Q3: Literary theory and politics: discuss any theoretical approach and explain its potential for foregrounding the political aspect of the literary text.

Question 1

Describe the first wave of feminism.

Answer 1

First wave of feminism: late 18th - early 20th century:

• Mary Woolstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792)
• Inequalities between the sexes are highlighted
• Women suffrage movement

Question 2

Describe the second wave of feminism.

Answer 2

Second wave feminism: 1960s-1970s

• building on more equal working conditions necessary in America after WW2
• “the problem that has no name” - women wanted to work and evolve but they were told to stay at home

Question 3

Describe the third wave of feminism.

Answer 3

Third way feminism: early 1990s - today

Question 4

What is feminist criticism?

Answer 4

Feminist criticism is concerned with the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social and psychological oppression of women.

Question 5

What are the objectives of feminist criticism?

Answer 5

• to interrogate the role of gender in writing by interpreting literary texts (a modernised lens)
• to explore and analyze the mechanisms of patriarchy
• to expose misogyny in the writing about women
• to inspect women’s social, economic or poliltic realities
• to highlight the marginalization of women (e.g. in the literature canon)
• to break gender stereotypes

Question 6

What are the important feminist critics?

Answer 6

Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Helene Cixous, Elaine Showalter, Judith Butler.

Question 7

What were the feminist statements of Virginia Woolf?

Answer 7

That the language is gendered, that sentences look different: more loose in women’s writing and more balanced in male prose.

Question 8

What were the feminist statements of Simone de Beauvoir?

Answer 8

• the category of women is defined by everything that man is not
• women’s sexuality and reproduction is being controlled

Question 9

What were the feminist statements of Helene Cixous?

Answer 9

• the idea of ecriture feminine - feminine writing in which women should celebrate their writing through writing through their bodies (they need to invent a new language)
• “the laugh of medusa” - Medusa is compared to a powerful woman who is not afraid to use her power against partiarchal dominance

Question 10

What were the feminist statements of Elaine Showalter?

Answer 10

• that literary works can be divided into two categories, gynotexts (by women) and androtexts (by men)

Question 11

What were the feminist statements of Judith Butler?

Answer 11

(one of the most important feminist theorists today)

• in “Gender Trouble” (1990) she critiques the idea of a universal notion of a woman
• introduced the idea of intersectionality

Question 12

What is intersectionality?

Answer 12

Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group. They are regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.