Thank you Dr. Krouse for an interesting post!
Feminism is a very interesting theory. Its roots, like Marxism, lie in politics, in class struggle and in hierarchical oppression. I think that approaching a text with a political agenda, like these theories do, is a very interesting way to approach a text. Through these theories we can analyze the system in which the text operates, the beliefs held by the varying tiers of society and how they all work around each other in order to form a complete, albeit imperfect, system. Through the eyes of feminist politics, we are able to examine culture in a way that we might not have before. Living in a patriarchal, male dominated society like ours, it is easy to look at things through that perspective. Feminist theory allows us to open up to new ideas, and a new way of thinking about situations. In my paper for class, I discussed a feminist criticism of The Little Mermaid. I went into it, knowing that it was sexist, but upon reading more about feminist theory, I was able to pick out things that I would not necessarily have looked for before. It is very different looking at society from the point of view of a woman, and understanding how she is supposed to participate in male society; male language.
While this theory opens up new ways of looking at literature and language, it is also partially limiting. Limiting the analysis of writing into this political framework excludes many other views. When feminist critics simply use gender as an analysis point they miss out on things like class and time period and psychology; that's why i think that using feminism combined with other theories like Marxist and Lacanian allows the theory to be more open minded, to explore gender along with other qualities. These types of feminism allow for a more comprehensive analysis of literature and language under feminist criticism.
15 years ago
1 comment:
Interesting post Ms. Bean...initially when I began studying feminist literary theory, I was under much the same impression that it was a limiting source of criticism as it only looked at the ways in which text disempowered women. However, after listening to class discussion and engaging with some material from feminist critics I believe the beauty of this form of criticism is that it doesn't just look to point fingers at men as the sole source of oppression, rather there are a variety of different feminist perspectives one can employ when analyzing a text. For example, Marxist feminist critics look at how class structure and capitalism function in order to disempower women. Thus, I now have to respectfully disagree with you that feminist criticism is not limiting rather because there are so many varying modes of feminism one is able to look at how different structures operate in order to oppress women. Thank you for your insight!
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