FEMINISM
‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’
-Simon de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
This small line
was perhaps a capsule which generated the feminist thinking for over fifty
years and more. Simon de Beauvoir not only defined ‘woman’ but also touched
upon the questions and issues that lie at the very heart of the feminist inquiry. The
Second Sex argued that there was no such thing as ‘feminine nature’. Some of
the essentialist questions were-
Is there an innate and natural difference
between men and women?
Is a woman a woman because she is biologically
female, or because she behaves like a woman?
Well, a new
feminist wave emerged with the writings and thinking of Elaine Showalter and
Gayatri Spivak which enhanced the view as well as the influenced the theory
with varied richness.
Elaine Showalter,
an American literary critic, feminist, and writer, developed a concept of ‘gynocriticism’.
This concept is linked with or perhaps emerged from Phallocentric criticism. So,
let’s see what phallocentric literature, as well as phallocentric criticism, is.
Phallocentric literature
tends to expose the masculine sexuality with a female passivity or women as a
subject to an artificially constructed idea of feminine. For example, ‘Lady
Chatterley’s Lover’ by D H Lawrence highlights the lengthy and admiring
descriptions of male protagonist Mellor’s powerful body, which contrast with
the diminishing glances at his lover Connie and the demeaning worship of the
phallus in which she partakes.
Phallocentric
criticism analyses the recurring pattern of imagery and the use of language
that would demonstrate concealed attitudes to femininity, and it effectively
created a new understanding of seemingly coincidental motifs. For example, Leo
Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” has an adulterous female protagonist who meets a
catastrophic end. The thing to be observed in this text is that it depicts
female sexuality with a frankly male description. A feminist reading would
suggest that the author has applied a very conservative resolution to his
seemingly progressive novel. This way literature is seen as a product of its patriarchal
culture. It can be said that from the moment of phallocentric criticism was
established, the text could no longer be assumed to be innocent of sexual
politics.
The phallocentric
theory took less interest to address the lack of women in the canon. So an
alternative female-centered criticism was developed to address the need, and
because of its preoccupation with the female voice, it came to be known as ‘gynocriticism’.
This theory first
assured to provide an ample number of female authors to readers. This way male
literary tradition was getting suppressed and there was a rise of female
literary tradition. A new poetics called female poetics emerged. Showalter
combined gynocentric rereadings of canonical female authors with an exception
of unknown writers in an attempt to revolutionize the accepted canon.
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