13.MODULE 13. Feminism Approach - Lecture

Pasig Catholic College
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

School Year 2020-2021
PCC@108: “Bringing the Good News to all Faiths in all Seasons amidst Life’s Challenges”
Subject: 21st Century Literature from the Date:

Philippines and the World
Subject Teacher: Miss Dia Sielo D. Carabaña
MODULE 13 – FEMINISM APPROACH
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this module students will have completed the following objectives:
1. To learn feminism approach in literary criticism; and

2. To apply the literary approaches to different kinds of texts through written analysis.
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
o Feminism o
Feminism Approach
LECTURE NOTES
FEMINISM
1. the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
2. organized activity in support of women’s rights and interests
FEMINISM APPROACH
It is concerned with women’s role portrayed in the society as portrayed through text.
Feminist criticism focuses on how literature has represented women and relationships between women
and men, drawing attention to how women have been marginalized and denied a voice of their own in literature.
BEFORE:
Aristotle
• “The man is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled.” Darwin
(The Descent of Man – 1871)
• “Women are of a characteristic of … a past and lower state of civilization.”
• Are inferior to men, who are physically, intellectually, and artistically superior Religious leaders
Thomas Aquinas
• women were merely “imperfect men”
• Spiritually weak creatures
• Possessed a sensual nature that lures men away from spiritual truths, thereby preventing males from
attaining their spiritual potential.
NOW:
Mary Wollstonecraft• A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) • Have an equal education
“How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?”
• To be treated as equal partners not as ornamental wives
“Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay
to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority”
Virginia Woolf• A Room of One’s Own (1929) • Women’s need for economic and social freedom
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”
“It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of
Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare”
• Forego the traditional role as a mirror for man’s ability
"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of
reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size."
What Feminism Does

• rediscovers texts written by women
• revalues women’s experience
• examines representations of women in literature
• challenges the view of woman as “other”
• examines and challenges patriarchal roles
• examines language as a tool of gender construction
• discusses social versus biological difference
Example:
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
• In “A Rose for Emily”, Faulkner presents the South as an area powerfully traditional, family-centered
and with a clearly defined social roles. At the beginning of the 20th century women in the South were
discriminated as well as docile to men. It was the man, most often, the father who had a dominant power, who
was intolerant of any opposition. Miss Emily is a figure who lives in the shadow of her father. The honor she
maintains is rooted in her family name and her sense of propriety.
• Certainly, Emily lives under the patriarchy of her father. After her father’s death, still so attached has
she become to her father, Emily refuses to bury her father, standing in a black dress with his
...thin gold chain descending to her waist…the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain…
Key Questions:
• How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
• What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
 How are male and female roles defined?
• What constitutes masculinity and femininity?  How do characters embody these traits?
• Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to
them?
• What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically)
of patriarchy?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
• What does the work say about women's creativity?
• What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation
of patriarchy?
• What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition? (Tyson)
REFERENCES
Malavolta, G. (2013, January 29). Introduction to feminist literary criticism. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/GavinMalavolta/introduction-to-feminist-literary-criticism
Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). Feminist criticism // Purdue Writing Lab. Retrieved from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_
of_criticism/feminist_criticism.html

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Pasig Catholic College

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Subject: 21st Century Literature from the Date:

MODULE 13 – FEMINISM APPROACH

1. To learn feminism approach in literary criticism; and

What Feminism Does

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