Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors. In the most general and simple terms, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s—in the first and second waves of feminism—was concerned with the politics of women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature, this includes the depiction of fictional female characters. In addition feminist criticism was further concerned with the exclusion of women from the literary canon, and Lois Tyson suggests this is because the views of women authors are often not considered to be universal ones.[citation needed]Since the development of more complex conceptions of gender and subjectivity and third-wave feminism, feminist literary criticism has taken a variety of new routes, namely in the tradition of the FrankfurtSchool's critical theory. It has considered gender in the terms of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as part of the deconstruction of existing relations of power, and as a concrete political investment.[1]It has been closely associated with the birth and growth of queer studies. The more traditionally central feminist concern with the representation and politics of women's lives has continued to play an active role in criticism. More specifically, modern feminist criticism deals with those issues related to the patriarchal programming within key aspects of society including education, politics and the work force.Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as: (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing, (2) to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view, (3) to rediscover old texts, (4) to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective, (5) to resist sexism in literature, and (6) to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.[2]Feminist literary critics[edit]Rebecca West's work on women's suffrage from approximately 1910, can be traced as the beginning of the feminist criticism movement. In addition to West's work,Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own from 1929 is an integral text to the movement. Prominent feminist literary critics include Isobel Armstrong, Nancy Armstrong, Barbara Bowen, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Laura Brown, Margaret Anne Doody, Eva Figes, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Annette Kolodny, Anne McClintock, Anne K. Mellor, Nancy K. Miller, Toril Moi, Felicity Nussbaum, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Hortense Spillers, Gayatri Spivak, Irene Tayler, Marina Warner.History of feminist criticism[edit]Feminists of the 1960s saw it as vital to combat the subservient and often negative images of women in literature to offer women a more equal stance in society.[3] Feminists argued that these representations of women were seen to provide ‗role models‘ to men and women as to what constituted ‗acceptable‘versions of the ‗feminine‘. Analysis‘of images of women in literature unearthed such stereotypes as the ‗virgin and the whore‘; ‗angel and the devil‘; ‗the mother‘; ‗the submissive wife and the dominant wife‘; ‗the bitch‘; ‗the seductress‘; ‗the sex object‘ (possibly as man‘s prey); ‗the old maid‘; ‗the bluestocking‘; ‗the castrating woman‘; ‗the pioneer woman‘; and ‗the victim‘.[4]Throughout the 1970s, the major role of feminist criticism was to expose the cultural ‗mind-set‘within society which perpetrated sexual inequality.[5] This argument however, that literature reflected ‗deep-seated prejudices‘towards women, making them out to be ‗passive and dependent‘, after a time seemed to be having an unintended effect. It appeared that the ‗woman-as-victim‘approach in literature and the constant findings of these stereotypes was, in fact, ‗naturalizing women‘s position‘, and was having a ‗depressive‘effect in society. Thus, rather that elevating the image of women in society, this approach was degrading it.[6] This brought about a change of ‗mood‘ within feminist criticism in the 1980s, resulting in a number of debates,disagreements and varied positions within feminist criticism.Feminists no longer sought to emphasize the negative depiction of women within literature, but to find acceptable, positive affirmations for both women readers and women writers. This shift from ‗androtexts‘(books by men) to ‗gynotexts‘, as described by Elaine Showalter,[7]gave rise to the Female Aesthetic: the question of ‗What it really feels like to be woman‘, expressing a unique female consciousness and a feminine tradition in literature.[8] But this approach called for an ‗authentic sense of what femininity feels like‘, thus narrowing the scope of feminist criticism to a preference for literature that was a source of historical information on the condition of women in reality, over literature that was considered ‗aesthetic‘. This implied an expectation that books would depict women as an oppressed group –an expectation that came to be judged as unsophisticated and naïve. This demoted the representation of female role models in literature, with some feminists and women writers feeling excludedby the surreality of the Female Aesthetic.[9]These traditional approaches to feminist criticism are usually referred to as the ‗Anglo-American‘ version of feminism, and are greatly at odds with what is now considered ‗recent‘critical theory: that of the French-derived, post-structuralist and psychoanalytic version of feminist criticism.[10]Post-war feminist criticism, through trying to elevate the position of women to a more egalitarian one within society, had not necessarily displaced the negative and projective images of the feminine by shifting focus from an attack of the male versions of the world to the woman writer and female world [11]and thus had to re-evaluate their position on feminist criticism. Gender Theory, the question of whether or not women‘s writing differs from that of men‘s - a form of language that is innately feminine, or the possibility of different feminine and masculine style‘s of writing, thus has become the central hypotheses of feminist criticism.[12] The idea of gender difference within writing has created such categories within feminist criticism as ‗black feminist criticism‘and ‗lesbian / gaycriticism‘.[13]女权主义批评家吉尔伯特和古巴将19世纪的英国文学概括为女性"想象力得以驰骋的黄金时代".19世纪的英国涌现出了一批优秀的女性作家,她们的创作大多都表现出女性主义思想的萌芽,其中勃朗特三姐妹笔下的反传统家庭的小说彻底地颠覆了父权制的统治,解构了传统的男女两性关系,构建了争取自由与平等的新女性形象,为西方女权主义批评莫定了基础.女性主义是指主要以女性经验为来源和动机的社会理论与政治运动,在某种意义上它可以被解释为女权主义,即在全世界范围内实现男女平等.它是跟妇女运动联系在一起的.它的起源可以追溯到法国大革命之前的启蒙运动,当时的思想家已经能够用笔指出男女之间的不平等现象了.法国大革命之后是女性主义蓬勃发展的时期,尤其是到19世纪末出现了第一次的妇女解放运动.此时的妇女运动的目标最重要的是争取政治权利.而在20世纪到来之后,全球性的解放已经开始出现,在20世纪60到70年代产生了第二次妇女解放运动.此次运动一般认为是起源于美国,其目标是要消除男女之间的差别.<<第二性>>(波伏娃)即产生于这一时期。
