Literary Theories

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Literary Theories
Feminism Gender Studies
Presentation by Nadine Rybka, Ann-Cathrin
Bonnekoh, Annika Bartmann, Katharina Peckmann
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Outline

• History
• What is Feminism?
• Virginia Woolf and A Room of Ones own
• Gender Studies

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History

• Feminism began  before the 18th century
• Women ? inferior human beings and depend on their
  husbands
• Exception ? e.g. Jeanne D'Arc
• Representatives pleaded for larger opportunities

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History

• 1st feminist document ? Vindication of the Rights
  of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft
• French Revolution ? many documents about Women
  Rights were published woman clubs came up
• National assembly banned these clubs (no
  political rights)

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History

• 1848 1st Women's convention for their rights
• early 20th century ? womens suffrage
• 1946 UN commission on status of woman ? secure
  e.g. equal political rights

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History

• 1960 ?2nd wave of feminism
• Aims ?full social and economic equality and
  contraception
• 1972 discrimination based on sex was prohibited

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What is Feminism?

• Criticizes the traditional view on literature
• Main thesis ?male point of view, therefore
  one-sided
• Women have been historically suppressed by the
  patriarchal (male-dominated society)

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What is Feminism?

• Feminists claim ?biological divergence that
  distinguishes the female from the male is no
  reason for the suppression of women by men
• Theory is not based on one position
• ?contains many different approaches
• ?and a debate

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What is Feminism?

• All approaches examine the representation of the
  female in literary texts from the point of view
  of women
• They have a look at production reception of
  literature by women
• Criticism proceeds interdisciplinary

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What is Feminism?

• Distinction between ?
• 1. traditional feminist criticism
• 2. contemporary feminist criticism

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What is Feminism?

• 1.
• One area that searched for lost women's
  writings dealt with the role of women as
  authors
• Analysis of classics in literature (male writers
  followed stereotypical role models for the
  description of women)

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What is Feminism?

• 2.
• Is there a specific female way of writing?
• uses different theories like psychoanalysis,
  linguistic social theories on the construction
  of gender and the difference between male
  female

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What is Feminism?

• Distinction between ?Anglo-American French
  Feminism
• Anglo-American ?empirical approach that examines
  womens own culture, looks for the tradition of
  female authors, criticizes the effects of
  discrimination

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What is Feminism?

• French Feminism ?influenced by psychoanalysis
• Thesis ?difference between male female lies in
  language (is influenced by socio-cultural
  discourse)
• Binary oppositions between the male the female

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What is Feminism?

• Male system ? seen as closed (rational,
  serious)
• Female system ? seen as open (irrational,
  playful)
• ?Feminist literary criticism is a very dynamic
  area

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Virginia Woolf
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Virginia Woolf

• 1882-1941
• 1895 her mother dies ?1st of her several
  breakdowns
• 1904 started work as tutor at Morley College
• 1905 founding of the Bloomsbury Group

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Virginia Woolf

• Active in the campaign for womens suffrage
• Member of the People's Suffrage Federation
• Main political involvement ? member of the
  Womens Co-operative Guild (radical organisation)

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Virginia Woolf

• Married Leonard Woolf in 1912
• 1917 founded the Hogarth Press
• 1929 published A Room of Ones Own
• ?important essay in the history of feminism
• 1941 commits suicide

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A Room of Ones Own

• Thesis ?"a woman must have money and a room of
  her own if she is to write fiction"
• is constructed as a partly-fictionalized
  narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt
  this thesis

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A Room of Ones Own

• She dramatizes that mental process in the
  character of an imaginary narrator who is in the
  same position as her, wrestling with the same
  topic
• narrator begins investigation at Oxbridge College
• reflects on the different educational experiences
  available to men women as well as on more
  material differences in their lives

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A Room of Ones Own

• Turning to history, she finds so little data
  about the everyday lives of women that she
  decides to reconstruct their existence
  imaginatively
• she considers the achievements of the major women
  novelists of the 19th century and reflects on the
  importance of tradition to an aspiring writer

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A Room of Ones Own

• A survey of the current state of literature
  follows
• Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her
  audience of women to take up the tradition that
  has been so hardly bequeathed to them

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A Room of Ones Own

• Central claim ? economical security (independent
  from husbands alms)
• Room of ones own as metaphor for privacy
• Central metaphor ? own room in the house (as
  private property)
• ? personal privacy

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A Room of Ones Own

• ? independent mind
• ? soul
• ? own room in history
• ? right to participate in cultural
  questions

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Gender Studies

• Difference between gender sex
• New-born child becomes traditionally assessed
  according to its sex
• Categories of men women are social
  constructions
• Practice this every day ? doing gender

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Gender Studies

• Gender in Psychology
• Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and
  psychiatrist developed a psychoanalytic theory
• central idea ? human subject is a creation of its
  use of language

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Gender Studies

• model of psychology ? mirror stage development
  of language occurred approx. at the same time
• Important ? whether certain characteristics are
  determined by genetic factors or by environmental
  factors

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Gender Studies

• Queer Theory
• ?anti-essentialist theory about sex gender
• analyses the queer aspects of a humanist work
  that are not necessarily sexual