Compare and Assess at least two of the following approaches in feminist theory, with illustration from two of the Victorian texts you have studied: Anglo-American Feminism; French Feminism

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Unit Number: 84523162

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Unit Title: Victorian Literature: Social Contexts and Theoretic Perspectives.

Assignment Title: 'Compare and Assess at least two of the following approaches in feminist theory, with illustration from two of the Victorian texts you have studied: Anglo-American feminism; French Feminism; Socialist or Marxist Feminism; feminist approaches influenced by Foucault.'

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'Compare and Assess at least two of the following approaches in feminist theory, with illustration from two of the Victorian texts you have studied: Anglo-American Feminism; French Feminism; Socialist or Marxist Feminism; Feminist Approaches influenced by Foucault.'

Feminist theory like psychoanalytic theory is relatively modern in its creation. The immergence of feminist literary theories can be linked to the out break of female political uprising in the early nineteenth century. The French Revolution marked the beginning of a fight for the obtaining of women's rights to power and equality in society. Elaine Showalter comments that the ideological socially acceptable view of Victorian women as a whole can be seen as '... prescribed a woman who would be a Perfect Lady, an Angel in the House, contently submissive to men, but strong in inner purity and religiosity, queen in her own realm of the Home.' (Victorian Women's Poets, Page 13) Feminist theory is segregated into separate view points of feminism as a whole; French Feminism analyses literature from a perspective of a psychoanalytic view, drawing upon the work of Lacan to highlight view points. It helps to analyse the ways in which women are positioned in society in the text and how they can be perceived to be repressed. Marxist Feminism takes its inspiration from how the women can be perceived to be oppressed in literature. American feminism analyses literature from a textual expressive view point. All feminist out looks have their issues which provide flaws into their argument. 'To be sure, most feminist thinkers today assume that nurture, at the very least, qualifies nature. Recently, however, a number of poststructuralist theorists - deploying both male and female signatures - have claimed that there is no gendered "reality," that the concepts of "man" and "woman" are, as some would put it, "always already" fictive since human identity is itself a tenuous, textually produced epiphenomenon.' (No Man's Land. Pagexv).

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë provided feminist critics with a canvas of a examples of marginally autobiographical Victorian gynocentrism. The production of text from a woman, looking at the emphasis placed on the female place in the history of the text, the structural placing of women and the thematic view of women in the text. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that women writers such as Emily Brontë had been trapped into the roles that society has manipulated, as they were trapped against the patriarchal view of the angel of the house. However even thought there is a desire for this view to be usurped, Bronte still curtails herself to society's expectations by debilitating and eventually killing off of the strong rebellious charcter of Catherine, emphasising her own fear of what the female form in which she was writing. Gilbert and Gubar's reading of Wuthering Heights classes it as a 'A bible of Hell.' (Gilbert, S & Gubar, S. Mad woman in the attic) The classification of Wuthering heights as a living hell is created in type by the Byronic hero of Heathcliff. Although Gilbert and Gubar look into the curtailment of women being confined to the house, trapped into submission by domesticity, Wuthering Heights provides Catherine with her own sense of control where she can break social confinements. Yet Catherine chooses to be confined by domesticity and social patriarchy by marrying Edgar Linton. Bronte does however portray the confusion Catherine feels in making her choice between what she desires and what is socially expected;
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'You love Mr Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing - You would love him without that, probably, and with it, you wouldn't, unless he possessed the four former attractions.' (Wuthering Heights, Page 119)Through the use of the second generation Cathy, Bronte allows the correction from cultural to natural choice to be made via the successful relationship between Cathy and Hareton. Kristeva comments on the text 'presses the linguistic sign to its limits, the semiotic is fluid, plural, a kind of pleasurable creative excess over ...

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