Feminist Criticism

The text ‘Feminist Criticism’, taken from A History of Literary Criticism by M.A.R. Habib, features in B.Ed. 1^st Year’s General English book (Tribhuvan University). Below are the key takeaways from the text:

1. Feminist criticism actually began since the ancient times. Though very few in number there were the writings of male as well as female writers at times which depicted women as stronger than men in certain respects. For an example, ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata depicts women as seizing the treasury in the Acropolis and denying sex to their husbands in order to force the men to end the destructive Peloponnesian War.   

2. However, feminist criticism arose in an organized and systematic way only in the twentieth century as women collectively began to protest and demand political rights such as right to vote.  

3. Feminist cause cannot be promoted using the historically imposed language which is dominated by male concepts and values. Hence, feminist criticism tries to either modify the inherited patriarchal language or create a separate female language in order to be able to express and assert women’s views properly.

4. Feminist criticism advocates for conceptual fluidity and openness. It rejects the traditional theories of masculine presuppositions that have divided male and female as binary opposites and have tried to fix the patriarchal concepts. It shows that such concepts are just the cultural and ideological constructs.

5. Feminist criticism rejects the notion of objectivity and neutrality. It acknowledges the subjective positions of women as informed by specific circumstances. It is international in scope and is dictated by many local as well as general factors. Hence, there are feminist writers such as Fatima Mernissi and Leila Ahmed from Arab traditions, Alice Walker from African-American experience, and Gayatri Spivak from Asian heritage who write distinctly from one another as marked by their specific cultural concerns.