The Feminist Criticism

This Presentation is about the feminist Criticism.
Here I talk about ,

1) What is Feminist Criticism
2) History of Feminist Criticism
3) Special Video through examples
4) Types of Feminism


this presentation is submitted to Department of English, MKBU

1. The Literary Criticism and Terms 2 The Feminist Theory

2. ‘One is not born a woman; rather, one became a woman.’ ~Beauvoir Name : Dodiya Mehul Maheshbhai Roll No : 23 Enrolment No : 2069108420180011 Class : M.A. Sem 2 Year : 2017/19 Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar

3. Introduction Feminist Criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s. Behind it, however lies two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural role and achievements and for women’s social and political rights marked by such books as ‘Marry Wollstonecraft’s A vindiction of the Rights of woman’. John Mill’s ‘The subjection of women’ and American Margaret Fuller’s ‘Woman in the nineteenth Century’. Much of feminist literary Criticism continues in our time to be interrelated with the movement by political Feminists for social legal and cultural freedom and equality.

4. What is Feminist Criticism? Feminist criticism is concerned with the ways in which literature reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social and psychological oppression of women. Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: Unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers.” Feminist Criticism is the literary and critical theory that explores the bias in the favor of the male gender in literature and which reexamines all literature from a Feminist point of view.

5. The Feminist Criticism has two basic promises, that is Women presented in literature by male writer from male point of views. Women presented in writing of female writers from Female point of views. Feminist criticism aims to understand the nature of inequality and focus on analyzing gender equality and the Promotion of women’s Rights.

6. History of Feminism

7. First Wave of Feminism The First wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19 th and early 20 th century in the United Kingdom, Canada and United States. Writers like Mary Wollstonecart highlighted the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan Anthony and Victoria Woodhall contributed to the women’s Suffrage Movement, which led to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the 19 th Amendment. Basic Assumption is, “Men and women have separate, biologically, determined roles and duties in society, Women works in Private Sphere, then men is the Public Sphere.”

8. Women widely are considered to be, Intellectually inferior Physically weak Emotional, intuitive, irrational. Suited to the role of wives and mothers. Women could not vote. They were not educated at school/Universities and could only work in manual jobs. A married women’s profits and salary were owned by her husband. Rape and physical abuse are legal within marriage. Divorce available to men but far more difficult to women. Women had no rights to their children if they left a marriage.

9. Second Wave of Feminism The second wave of feminism which occurred in 1960-1980, came as a response to the experience of women after world war 2. it dealt with inequality of laws and pioneered by Betty Friedan, woman achieved championed abortion rights, reproductive. Freedom and other women’s health issues. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Elaine Showalter established the ground work for the dissemination of feminist theories, which dove-tailed with the American civil Rights movement.

10. Basic Assumption, Society is patriarchal Women may have legal Rights but they s\are still treated as inferior. Women should be equal to men in all respect.

11. Third wave of Feminism The third wave of feminism emerged in the mid 1990s. It resisted the perceived essentialist ideologies and a white, heterosex , middle class focus of second wave feminism. The third was wave feminism borrowed from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on marginalized population’s experience.

12. Types of Feminism Radical Feminism :- RF focus on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power. Liberal Feminism :- LF aims to achieve equal legal political and social rights for women. Socialist Feminism

13. Comparison Today’s Position of Women with waves.

14. Superstition and Women

15. Conclusion