Feminist Literary Criticism

A Comprehensive Overview for UGC NET English

I. Background and Historical Development

Feminist literary criticism emerged as a political and literary response to the male-dominated literary canon and the patriarchal structures embedded in literature, criticism, and language. It gained theoretical momentum during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s.

Feminist criticism examines how literature perpetuates or challenges gender roles, highlights the absence or misrepresentation of women, and seeks to recover suppressed women's voices. It overlaps with psychoanalytic, Marxist, postcolonial, queer, and deconstructionist approaches.

II. Purpose of Feminist Literary Criticism

• To challenge the androcentric literary canon.
• To recover lost works by women writers.
• To expose patriarchal ideologies embedded in texts.
• To analyse how gender, language, and power intersect in literature.
• To develop alternative literary theories like Gynocriticism.
• To promote intersectional approaches incorporating race, class, and sexuality.

III. Phases of Feminist Criticism (Elaine Showalter)

• Feminine Phase (1840–1880): Women imitate male literary norms.
• Feminist Phase (1880–1920): Women protest against male values.
• Female Phase (1920–present): Women explore female identity and language.

IV. Key Feminist Critics and Their Works (Chronologically)

Critic / Author	Seminal Work	Year	Significance
Mary Wollstonecraft	A Vindication of the Rights of Woman	1792	Early feminist call for women's education
Margaret Fuller	Woman in the Nineteenth Century	1845	First major feminist work in the U.S.
Sojourner Truth	Ain’t I a Woman? (Speech)	1851	Intersectionality; Black feminist perspective
Virginia Woolf	A Room of One’s Own	1929	Women’s creativity and financial independence
Virginia Woolf	Professions for Women	1931	"Killing the Angel in the House"
Simone de Beauvoir	The Second Sex	1949	“One is not born, but becomes, a woman”
Betty Friedan	The Feminine Mystique	1963	Critique of domestic ideology
Kate Millett	Sexual Politics	1970	Patriarchy in literature
Germaine Greer	The Female Eunuch	1970	Rejection of passive femininity
Shulamith Firestone	The Dialectic of Sex	1970	Reproduction & technology
Juliet Mitchell	Psychoanalysis and Feminism	1974	Freud and feminism
Luce Irigaray	Speculum of the Other Woman	1974	French feminism
Hélène Cixous	The Laugh of the Medusa	1975	Écriture féminine
Elaine Showalter	A Literature of Their Own	1977	Gynocriticism and literary history
Elaine Showalter	Toward a Feminist Poetics	1979	Textual vs. Institutional criticism
Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar	The Madwoman in the Attic	1979	Angel/Monster in women’s writing
Julia Kristeva	Powers of Horror	1980	Abjection and psychoanalysis
Dale Spender	Man Made Language	1980	Language as patriarchal tool
Michèle Barrett	Women’s Oppression Today	1980	Marxist-feminist reading
Sheila Rowbotham	Hidden from History	1973	Feminist social history
bell hooks	Ain’t I a Woman?	1981	Race and gender oppression
bell hooks	Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center	1984	Intersectionality and inclusion
Alice Walker	In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens	1983	Womanism; Black creativity
Toril Moi	Sexual/Textual Politics	1985	Overview of French theorists
Donna Haraway	A Cyborg Manifesto	1985	Posthuman feminist identity
Gloria Anzaldúa	Borderlands/La Frontera	1987	Chicana feminism, border theory
Hazel Carby	Reconstructing Womanhood	1987	Black women’s intellectual history
Barbara Christian	The Race for Theory	1987	Critique of elitist theory
Judith Butler	Gender Trouble	1990	Gender as performance
Monique Wittig	The Straight Mind	1992	Lesbian feminism
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	Can the Subaltern Speak?	1988	Postcolonial feminism

V. Types of Feminist Literary Criticism

• Liberal Feminism: Equal representation and inclusion.
• Radical Feminism: Patriarchy and sexual oppression.
• Marxist/Socialist Feminism: Class and economics.
• Psychoanalytic Feminism: Unconscious, identity, and language.
• French Feminism: Language and female difference.
• Black Feminism: Race and gender intersectionality.
• Postcolonial Feminism: Third World women, decolonization.
• Ecofeminism: Gender and nature.
• Queer Feminism: Gender fluidity and performativity.

✅ Quick Recap for UGC NET

• Elaine Showalter – Gynocriticism
• Gilbert and Gubar – Madwoman in the Attic
• Judith Butler – Gender performativity
• bell hooks – Intersectionality
• Spivak – Subaltern studies
• Cixous – Écriture féminine
• Alice Walker – Womanism
• Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own

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