The term feminism, with regard to literature, has a number of distinct associations. Largely grouped under the interdisciplinary field of gender studies, and arising out of increasing understanding of women’s issues, different branches of the discipline focus on divergent ideas. The oldest identifiable form of literary feminism grew out of 18th-century liberal philosophy such as that found in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), which emphasized female autonomy and self-fulfillment. In the 20th century, liberal feminism worked to achieve economic and social equality for women. More a revisionist than a revolutionary movement, feminism’s literary aim was to reform existing structures by getting people to learn and read about women’s issues, not to break down those structures to create new ones.
The movement eventually broadened to encompass radical feminism, which accused liberal feminism of not having high enough goals. Arising out of the Civil Rights movement and the surge of Leftist activism in the late 1960s, radical feminism’s goal of addressing the women’s oppression was revolutionary. As the 1970s progressed, the movement gained a more cultural perspective, the one most widely adopted by feminist writers.
Cultural feminism celebrates women’s culture and community. Its goal is to seek out those qualities that are traditionally associated with women, such as compassion, subjectivity, intuition, and closeness to nature, and to claim them as desirable, positive, and even superior traits. Proponents of cultural feminism, including the writers Elizabeth Gould Davis and Ashley Montagu, also believe that these qualities are not innate but are learned.
In France, the feminist social movement began in April 1944 when French women obtained the right to vote. It was advanced greatly by the 1949 publication of Simone de beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in which she states “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that determines this creature.”
Simone de Beauvoir was not alone in her support of the emerging feminist trend in France. Other writers soon began to follow her example. Helene cixous and her “ecriture feminine,” developed in her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975), established a new form of women’s writing whereby women could learn to “write from the body” to break free of the bonds of male-dominated rhetoric. Theories of the body became particularly important for feminist thinkers, as a woman’s body was traditionally the source of such male-defined constructs as physical weakness, immorality, and unseemliness. One of the main goals of feminism as a literary movement was to redefine the body and society’s view of it.
In reference to the concept of the body, many feminist critics turn to the work of writer Julia Kristeva. Although she does not consider herself a feminist writer, her theories linking the mind to the body and linking biology to representation have been pivotal to the movement. Kristeva emphasizes the maternal function of a woman’s body and its significance to the development of language and culture. As a result of this function, Kristeva purports, ideals of feminism as espoused by de Beauvoir should be rejected because they negate the importance of motherhood. She also insists that early feminism, which sought total equality, is remiss in its attempts to ignore the inherent differences between genders. She further argues that a unique feminine language, as proposed by Cixous, is impossible. However, in rejecting existing feminisms, Kristeva paves the way for another form of feminism, one grounded in the exploration of multiple identities, arguing that there are as many sexualities as there are individuals.
In the 1990s, the trend toward gender studies, encompassing not only feminism but also lesbian criticism and queer theory, has shifted the focus once again to a more inclusive philosophy.
Some Works by Feminist Writers
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.
Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader. Edited by Tori Moi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. Indianapolis, Ind.: Doubleday, 1976.
Moi, Tori. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary
Theory. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Fort Washington, Pa.: Harvest Books, 1990.
Works about Feminism
Richardson, Angelique, and Chris Willis, eds. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin de Siecle Feminisms. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Warhol, Robyn R., and Diane Price, eds. Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Pis-cataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1977.
