Chapter 8: Feminisms and Gender Studies

1. Chapter 8: Feminisms and Gender Studies A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

2. I. Feminisms and Feminist Literary Criticism: Definitions • Patriarchal culture • Feminism as a political approach like Marxism • There is no longer a single set of assumptions or a homogenous feminism

3. II. First-, Second-, and Third-Wave Feminisms • First-wave (19th century)—political rights (Wollestonecraft, Stanton) • Second-wave (post-World War II)—gender equality (de Beauvoir, Millet, Friedan, Gilbert and Gubar) • Third-wave (1990s to present)—broader group of women included (Anzaldúa, hooks, Sandoval, Rebecca Walker, Rich) • Role of Third-Space women, maternalist studies (especially black maternalist studies)—Morrison, Alice Walker, O’Reilly

4. III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed? • Showalter’s three phases of feminism: the “feminine” (women writers imitate men), the “feminist” (women advocated minority rights and protested), and the “female” (focus is now on women’s texts) • Showalter’s four models of sexual difference: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural • Essentialist and constructivist feminisms

5. III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed? A. Feminism and Psychoanalysis • French feminism and l’ecriture feminine • Influence of Freud and Lacan • Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva B. Feminists of Color • Feminists of color, like lesbian feminists, have different concerns than mainstream white heterosexual woman, often competing; new voices, such as modern slave narrative; postcolonialism and the subaltern woman (Spivak); Anzaldúa, “The New Mestiza”

6. III. The Literary Woman: Created or Constructed? C. Marxist and Materialist Feminisms • Lower-class women have a different view of feminist goals as opposed to middle- and upper-middle-class women; debate between Marxist and materialist feminisms D. Feminist Film Studies • “Male gaze”; social construction of female identity (Marx); Mulvey and de Lauretis • IV. Gender Studies • Gender Studies: false binaries; Queer Theory; Sedgwick and Warner

7. IV. Gender Studies • False binaries • Queer Theory • Sedgwick and Warner

8. V. In Practice A. The Marble Vault: The Mistress in “To His Coy Mistress” Grotesque attack on female body disguised as a love lyric B. Frailty, Thy Name Is Hamlet: Hamlet and Women Hamlet cannot resolve his Oedipus Complex to become a mature man He loathes the female body Heilbrun on Gertrude: how we read Gertrude determines how we read Hamlet

9. V. In Practice C. “The Workshop of Filthy Creation”: Men and Women in Frankenstein • Femininity = Life, Masculinity = Death; Victor appropriates female role but fails 1. Mary and Percy, Author and Editor • In Mary’s life, due to her miscarriages and the suicides of family members, death and life were horribly mixed; novel is artistic resistance by a woman against a patriarchal family, husband, and society; Percy’s role is debatable 2. Masculinity and Femininity in the Frankenstein Family • Family, gender, and parental roles are skewed 3. “I Am Thy Creature. . .” • Victor fails at being a father to the Creature: “’I was thy Adam’”

10. V. In Practice D. Men, Women, and the Loss of Faith in “Young Goodman Brown” • Hawthorne’s women characters are superior to his male characters; story’s sexuality E. Women and “Sivilization” in Huckleberry Finn • Strong women characters like Mrs. Loftus; Jim’s maternalism F. “In Real Life”: Recovering the Feminine Past in “Everyday Use” • Motherhood and sisterhood; quilt as symbol of black women’s creativity and family history; narrator: a womanist