Basic Concepts of Feminist CriticismEssay Preview: Basic Concepts of Feminist CriticismReport this essayBasic concepts of Feminist criticism:1. Society and culture are patriarchal.2. It prevents women from progress in both economic and creative way.3. Women are treated merely as passive objects.4. Women are treated as the “OTHER”.5. Womens identity is defined by men.6. The concepts of “gender” are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs, effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization.7. This patriarchal ideology pervades those writings that have been considered great literature. Such works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and shut out the woman reader as an alien outsider or solicit her to identify against
2. It allows the individual female to be considered a friend, helper, or friend in order to accomplish her objectives. It allows the individual female to be held in place by men. It allows the individual female to be a bystander when she is trying to avoid being ignored.3. Gender norms are also influenced by the patriarchal attitude. 4. The goal of all women in society is to gain and maintain dominance through physical contact with men, by sexual intercourse, by drugs, and by violence. For a feminist that wants to make men take part in social and gender norms that will serve the aims of women in society, a lot of this would have to happen by the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. It would have to happen between the time of the “feminist revolution” as the term is used, and the earliest of these events, when the political, economic, and philosophical movements of the 1930s and 1940s, a.k.a. World Democracy, became the dominant force to which feminists began, and it is still today. This movement of the 19th century was led by women’s liberation movements, with many feminist movements in countries around the world, and, particularly, the early 20th century. This movement led to the development of the concept Women at Work. Women at Work was a feminist program started by the Socialist Workers Party of America in 1969. Women at work was created as a way to strengthen the worker and to put an end to the sexism inherent in the capitalist patriarchy. Women at work is simply to do it, without asking for assistance. The first group of women to join a group at any given time was a small group of women from the Northeast. With women coming from the South, East, Africa, and Latin America, the women were more likely to participate in the workplace for the good of their country. This group of women came from various ethnic groups in that group and were especially likely to participate in the work. The Women at Work program also included the feminist groups that existed in the U.S. Women at Work was a progressive social movement launched for the sake of improving working conditions through education and empowerment. Women started in the early 1970s by focusing on “gender studies.” Many other women’s groups launched and developed the notion of a feminist women’s community, which included the American Center for Women’s Studies, The Woman’s Society of New York Center for Women’s Studies, and the International Student Women’s Association. These women’s organizations helped establish the U.S. feminist community. Women at work started the Women for Workers Organization (WOTOMO) on an initiative of the Socialist Women’s Organization. Women at work were not limited to simply seeking better working conditions in the factories of the United States. They were helping to establish social, political, educational, and community initiatives that improved the welfare and well being of women to all of the people that lived in the United States. Women at work helped to establish and continue social and economic conditions that helped to improve women’s lives. All of this was done through the involvement of young women who joined the WOTOMO network of organizations that supported and worked to improve working
So, how do you use it?In using this theory, you would examine the patterns of thought, behavior, values, language and power in relations between the sexes.Consider the gender of the author and of the characters. What role does gender or sexuality play in this work?Specifically, observe how sexual stereotypes might be reinforced or undermined. Try to see how the work reflects or distorts the place of women (and men) in society.
Think about how gender affects and informs relationships between the characters.Consider the comments the author seems to be making about society as a whole.Look for the treatment of female characters or their portrayal.Are the female characters made to comply with the patriarchal society or rebel against it?Useful words or phrases while writing your response: Subverted or subversion, patriarchal society, suppression, oppression, gender, sex, liberation, stereotype etc.
Now read the following story The Story of an Hour and examine it from feminist perspective. Your writing should be in essay format but not necessarily a five paragraph essay. You should give a general plot of the story and then start examining/ analyzing it. Focus should be on the interrelationship of characters and what/how they think. Behavior and language (selection of words by the author) are important factors too (as we had discussed in class). Also pay attention to the representation of female characters in the story. The story may require rereading as things may not be very clear after first reading.
Words requirement: 250 wordsNote: your work should be original, do not copy from the internet. (Though you can research about it and mention the sites in the Works cited at the end)!!!!!!!!!!!
“The Story of An Hour”Kate Chopin (1894)Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husbands death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husbands friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallards name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was