Feminism in Literature.

Batool Sarwar

Associate Professor

Department of English,

University of Dhaka

I myself have never been able to precisely find out what feminism is. I only that people call me a feminist when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat… Rebecca West, 1913.

The diversity and complexity of the feminist agenda:

First Wave, Second wave and Third Wave:

Liberal feminism,

Marxist feminism,

Ecofeminism,

Postcolonial feminism etc

In considering the impact feminism has had on literature we could consider:

The articulation of theories that deal with the concept of women as creators of literature—the socio-psychological and cultural positioning of women that impact on the women’s choices of style, subject matter etc as well as the feminist challenge to the literary ‘canon’

The desire to identify ‘feminist texts’ in which female characters challenge the patriarchal construction of gender. As such both Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy can be considered as feminist writers.

Feminist re-readings of ‘classic’ canonical texts.

A Room of Ones OwnVirgina Woolf 1928

The economics of production: ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’

Women as the Other for constructing male identity---Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would he unknown… Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism;… For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is?

A Room of Ones OwnVirgina Woolf 1928

Women in Literature and the historical realities of their life:

The context of creation. Shakespeare’s sister. –

“Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history… Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”

Exploring a uniquely female aesthetic ---why did women only write novels? The ‘masculinity’ of language: ‘There were no common sentences ready for her use”

Post Colonial Feminism

Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1, "Race," Writing, and Difference (Autumn, 1985), pp.243-261

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism

Spivak calls Jane Eyre the “cult text of feminism” because her search for individualism and selfhood embodies the “high feminist norms’ celebrated in English and Anglo- American Literature.

Jane’s struggle against all forms of patriarchal power:

Familal : John Reed and family Religious: Brocklehurst and John Reed Sexual: Rochester

Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism

Bertha Mason: The mad women in the attic as the other produced by the ‘axiomatics of imperialism;

Given a voice as Antoinette by Jean Rhys. “She must play out her role, act out the transformation of her

"self" into that fictive Other, set fire to the house and kill herself, so that Jane Eyre can become the feminist individualist heroine of British fiction. I must read this as an allegory of the general epistemic violence of imperialism, the construction of a self-immolating colonial subject for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer.”

New Directions: Are we really better off?The Beauty Myth: Naomi Wolf, 1991

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us... During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty... Pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.

Wrapping up:How successful are we in creating a literature where we are reflected and represented?

Post colonial subjects Women’s complicity in the oppression of

other women: Images of ourselves: inclusion and exclusion