Feminist Criticism ppt by Yvette Rejuso.pdf

This ppt talks about Feminist Criticism and the theories it covers. Feminist Criticism examines how literature and other cultural productions reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.

1. eminist
Criticism
by Yvette Rejuso

3. Feminist Criticism
Examines how literature and
other cultural productions
reinforces or undermines the
economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of
women.

4. Female writers were not
considered universal and did
not become part of the literary
canon as male authors’ literary
pieces describing experiences
from a male point of view was
considered the standard of
universality.

5. What is feminism?
Feminism is a wide range of
political movements, ideologies
and social movements that share
a common goal to define,
establish, and achieve political,
economic, personal and social
equality of sexes (Raina, 2020).

6. What is the goal of
feminism?
- Feminism seeks to break
people’s mentality of traditional
gender roles that can cast men
as rational, strong protective,
and decisive and women as
emotional (irrational), weak,
nurturing, and submissive.

7. What is Patriarchy?

8. What is Patriarchy?
- It is a sexist ideology
which promotes the
belief that women are
born inferior to men.

10. Feminism distinguishes the
word sex and gender.

11. ‘Social
Constructionism’

12. Patriarchy still exerts forces that
undermine women’s confidence
and assertiveness and with the
absence of these qualities are proof
that women are naturally, self-
effacing and submissive.

13. •Crying is a sign of weakness
•Unmanly to show fear or sympathy
towards men
•Expressing a loving feeling is a
taboo
•Men are not permitted to fail at
anything
Patriarchal Rules are
destructive for men

14. What happens
when Patriarchal
Ideology is
unnoticed?

15. “Cinderella”
Femininity with submission
Tolerate familial abuse
Patiently
wait to be
rescued by
a man
View marriage as a
desirable reward for
“right” conduct

16. Responsible for
making women
happy
Men must be unflagging
super providers without
emotional needs
“Prince Charming”
Wealthy rescuers

17. BAD WOMEN

20. Summary of
Feminist Premises

21. Women are oppressed by
patriarchy economically,
politically, socially, and
psychologically.
1.

22. 2.
Where patriarchy reigns, women
is other: she is objectified, and
marginalized, defined only by her
difference from male norms and values,
defined by (allegedly) lacks and men
(allegedly) have.

23. 3.
All of Western (Anglo-European)
civilization showcase patriarchal
ideology, in numerous patriarchal women
and female monsters of Greek and
Roman Literature and mythology, the
patriarchal interpretation of the Biblical
Eve as the origin of sin and death, the
representation of woman as nonrational
creature by traditional Western
philosophy.

24. 4.
For most English-Speaking feminists, the
word gender refers to our behaviour as
socially programmed men and women.
All the traits we associate with masculine
and feminine behaviour are learned, not
inborn.

25. 5.
All feminist activity’s
ultimate goal is to change
the world by promoting
women’s equality.

26. 6.
Gender Issues play a part in
every aspect of human
production and experience,
including the production and
experience of literature,
whether we are consciously
aware of these issues or not.

27. French
Feminism

28. French feminism believes that
in the importance of social
and political activism, in order
to ensure equal opportunity
and equal access to justice for
women.

29. Two focus of French
Feminism

30. French
Feminism
Materialistic

31. Examines the patriarchal
traditions that control
the materials and
economic conditions by
which society oppresses
women.

32. Simone de
Beauvoir
French existentialist
philosopher, writer,
social theorist, and
feminist activist.

33. essential
Can give meaning
Fully developed
contingent
Man’s other
Less than a man

34. Patriarchy tells women
that are uncomfortable
to bear children are
unfulfilled women.
Women should invest the
meaning of their lives in
their husbands and
children.

35. Christine Delphy Marxist Theory
Women constitute a separate
oppressed class, based on their
oppression as woman, regardless of the
socioeconomic class they belong to.

36. Collete Guillaumin’s work
Men are defined primarily in terms of what
they do, according to their value in society
as participants in the workforce. Women
on the other hand, are defined primarily in
terms of their sex.

37. “Direct physical
appropriation”

38. (1) The marriage contract puts
no limits on the wives will have
to work and specifies no
holidays on which they don’t
have to work.

39. (2) In some cultures, women’s
hair and their milk are being
sold by the male members of the
family. Also the number of
children in the family is decided
by the male.

40. (3) Women’s sexual
obligation to men both
occurs in marriage and
prostitution.

41. (4) The care-taking of babies,
children, elderly, and the sick is
carried by the overwhelming
majority of it is done by unpaid
female family members.

42. French
Feminist
Psychoanalytic Theory

43. An influential
theorist, as well as
novelist, playwright,
and poet.
Helene Cixous

44. A woman can’t be
liberated in any
meaningful way if she
doesn’t know that she
needs to be liberated.

45. It is within language that
detrimental patriarchal
notions of sexual difference
have been defined and
continued to exert their
repressive influence.

46. Cixous argues that language
reveals what she calls patriarchal
polar opposites, one of which is
considered to the other.

47. Head/ heart
Father/ mother
Culture/nature
Intelligible/palpable

48. Women obtaining equal opportunities, acquiring
power in sociopolitical system does not end the
current patriarchal system.

49. As source of life, women needs a
new feminine language that
eliminates the patriarchal thinking
that oppresses women.
This language according to Cixous
would be best for expressed in
writing, is called ecriture feminine
(feminine writing).

50. Caught with patriarchal
language, Luce Irigay posits,
women have only two choices:
to keep quiet, or to imitate
patriarchal representation of
herself.

51. Julia Kristeva suggest that any theory that
essentializes women misrepresents their
infinite diversity and leaves them
vulnerable to patriarchal essentialization of
women as naturally submissive.

52. Multicultural
Feminism

53. The promotion of sisterhood must
include respect for and attention to
individual differences among women
as well as an equitable distribution of
power among various cultural group
within feminist leadership.

54. <

55. Gender Studies
and Feminism

56. An understanding of the major issues
addressed by gender studies is a
useful understanding of the ways in
which feminist concerns are
continuing to evolve:

57. (1)Patriarchal assumptions about gender and
gender roles,
(2) alternative to the current way we
conceptualize gender as either feminine or
masculine,
(3)The relationship between sex and gender, an d
(4)The relationship between sexuality and gender.

58. Guide Questions
to perform feminist criticism

59. 1. What does the work reveal about the operations
(economically, politically, socially, or
psychologically) of patriarchy? How are women
portrayed? How do these portrayals relate to
gender issues of the period in which the novel was
written, or set? In other words, does the work
reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology?

60. 2. What does the work suggest about the
ways in which race, class, and/or other
cultural factors intersect with gender in
producing women’s experience?

61. 3. How is the work ‘gendered’? That is, how does
it seems to define femininity and masculinity?
Does the work suggest that there are
characteristics’ behavior always conform to
their assigned genders? Does the work suggest
that there are genders other than feminine and
masculine? What seems to be the work’s attitude
toward gender (s)?

62. 4. What does the work imply about the
possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting
patriarchy and/or about the ways in which
women’s situations in the world might be
improved?

63. 5. What does the history of the work’s reception
by the public and the critics tell us about the
operations of patriarchy? Has the literature work
been ignored or neglected in the past? Why? Or,
if recognized in the past. Is the work ignored
now? Why?

64. 6. What does the work suggest about
woman’s creativity?

65. 7. What might an examination of the
author’s style contribute to the
ongoing efforts to delineate a
specifically feminine form of writing?

66. 8. What role does the work play in
terms of women’s literary history and
literary tradition?