Analyse the construction of femininity in the text(s) of your choice.

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Analyse the construction of femininity in the text(s) of your choice.

Feminist theory is very different to other forms of key literary theories. Feminist literary theory is not a single unified theory with a single body of work. There is no single key commentator, whose work defines feminist theory. The feminist theory makes few assumptions, and is therefore very adaptable to different contexts. It also draws from many other literary theories, such as Marxism, cultural materialism and structuralism.

  Feminist literary theory is most often described as simply the use of feminist principles and techniques to analyse the textual constructions of gendered meaning. However feminist definitions and feminism have gone through a number of changes since the 1970’s. This has made feminism able to use existing feminist insights and apply them in new ways.

   Over time, feminist theory has been placed into three main groups. The first being, that feminist theories have an essentialist focus. Secondly, the theories are aimed at defining a feminist literary canon or they seek to reinterpret and re-vision literature from a less patriarchal slant. Thirdly, the theories focus on sexual difference and sexual politics.

  There are key assumptions of feminist criticism. It believes all literature, dramatises implicitly or explicitly the difference between the masculine and the feminine. It assumes all literature, records the struggle of women and men with the social forces of patriarchy. It also criticises functions, to facilitate the awakening of human consciousness to the gender-delimiting elements of human experience. The use of these assumptions usually fall into three broad feminist approaches; The Socio-Political approach, The Socio-Psychological approach and The Fe(Male) approach.

   In my essay I will be looking at the feminist literary theory with relation to Salman Rushdie’s, ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’. ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ is a fantasy story. It is about the land where stories are made. Rashid has a gift of storytelling, but when he looses this gift; his son seeks to recover it. The novel mirrors Rushdie’s own troubles in writing after the Ayatollah was forced over him. The novel forms as a way to explain to his son about the events that were happening to him. His persona is taken on most clearly in the character of Rashid, the Shah of Blah, a father and story teller who looses his ability to create.

  Although, on face value, feminist ideas are not strikingly obvious in ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ there are some key feminist ideas. Anti-essentialist ideas are key to the feminist theory and anti-essentialist ideas are present in this novel. Essentialism, in is most common sense, is speaking of things as if they have a ‘nature’. This can be about people or objects. In each case, a set of qualities are ascribed to the ‘type’ and are taken to make this thing what it is and not something else. It beliefs things have unseen core properties. These properties give the thing its identity or ‘nature’, distinguishing it from other things. Therefore, anti-essentialism opposes essentialist ideas. Anti-essentialism eliminates the questions of essence. It thinks essentialists; in their view of essence wrongly presuppose that a common nature exists. The anti-essentialist view believes there is no common property or set of properties in things.

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   Salman Rushdie uses the anti-essentialist ideas in his reversionary use of Princess Rescue stories to show femininity as having no changeless essence. He uses this technique as a way of fighting and questioning images of women. He focuses on passive women, rescued by brave men. This is a fundamental issue within feminist theory. Feminist ideas promote equality between men and women. The feminist theory believes women have been oppressed, simply due to their sex, and the idea of patriarchy. Rushdie’s novel promotes strength and diversity in women and many of the female characters break the conventional roles considered for ...

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