A Brief Introduction to Feminist Criticism

A Brief Introduction to Feminist Criticism

The historical implication of "feminism" usually means "movements for recognition of the claims of women for rights (legal, political, familial, etc.) equal to those possessed by men." Women have never ceased to fight for their rights, though the feminist movement in the West did not take any visible shape till the nineteenth century in the name of women's liberation movement. This liberation movement began to subside in the twentieth century as women have gained most of these political and legal rights. The feminism starting in the 1960s had been concerned not so much with the traditional women's rights as with issues more deeply rooted than those for the previous liberation movement. The "feminism" in this unit refers chiefly to the theoretical speculations on women and women related subjects as the result of the contemporary women's movement, which is markedly different from the previous feminisms.

It is not easy to identify the origin of feminism. An "archaeology" would find women antagonists in the fifth century Greek literature, and similar images of women may have existed in the Chinese Tang poetry. In Europe the feminist tradition can be traced back at least to the fourteenth century, where French woman poet Christine de Pisan criticized the misogynist ideas in terms of court etiquette and the Christian tradition. The Deutch renaissance scholar E. Erasmus attacked the double standard in education and morality for women. The age of Enlightenment saw a hostile attitude toward women in France, but the mujer esquiva in the seventeenth century Spanish drama is a eulogy of woman identity.

Feminism is mostly found in the English speaking countries, thanks in part to The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, one of the two most widely read feminist works in the West today. The first conspicuous women writers appeared in the eighteenth century England when industrial revolution increased the number of well-educated middle class women and greatly facilitated their publication. Writers for the first time shifted from the patronage of the court to the general reading public, and writing became largely a commercial activity. The nineteenth century brought about major changes to feminist movement. Inspired by the American and French Revolutions and the anti-slavery movement, women for the first time unmistakably claimed for the natural "Rights of Women." Darwinism shook the self-importance of man/ male, Marxism further questioned the legitimacy of capitalist man, and Nietzsche denounced the validity of (the male) God. In this context women's liberation movement took a definite shape and made major progress in women's suffrage and property rights. Women became medical doctors; lawyers, or journalists, and women students went into Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. This was also