Feminist Criticism focuses on the inequality and oppression of women within society.

Authors Avatar

FENINIST CRITICISM

Feminist Criticism focuses on the inequality and oppression of women within society.  Literary feminine criticism today is the result of the ‘women’s movement’ of the 1960 which realized the significance of images of women put forward by literature and saw that it was vital to combat and question their authority and coherence.  This movement has been crucially involved in books and literature.  Representation of women in literature was seen as one of the most important forms of ‘socialisation’ since it provided the role models which indicated to women and men what was acceptable ‘feminine’ and legitimate feminine aspirations and goals.  In the 19th century, very few women went out to work unless there was a dire need to do so.  Focus on put on the choice of marriage partner, which decided their social status, happiness and fulfillment or lack of it.   Men were seen as strong and women as nurturing, capable of writing only about nature etc.  Charlotte Bronte wrote under the pseudonym Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell to get around this prejudice.

Elaine Showalter described the shift of attention from adrotexts to gynotexts and coined the phrase gynocritic.  Gynocriticism focuses at the structure of women’s wrting, how it is produced and the motiviation behind it.

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre caused outrage when it was first published and feminist criticism can be focused on the social structure of the novel.  Elizabeth Rigby wrote ‘Jane Eyre is the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit and the tone which fostered Chartism and rebellion is the same which has written Jane Eyre’.

Join now!

Jane is an orphan and is treated as an outsider from the start by the Reed family at Gateshead.  Her name gives an allusion of invisibility.  She is living in a patriarchal society and is removed from a normal social structure.  She distances herself by sitting at the corner of the window behind a curtain contemplating whether to stay where she is or go out into a loveless world.  John Reed the tyrannical son reminds Jane of her lowly position within the household and he is her first encounter of a patriarchal figure.  Jane’s anger and confrontation with John ...

This is a preview of the whole essay