SSE e! 7 i ORY. | AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY AND CoTUARL THEORY | \ pr ' Peter Barry :Beginning theory hava Le at Ks 1 Manchester University Press‘ jetties edvtors: Peter Barry and Helen Carr ‘Beginaings —e af books designed to give pracuet help tomedens beginning to nckle recent developments in English, Literary Studies and Cukural Studies The books in the series @ demanstrate and encourage a questioniny it ds i ig engagement with the © give esveadal information about the context and hustary fanek arrered; © show how 19 develop ¢ practice which is up-to-date and info ty Each book focuses upon the needs of its readers, sho have the right 19 expect Iuctity and clarity to be she distinctive Ceara of ‘book which includes the word ‘begining? i ts be. Each are to by. frm foundation of wel wxdersigod mstal principe se aa fp Ferber study and 8 commited to pking new wpe of we daspline without ove-smpliation, but na manner eprops the needs of begmners. ; ee ray si tobe buon ameaton al scone? he topic area it-discusses Absa in the seriesBeginning theory An introduction to literary and cultural theory Second edition Peter Barry Manchester University Press Manchester and New York Oistlbuted eaclushvaly fr the USA by PalgraveCopyright © Peter Basey 1995, ama First edition hen sible 1995 by Manchester University Pros, This eaten published 2002 by Manchester Vnivertity Press Orford Rowd, Manchester MIS ONR, UK. Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Toot worm manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk es Dustribeted exctusively am the USA 4 Palgrare, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed excbeively in Canada 4) UBC Pres, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, 8C, Canada VOT 122 British Library Catalopeing-io-Pabbcation Dasa A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-or-Pubiication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6268 3 paperback ‘This edition first published in 2002 10 29 08 07 06 05 wae76s Dat tt co ma ped it Greet Britaln Teena Lid Sr leo PlFeminist criticism Feminism and feminist criticism The ‘women's movement’ of the 1960s was not, of course, the start of feminism. Rather, it was a renewal of an old traditien of thought and action already possessing its classic books which had diagnosed the problem of women’s inequality in society, and (in some cases} proposed solutions, These books include Mary Woll- sronecraft’s 4 Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), which discusses maie writers [ike Malton, Pope, and Rousseau; Olive Schreiner’s Women and Labour (1911), Virginia Woolf's 4 Rooms of One's Owe (1929), which vividly portrays the unequal treat- ment given to women seeking education and altcrnatives to mar- riage and motherhood; and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949), which has an important section on the portrayal of women in the novels of D. H. Lawrence. Male contributions to this tra~ dition of feminist writmg include John Stuart Mill's The Subjec- ton of Woman (1869) and The Origin of the Family (1884) by Priedrict Engels. The feminist literary criticism of today is the direct product of the “women’s movement’ of the 1960s. This movement was, in important ways, literary from. the start, in the sense that it realised the significance of the images of women promulgated by litera- ture, and sw it a6 vital to combat them and question their author- Pde their coherence. In this sense the women's movement has sdsayé been crucially concerned with books and literature, so that ferrinist criticism should not be seen as an off-shoot or a spin-off122 Beginning theory from feminism which is cemote from the ultimate aims of the movement, but as one of its most practical ways of influencing everyday conduct and attitudes. ‘The concer with ‘conditioning’ and ‘socialisation’ underpins a crucial set of distinctions, that between the terma ‘feminist’, ‘female’, and ‘feminine’. As Toril Moi explains, the first is ‘a political position’, the sewond ‘a mattet of biology’, and the third ‘a set of culturally defined characteristics’, Particularly in the dis- tinction between the second and third of these lies much of the force of ferninism (sec Moi's essay in The Feminist Reader, ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore), Othet important ideas are explained in the appropriate part of the remainder af this section The representation of women in literature, then, was felt to be one of the most important forms of ‘socialisation’, since it pro- vided the role models which indicated to women, and men, what constituted acceptable versions of the ‘feminine’ and legitimate feminine goals and aspirations. Feminists pointed out, for exam= ple, that in nineteenth-century fiction very few women work for a living, woless they are driven to it by dire necessity, Instead, the focus of interest ts on the heroine's choice of marriage partner, which will decide her ultimate social position and cxclusively determine her happiness and fulfilment in life, or her lack of these. ‘Thus, in fermnist criticism in the 1970s the major effort went into exposing whar might be called the mechanisms of patriarchy, that 15, the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpet~ uated sexual inequality, Critical attention was given to books by male writers in which influential or typical images of women were constructed. Necessarily, the criticism which undertook this work was combative and polemucal. Then, in the 1980s, in femunism as in other critical approaches, the mood changed. Firstly, feminist criticism became much more eclectic, meaning thut it began to draw upon the fmdings and approaches of other kinds of criticism — Marxism, strucruraliam, linguistics, and so on. Secondly, it switched its focus from attacking male versions of the world to exploring the nature of the femals world and ourlook, and recon- structing the lost or suppressed records of fernale experience. Thirdly, attention was switched to the need to canstruct # few123 feminist critichn riting by rewriting the history of the novel caneh "SW : ae t neglected women writers were anf of poetry in such a Way tha sinence. . pike chai phases of interest ary activity seem characterise tic of feminist criticism, Elaine Showalter, for instance, described the change in the fate 1970s as a shift of attention from ‘andro- eus’ (hooks by men) tu "gynotexts’ (books by women) She coined the term ‘gynocritics', meaning the study of gynotexts, but jynocriticism és a broad and varied field, and any generalisations abour it should be treated with caunan The subjects of gyno- criticism are, she says, “the histury, styles, themes, genres, and structures of writing by women; the psychodynamics of female creativity; the trajectory of the individual or collective female career, and the evoludon or laws of a female literary tradition’, Showalter also detcets in the history of women’s writing a fem= mas phase (1840-80), in which women wnters imitated dominant male artistic norms and aesthetic standards, then a femimst phase (1880-1920), in which radical and often separanst positions are muinorned; and finally 9 female phase (1920 onwards) which Tooked particularly at female writing and female experience. The at this liking for ‘phasing” are complex: partly, it is the my ‘of the view that ferninist criticism required a terminology ‘hie as to attain theorenical respectability. More importantly, a Great need in all intellectual disciplines, to establish a cae) fe earTes erabling carly and cruder examples of (in this vist criticism to be given thew rightful credit and ackaowledgement while at che same ti ing it Approich thes represent 1 ¢ time making it clear that the fnodel for practice. Spo loner gensrlly regarded as 9 ‘But feminist criticiam ei tele rag ce 20 Poatians that exist within “ertementy have centred an three the role of thenry: 2. the Particular areas, these being: 1, haces ture Of language, and 3. the value or Ahervise of paychog tach of there on ‘The nest thres cetions will look at been remarkable for it, Debates and dis12a . Beginning Use eminist criticism and the role of theory A major divisi stan within leminist critic areenic 15 about the amous den has concerned dine ‘ure at What is usually called ihe oy of theory that should tes. feminism has tended 1 be Sore alo~Amerca’ vervion of theory, and more cautious in using Ste stout tte cri inists, who have adopted and adapted in have the "Prench’ fem- post-stru ipted a great deal of (mainly) eturalist and psychoanalytic criti a much of their work, The ‘ iam a the aris of etr work. The “Anglo-Americans’ - or American) mainraii jor i {not all are Engi t tain a Major interest m traditional critical con cepts like theme, morif, and characterisation. They seera to accept the conventions of literary realism, and treat literature as a series of representations of women’s lives and experience which cin be measured and evaluated against ceality. They see: the close read- ing and explication of individual literary rexts as the major bus- ness of feminist criticism. Generally, this lind of femimot criticism has a good deal in common with the procedures and fiberat humanist approach to literature, ace considerable ermphasis on the use of crary material (such as diaries, memoirs, sland medical history) in understanding the Kterary text, The American eine Elaine Showalter is usually taken as the major representative of this approach, but other exemplars would be Sandra Gilbert and Susa Patricia Stubbs, and Rache! in Gubar, Brownstein. However, ‘Anglo’, and this 5! widely accepted oa often disnactly different anist’ in orientation. nl a am so that it is obriously unsatisfactory ms y e ei . " ‘ ‘cal’ category. 17° s yt inko o non-theoret™ ee i - feminism has obscured | iy ek ge lar books suimal Feminist Esrerary Sexual Textua’ Fxamples of chis assumptions of the although feminists also p historical dara and non-lit fact American rather ‘than ould make us question the see oof this gory’ English femmist criticism is. 3 eer a : from Amencan: it tends to be socialist agreed wick cultural materialism OF most of these are 1m125 Feminist criticism Bicron (19875. Jutia Swindells’s Fisariva H ring and Working Mean (1985), and Sra Changes: Clee anal Femistsmn (1986) by Com Kaplan, an American who worked! in Britain for many years. Kapha was a member of the Maraist Meminist Literature Cale ective, an important group whose very evistener indicarcs: the sarong politcal anct theureticad snteres!s of this kind of feminist enisicistn. A sinailarty impectant group was the Literature ‘Teach= ing Politics Collective. which was also a seri¢s of conferences and an asgociated journal. An important figure associated with this group is Catherine Belsey, whose books, (such as The Subject of Tragedy (1983), and Jos Milton’ Language, Gender, Peer (1983), are part of this same socialist feminist British tradican. While the definitive works in the so-caled ‘Anglo-American” tra- dinion appeared in the lare 1970s, the British. ‘socialise feminist” ersdition produced sts key works in the md-1980s and remains active and influential In cotatrast to the Americans (if not, as we have just urgued, t0 the British) the work of French’ feminism ts more overtly theo- retical, taking as ls starting-point the insights of Major post- scructuralists, especially Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. For these femunist critics, the literary text is never primarily a represcnia- tion af reality, or a reproduction of a personal voice expressing the minutiae of persopal experience. Indeed, the French theorists ‘often deal with concerns otfter than brerature: they write about baguage, representation, und psychology as such and often travel through detailed treatments of major philosophical issues of this kind before coming to the literary text self, The major figures on this ‘French ' side of the divide are Julia Kristeva (actually Bul- garan, though regarded abroad ~ as she has ruefully stid ~ as a kind of embodiment of French intellectualism), Héline Cixous (Algerian-bom}, and Luce Irigaray. All chree are best encountered ininally in the various feminist readers now available. For instance, Kristeva’s 1974 intetvicw “Woman can never be defined" is in New French Feminisms (Marks and De Countivron), as are sections from ‘Sorties’ and ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ by Cixous, and sections from Irigaray’s The Sea Wich at not Ome. Extracts from the sare Cisous and Irigaray pieces are also in Feminirms: A Reader (Maggie Humm).6 Baginning theory A sostuned discussion of the differences hetecn, “Angho~Amrerie can’ and ‘French’ feminisms (though one which is Touch on the side of the latter) is Tori Moi's Sexual Testual Pelizies Por a more recent Yccoune see the choprer ‘Imaginary Gardens with Real Frogs in them: feminist ewphons and the Franco-American divide, 1976-1988" by Ann Rosalind Jones in Changunp Subjcrss The Making of Feminist Lisesary Criticism {Greene and Kahn). ‘These Prench feminists arc paricutarly concerned swith language and psychology, which are considered in ¢he (so following sxc dos. Feminist criticism and language Aether fonsdamental issue, an which apinson is just as polarsed, is the question of whether of not there cxssts a form of language which is inherently feminme, There is a fong-standing tradition of debate on thus isave within fecoinism, For xstanct, Virgina Woalf, (in sections four and five of ter exiended polemical exsay A Room Of One's Own) siggesté that language use ws gendered, so “no sentence ready for her wae’ The great male novel- “glare eanT tara oeas eno bt Gat Uae aes Sve but not precio raking ther-owni fint without ‘ceasing to be. ““GamMGd property’ She quotes an example and says ‘That is a sHaW'S sentence’. She doesn't make its qualities explicit, but the example secs to be characterised by carefully balanced and pat- termed rhetoncal sequences. But ‘it was # sentence unsuited far » woman's use’, and women writers trying [o use it (Charlome Bronté, George Eliat} fared badly. Jane Austen rejected it and instead ‘devised a perfectly natural, shapsty sentence proper for her own use’, but this is not described or exemplified Presum- ably, though, the characterisnes of & ‘woman's sentence’ are thay the clauses are linked in looser sequences, father than cavefally balinced and patterned as in male prose, ; Generally, then, the female writer is seen as nullering the hand cay of having to use a meditm (atest writing) which is ciBen~ tially a maie instrument fashioned for mate purposes. This ie that the language is ‘masculine’ in this sense is developed byFeminist criticism ve Spender in the carly F808 in her bwok Man Made Language (1981) which also argues that language is not a neutral medium bot one which contains many features which reflect its role as the instrument through which patriarchy finds expression. (‘This view that zhe language is man-made is challenged from within femi- nism by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in the cssay ‘Sexual Linguistics: Gender, Language, Sexuality’, reprinted in The Fem- waist Reader ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Macmillan, 1989). If normative language can be seen as in some way male- onemted, the question arises of whether there might be a form of language which is free from thts bias, or even in some way ori- sented towards the female. French theorists, therefore, have posited the existence of an écriture ferme, (the term is that of the French theorist Hélene Cixous, from her essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’), associated with the feminine, and facilitating the free play of meanings within the framework of loasened gram- toatical structures. The heightened prose of the Cixous essay both demonstrates and explains it: ~ his impossible to define a feminine practice of writing, and this is 5 an ittpossibility which will remain, for this practice can never be / theurized, enclosed, coded ... it Will always surpass the discourse that regulates the phallocentric [male-dominated] system; at docs aad will take place in areas other than those subordinated to philo- sopbice-theoretical domination, [t will be conceived of by subjects who am breakers of automatiyms, by peripheral figures that no authority can ¢yer subjugare. e (Marks & de Courtivron, New French Femimsois Harvester, 1981) Here the user of éeviture fZotinine seems to exist in a realm beyond logic (‘this practice can never be theorized... and: will rake place 3 weas other than those subordinated ta Philosophice-thedretical W') The user of such language is seen as a kind of Fhe nil freeddomn-fighter in an anurchic tealin of perpetual appo- fon (peripheral figures that no suthority can ever subjugate’) UPIng at the centres of Power. Por Cicous (though not for other ; ) this kind of writing is somehow uniquely the product en Physiotogy, which women must celebrate in, their writ128 Beginning theory Wormen must rire throw : iph their bodied, they must in oo Language thar sill wreck partitions, ps 2 hetorics, regularions and codes, they must submerge. cur through, get beyond the ulumate resetve-discourse, inclyding the one that Jaugha at the very: idea of pronduntcing the word ‘silence’. Such is the strength of women that, sweeping away syntax, breaking tar Famous thread (just a tiny Yerle thread, they say} which acty for men as a surrogate umbilical cord, (Marks & Coartivran, p. 256) Ecrinare feorinine, then, is by its nature transgressive, rule-iran- scending, intoxicated, bur it is clear thar the notion: as put Sor- ward by Cixous raies many problems. The realm of the body, far instance, is seen as somehow immune (‘impregnable’) 0 sixial and geader conditioning (rhetorics, regulations, codes") and ably to isstre forth a pure essence of the ferme. Such ‘essentiaiisma! is difficult to square with a fernimsm sehich emphasises feminusy- ity asa socal construct, nota given entity which ss somehow just mysteriously ‘there” And if feminmury 1s socially constructed then it must follow thar it diffess fram one culture ro another, 56 thar such overarching generalisations about i" are impossible. Who, we might ask, wre these womch who ‘must® BTICE hrough their bodies? Who impases this Coercive “ent «por thems, and {above ail) why? : Further expression of the vanon of the ccritere /rounite 1 found in the writing of Julia Kristeva. ‘Kristeva uses the terms the dic and the seniatte 10 designate twa different aspen’: of tan- guage. In her essay “The System and the Speaking Subieet a symbolic aspect i associated with author carder, fats evcession and control Cte tammily, coe a ne Jogical-rending discourse, ul) caf obi are : Oe eenio of fascist ideology’). This arabe peat guage snaintains the fiction that the self « fixed an uate Lie she describes ax ‘oe Language with ete ag transcendental subjert-<0 By contrast, te pe Givoourse ix characterised ot OY Topic and amber each placement, stippases condensatian’, which ne «bi looser, raore rancamined 8 ‘of masking connenooFeminist criticism me increases the available range of possibilities, She quotes Plato in the Timaens invoking ‘a stare of language anterior to the Word Plato calls this the choru’, ancl, again, it ix linked with (he mater- na) rather than she paternal, All this is presented at a fairly gen- eralised level, but Kristeva sees the semiotic ag the language of poctry as opposed 10 prasc, and examines its operation in the work of specific poets. Though it is hnked conceptually with the feminine, the pocts who use it are not all femafe, and in fact Kris- ‘teva's major exemplars are male wrtters. It shoufd be stressed, though, that the symbolic and the semi- ope are not two different éinds of language, but two different aspects of language, both of which are always present in any gwen sample. The model, again, is that of the unconscious and the con— scious, and the Lacanian re-use of these notions. The symbolic is the orderly surface realm of strict distinctions and laid-down structures through which language works: this aspect of language is the side stressed by the structurahsts, the Saussurean ‘network of differences’, But ever-present is the linguistic ‘unconscious’, a realm of floating sigmificrs, random connections, improvisations, approumations, accidents, and ‘slippage’ — everything, that is, entailed in the post-structuralist view of language. Tndeed, one Say of characterising the process of deconstruction (whereby con i cee of meaning ate discovered in texts) is to ing the ‘conscious” or us of the text emerging into and disrupe- ‘ ‘ous’ oF ‘surfece’ meaning, These disruptive incur oa 7 dreams, 7 postry, and in modernist, experimental Ing which distorts the surface of language (for example, the ee) © ©. cummings). This ‘random* element can never ‘be renee ras the most meticulous and painfully deliberare oe a Clearly, since language is by definition an pita enprovisatary Practice, if cut off from Kristeva’s " of the semiotic it would instantly perish. - ate. Fotion of the basic opposition berween the semuutic tot Symbolic Kristeva is indebted 10 Jacques Lacan and his Ween two realms, the Jmagisary and the Syevbotic. tiistic mary realm is that af the young child at the prein- + Dre-Oodipal stage. ‘The self is noe yet distinguished from130 Beginning theory what ix other than the self, and the body's strise of being sepa rate from the resi of the world is ot vet established. The child lives in an Edenclike reals, free of both desire and deprivation, The semiotic is seen as inherently subversive politically, and altyays threatens tbe closed symbolic order embodicd in such con- ventions as governments, received culcural values, and the gram- mar of standard language. For some feminists this visionary ‘semioric’ female world and language evoked by Civous and Kristeva is a vital theatre of pos sibilitics, the value of which is to entertain the imagining of alter- natives wo the world which we now have, and which wornen in particular now have. For others, it fatally hands over the world of the rarional to men and reserves for women @ traditionally emo- tive, intuitive, trans-rational and ‘privatised’ arena. Nor surpris~ ingly, therefore, the language question is one of the most contentious arcas of feminist criticism. Feminist criticism and psychoanalysis The story so far of feminism’s relationship with psychoanalysis is simple in outline bur complex in auance. The story cin be said to begin, like so much else, with Kare Millett’s Sexual Politics inv 1969 which condemns Freud as a prinne source of the patriarchal attitudes against which feminists must fight. The influence of this view within feminism ts sul] very strong, but Freud was defended in a series of importam books in subsequent years, notably Juliet Mitchell's Prychoanalynis and Feminasm in 1974. This book defends Freud against Millett by, in effect, using Millett’s own terms and concepts, especially the distinction, so crucial to femi- nism, between sex and gender, the former being a manter of biol ogy, the latter a construct, something, learned or acquired, rathst than ‘natural’, This distinction is what Simone de Bevuvoir invokes in the famous first sentence in Part Two of The Second, Sex (1949) when she writes ‘( ‘Or Ne IS NGL ct born a} OnE. = cua ‘a woman’, nan’, The Project (of de Beauvoir’ 's book is one which Serual Pefiues sees ‘itself as continuing. Mitchell's defence Freud, then, is fi argue that Freud doesn’: present the ferunine as something simply ‘given and natural’, Vemale sexuality131 femninist criticism . Jity in general) isn't just there ‘naturally’ ee aan wn diene by early caperiences and adjust- gents, and Fread shows the process of its being Pruduced and constructed, particularly in the Three Essays on the Theary of Sex- walty (an volume seven of the Penguin Freud, entitled On Sexte- aluy). Wt follows that gender eoles must be malleable and changeable, not inevitable and unchangeable givens, Thos, the argument runs, the notion of penis envy need not he taken zs simply concerning the male physical organ itself (what- ever might have been Freud's intentions), but as concerning that organ as an emblem of socal power and the advantages which go ‘waht wt. (Lam reminded of an advertisement ~ which was banned ~ showing 4 photograph of a nude woman with the caption (Whar ‘women need to succeed 1 a man’s world’. ‘The woman shown had talc sexual organs crudely drawn in over hor own.) In the reads ing discussed in the next section, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar use the idea of ‘social castration’, which amounts to the ‘Same thing, fot chis term signifies women’s lack of social power, this lack being represented, by means of the word ‘castrauon’, as I 1 to the iety, partly on che Sounds that what & often implicit in Freud is explicst in Lacan's system, Tamely phallus is not the physical biological object but a symbol OE Leet whit goss with it. While men, of Sourse, come out * wnitings better advantaged than women, none the less nth Men too as powerless, since the full Smilfication, which the phallus atso i shone Siting ~ Ratoriousty abstruse, playful, punning, and ‘paralogical’ FIC) écems to embody the euage, rather than the ‘Another Ssnificant nany (oeaning beyond or above {o i Bs 7 ‘feminine’ ies om aspece of lan, ‘masculine’ or eee PS¥Choana lytic the insights of ferninism," Beginning theory Psychoanalysis and polities. She is joint editor, with Jutiet Mitchell, of Femme Sexuahity> Jacques Lacan and the école frei dienne (1982). The argument in favour of Lacan, and af Freud, is, again, chat it shows sexual identity tv be a ‘culiural construct’, gives a deaailed series of ‘insider’ accounts of how the construc. ton takes place, and shows examples of this conditioning being resisted. The resulting posivon is (as tsobel Armstrong remarks in a article about Rose in The Times Higher Education Supplement \6 July 1993, p. 15) a very complicated one. tn general the defence of Freud and Lacan has been more favourably received by Freach and British feminists than by Americans (another interesting ttansgression of the usual Anglo-American versus French dichotomy). Elame Showalter, for instance, in her essay about Ophelia (reprinted in Newton's Theory imo Practice — see under General Readers m the Further reading section) is dismissive of Lacan's evident disregard of Ophelia - he promises fo discuss her in his seminar on Hamlet, but somehow never gers tound te it. Likewise, Jerry Aline Flieger, an American contributor to Chazg- ing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Gnircase (Greene and Kahn), sounds a note of scepticism when she writes. was fascinated and croubled by Lacan's sharecterisation of the phallus as the Signifier of Significrs, as well as by his infansous statements “There is no sexual relation’, and “Woman docs not exist’, Thus | was relieved and grateful when ferumists such +s Jacqueline Rese and Jane Gallop, in the late events a euly cighties, performed ingenious and persuasive readings of Lacan es critic of phallocracy, rather than adwoeate. ‘ci The effect af this comment is partly ro draw atrention to the mge- nuity needed to mount such a defence. cisco Stephen Heath, in an essay 1 Fermimst Le ay “Tht Mary Eaglctan) quotes Roland Barthes to ee - monument of psychoanalysis must be nae et (p. 214). We might say that feminism began by dency of id thee Cormer. ‘Phe xem lerter, then changed sie ae ae ie Beane rehab ofFeminist criticism “ psychoanalysis can perhaps be explained by the fact thar prycho~ analysis has been more an accepted part of middlo-class life in the USA than it ever became in Europe. Hence, it is more difficult for Americans to ste it as still possessed of radical potential, teaar of alt for women. Further, there wos a new emphasis in the (990s on the culturally-specific nature of psychoanalysis, and hence a reluctance ro claim any kind ef universal validity for it. In Rose's own work, as elsewhere, there is a strong and growing intcrest in listening to the vosces of the hitherto excluded “Other’, particu- larly those of the cultures and races which had no place m the work of Freud or Lacan, a ‘STOP and THINK General: Within fe ng emphasis on the oemuctedness_of femininity, that \s_on_such matters as _ Saas ee the influence of images and ese tar tee ening Teerature. ani ae ancaaes a fations are ways of avolding ‘essentialism’, which is feat view that there is some natural, given essence of Me fe, that (5 universal and unchangeable. fonmectiin ee has for some years now been a dominant tha vee I theory, but there is some awareness, tod, fete ret ee, leaves us with certain difficulties. For Beneralie oe essentialison, by making it hard to make any =, net women, also make it difficult to politicise oe icky Up? Does It tend to reduce identity ta the sum that Identity oe perhaps in spite of our ‘instinctive’ feelings. such feelings _ = deeper than that? Is the tact that we have wrens. fre ee as evidence ~ on elther side? And in ; uid congitute evidence on ether side of this ge es feo | Sedltie: In the ‘¢ the in omels discussed below, ve WO Com, what are some of ‘the critical assumptions and procedures sare — innon-feminist approaches to the same with the two essays mentioned at the Start136 Beginning thmcry of the example, or with the piee : 65 in the Macmilla on Wuthering Heights (ed. Miriam Allott, 1979), * Canebaok cm rcreneee e What feminist critics do 1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts writren by women. 2. Revalue women’s experience. 3. Examme representations of women in literacure by men and women. 4. Challenge represcntarions of women as “Other”, as lack", as Part of ‘nature’, 5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and in fife, with a view to breaking them down, secing reading as a polit- ical act, and showing the extent of patmarchy 6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seer transparent and “natural” 7, Raise the quesuon of whether men and women ate ‘esscn= tially’ different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different. 8. Explore the question of whether there 1s a fernale language, an éerinure feminine, and whether this is also available t men. 9. *Re-read’ psychoanalysis to further explore the issuc off fenaale and male identity, 10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only ‘subject posttions ., constructed in discourse’, or whether, on the contrary, the expericnce (cg. of a black or lesbian writer) is central. LL. Make clear the ideological base af supposedly ‘neutral’ or ‘mainstream’ literary interpretations Feminist criticism: an example icism {will take the account of Ibert and Susan Gubar, from ‘As an example of feminist criti litte. The piece is reprinred Wuthering Heights by Sandra M. Gi their book The Madwoman us the a.Feminist criticism ns the widely-used Debarmg Texts (ed. Rick Rylance). Rylance reprints two other accounts ef the same novel, onc by QD Leavis, which might be considered ag liberal humanist, and one by Frank Kermode which might bc scen as post-steucturalist. Comparisons can also be made with Fagleron’s Marxist account of the same novel in his book Alyths af Power: 4 Marvist Study of the Brontés, to which Gilbert and Gubar refer, Gifbert and Gubar’s strategy with Bronté’s novel is to see it as a female version of the male form known as the Bifdungsromant (this German term means the ‘formation’ or ‘education’ novel) in which the hero's growth to manhood 1s traced, as a process of ‘tri- umphant self-discovery’, whereby an identity is discovered and a mission in hfe conceived and cmbarked upon a classic example would be James Joyce's 4 Portrait of the Arist asa Young Man For the heroine, however, things are different, and an equivalent novel (ike JFuthermg Hegiis) about the growth to womanhood records a process of ‘anxious self-denial’, rhs being the “ultimate product of a female education’. Gilbert and Gubar say that ‘What Catherine, or any girl, must Icarn is that she does not know her ‘own name, and therefore cannot know cither who she is or whom she is destined to be’ The process of denial involved they describe as ‘social castration’. Effectively, Catherine has to leave behind all hee instinctive preferences, signified by the Heights, and take on an alien artirade, signified by Thrushcross Grange The point of the word ‘castration’ here is that in order to achieve acceptability and femininity Catherine has to losc the power which men take for granted, namely power over their own des= ny. This is symbolised by the phallic guard-dog, ‘purple tongue banging half a foot out of rs mouth’ which bites Cathcrine's foot ay the enters the Grange, a symbolic castration, they say, She then undergoes the iniuanion ritual of impnsunment at the Grange, similar to that undergone by traditional heroines like Persephone and Snow White, The Gronge is the lume of ‘concealment and doubleness’, Here ahe fearns, as Hronté says, ‘we adopt 4 double character with- out exactly Intending to deceive anyone’, thar is, say Gilbert and Gubar, she must Jeam ‘to repress her own impulses, must girdle her awn energies with the iron stays of “reason”. This ‘eduica-of her Personality’, as Heathe) : ue "ratmertation forcibly excluded from her li + tn his ruthless employment of his social an Sexual power, he 1s an embodiment of the patriarchal inchs The marriage “mnexorably locks her into a social System which denies her autonomy’, so that Heathcliff's return, the ‘return of the repressed’, as we might call it in Freudian terms, ‘represents the rerun of her true gelf’s desires without the rebirth of her former powers’, hence the inevitable descent into self-rejection (Catherine fails to recognise her own face in the mirror), self-star- vation, madness, and death, ‘a complex of psycho-neurotic symp- toms that is almost classically associated with female feelings of powerlessness and tage’. Thus, the events of the novel are “strongly” read as emblems of the construction of gender identity, Selected reading Readers Belsey, Catherine and Moore, Jane, eds, The Femumist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Poliney of Literary Crincism (Ind edn. Palgrave, 1997). ExeeHent introduction, Manageable size. [mportant essays on the cru- Cia] issues. Eagleton, Mary, etl. Feneinist Literary Criticism (Longman, ae on Interesting collection, with essays paired to represent opposing key issues. Very good editorial commentary. : fugit Mary, ed. Feonemse Literary Theory: | Reader ay Oth wrell, 1995). Includes material on black feminism and the 1 postmoderixm on fcminisny. Short extracts from « wide range of ctitical nner Humm, Maggie, ed. Femuirms: ol Reader (Langman, 1992)Feroinist criticism 7 eksollent i is il ‘i from book, wide-ranging and ocesaible, on fominiems tae the present day, including black and kshian feminisns, Sub vecened by category, with a separate introduction far cach ong. Marix Bhine and de Caurivton, Isbell, eds, New Frosch Forums (Harveser, $81). ; ‘The picneering book, ia intreducing much of this peaking madcrs, Met, Tori, Froech Femrmist Thoaght: A Reader (Blackwell, 1997) material to English~ fe a Soran, The tMadtomen ix the Ane, The fee iF rit oot tbe Nitcteath Conary Literary Joes thatig Ke Univesity Pres, tnd edn, ) mower it A farasasy book HME abou Homen {Croo. Capers. on Viltete, George Et, Went Jattras Mary, i hat, Woolf, bay ME Homan: Baa3s ie Pomgie Crticiom (Methuen, Chepiers oa Vilene, Ty, Devs eo the Prete nyt wa Pred’ case sradign (oe Mie, San os 1, Femsniay . toy Ha ng MME A recon Feminist Litera.Beginning Uneory Moi, Toril, Sernal/ Fettual Politics (Methuen, 1985), A very influential book, though its view of the main kinds of feminist theory and eniticism has been challenged. Moi, Tatil, Whar ss 2 Woman? (Oxford University Press, 2001) A very interesting fundarnental rethink Of many aspects of femintm Ruthven, KK. Fomine Literary Studies; 4m Aatroduction (Cambridge University Press, 1934). A useful overview with a bias towards ‘AngloAmenan’ sarunts. Showalter, Eline, The New Feminist Crincion. Essays om Women, Litera. fare, amd Theory (Pantheon, 1983). Showalter, Elaine, 4 Literature of Thee Own (Revised and cxpanded ein, Virago 1999). Includes a new opening chapter on the recepnon of the original edi- tom of this book, and a posiserpt chapter an the legucy of feminist Smbbe, Pairicis, Heme and Fiction: Femimsm aud the Novel $880-920 (Routledge, new edn, 1981),