdom.
I wouldn’t wish, so to speak, to domesticate the terror. At the same time I would like to suggest
some areas and sensitivities peculiar to feminist theories, and to play around with some of the
applications of these theories. So I shall try to put two working definitions before you. Consider
their areas of clarity and put question-marks over their areas of confusion. Mere is the first :
...feminism is a political perception based on two fundamental premises : (1) that gender difference
is the foundation of a structural inequality between women and men, by which women suffer
systematic social injustice, and (2) that the inequality between the sexes is not the result of biological
necessity but is produced by the cultural construction of gender differences. This perception provides
feminism with its double agenda; to understand the social and psychic mechanisms that construct
and perpetuate gender inequality and then to change them. (Morris, 1)

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