Page 282 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 25: Gynocriticism and Feminist Criticism: Analysis

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
25.1 A Brief Introduction to Gynocriticism
25.2 The Contribution of Gynocriticism
25.3 The Quality of Gynocriticism
25.4 Summary
25.5 Key-Words
25.6 Review Questions
25.7 Further Readings

Objectives
After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Introduce Gynocriticism.
• Discuss the contribution of Gynocriticism.

Introduction

The feminist study of women's writings. The term is sometimes used to mean any literary criticism
devoted to works written by women. More often, it designates a body of literary criticism principally
produced by academic feminists in the United States between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s
that sought to characterize imaginative writing by women in contrast to canonical literature written
by men. Gynocriticism celebrated a distinctive "voice" in women's literature across genres and
periods that it explained in terms of women's cultural position as an oppressed group; of women's
experiences, especially experiences of male domination and of female bonding; and of psychological
traits supposedly typical of women such as empathy and fluid ego boundaries. This approach,
sometimes simplistically labeled "American feminist criticism," pioneered feminist literary history
and established a canon of women's literature influential in teaching, publishing, and scholarship.
By broadly endorsing women's creativity, gynocriticism overlaps "cultural feminism."
Gynocriticism's most important precursor is Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929), which
posed influential questions about "women and literature." Following Woolf, American feminists
of the late 1960s and thereafter saw imaginative literature as an important force affecting women.
While some scholars attacked male writers for stereotyping women, other feminists sought role
models and found energizing identifications in female characters drawn by women writers. For
example, in 1972 Nancy Burr Evans rejoiced to see her "own experiences mirrored" in fiction by
women (in Images of Women in Fiction, ed. Susan Koppelman Cornillon). Similarly, Louise
Bernikow's Among Women (1980) and Rachel Brownstein's Becoming a Heroine (1982) emphasized
the satisfactions of reading women writers who portrayed female friendships and women's search
for identity.
Compared with the long tradition of the feminist practice or women's liberation, feminist literary
criticism is a modern criticism approach that just started in 20 century. The chief pioneers of this
th
approach are English writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and French writer Simone de Beauvior
(1908-1986). They firstly had an insight into the twist of the female image and sexism in the male
writers' works. This initiated the pursuing of the female reading and writing in the feminist
criticism. Since 1960s, Kate Millet with her Sexual Politics made the feminist literary criticism

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