Page 292 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes with a patriarchal canon (or even a maternal one .... becomes a poetics of suffering and victimisation.
We also need to ask ourselves whether there are other more positive ways in which women
writers may respond to an intimidating male tradition of misogynistic myths and monstrous
women that threatens the creative fire in their heads ? Is there hidden laughter as well as anger,
a subversive spirit of feminine mischief able to parody or appropriate or reshape male stories,
masculine modes and forms?
The problem with gynocriticism — as suggested here — is that it can see only one relationship
between women’s writing and men’s writing : that which is adversarial or hostile. Therefore
gynocriticism is restricted to offering a narrative of suffering in which women are seen always and
only as victims. In the process gynocriticism loses the weapon it could have had to hijack the
agenda of patriarchy : the weapon of laughter. Think back now to the one of Woolf’s essay, from
which the element of fun — a woman speaking about and to women in a primarily male academy
— is never lost. Does Woolf gain or lose, do you think, by putting across theory with a sense of
fun? And as a corollary, do you think Showalter’s essay becomes more or less profound because
it shuts out humour ?

26.4 Possible Application

Keeping these pros and cons in mind, please turn yet again to ‘An Introduction’ and give it
another read. At the centre of the poem is an experience that — biologically and psychologically
— is a part of the ‘wilderness.’ In other words it is part of that crescent-shaped area peculiar to the
silenced culture of women. ‘When/ I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask ? For, he drew
a youth of sixteen into the /Bedroom, and closed the door He did not beat me/ But my sad
woman-body felt so beaten./ The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank/ Pitifully.’
How much of this central experience can gynocriticism recover ? The notion of woman as sufferer,
perhaps can be restored to the articulate world. I should imagine though that a great deal of work
on the interplay of ethnic, sexual and economic factors will need to be done, and I wonder how far
gynocritics will offer a culturally-sensitive model. What do you think ?
Self-Assessment
Choose the correct options
1. Elain was born in
(a) 1940 (b) 1941 (c) 1950 (d) 1943
2. Showalter hizacks a stuffy patriarchal description by Leen Edel in
(a) 1979 (b) 1965 (c) 1985 (d) 1980
3. The ‘Paris spring’ across Europe in favour of peace and liberation was echoed in
(a) 1968 (b) 1971 (c) 1972 (d) 1975
4. Elain Showalter was
(a) German theorist (b) American theorist (c) French theorist (d) Russian theorist

26.5 Summary
• ‘Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness’ is written at a time when the American campus — a
site for alternative or fringe thinking — is increasingly concerned (to all appearances ) with
Women’s Studies. The essay highlights the need for feminist theories to work out a framework
they can share. Showalter suggests gynocritics — theories which are centred on the experience
of women as writers — as a common factor. She explores biological, linguistic and
psychoanalytical models of difference in women’s writing and sets them aside in favour of
a theory based on a model of women’s culture. Arguing that women constitute the muted
culture and men the dominant culture, Showalter reminds feminist theorists of the need to
keep all cultural phenomena —race, class, the academy and the market in mind — to produce
a ‘thick’ or multi-layered analysis of women’s writing. This will enable feminist theorists to
sensitively map the wilderness.

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