47 Gender Criticism Lecture Notes and Presentation

Slide One: Gender Criticisms

Welcome! I’m Dr. Liza Long. In this presentation for English 211, we will learn more about feminist, postfeminist, and Queer Theory approaches to texts. The target for all three approaches in this section is gender, but these three critical approaches are very different. They can also all be considered as political critiques of power structures, similar to the Marxist, postcolonial, and ethnic studies lenses we covered in a previous section of the course.

We will be considering how biological sex, gender, and heteronormative social constructs have contributed to how we define literature. I want you to consider that the very act of reading scholarship by women and queer scholars is considered a feminist act.

We will be considering three approaches to gender and literature in the chronological order that they developed, starting with feminist criticism. With feminist literary analysis, we start by considering the woman both as a writer and the woman as she is written (the Latin poets’ scripta puella or “written girl” was an area of research I focused on). You may be familiar with labels like “first wave,” “second wave,” and “third wave” when we talk about feminist criticism.

Feminist criticism came to prominence as an approach to literary texts in the 1970s along with New Historicism. You’ll remember that with New Historicism, we learned there are no stable facts in history. Similarly, with feminist criticism, we consider which voices are heard and which are silenced, but we consider those questions with respect to women and girls, looking at text and context for women throughout history. We also consider the status of women and the relationships of women and men. One word you’ll hear in this type of criticism is “patriarchy.” This seems to be an important part of our current discourse, especially because of the popularity of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie (and I could probably do a whole lecture just about that movie).

With both postfeminist and queer theory criticism, you may also see the term “patriarchy,” since these two lenses build on feminist critical approaches. Postfeminist criticism is a deconstruction of feminism. There’s an emphasis in postfeminist criticism on contemporary culture, which may overlap with a cultural studies approach. The “post” in postfeminism is similar to the “post” in postcolonialism, which is a deconstructive approach to texts produced and consumed after colonization. While postfeminist critics argue that a feminist approach is too simplistic, and while they also assume that some of the aims of feminism have been achieved, this type of criticism does not necessarily preclude talking about feminist issues and power imbalances based on gender. You can still use techniques from feminist criticism within post-feminist criticism.

Finally, Queer Theory examines and critiques the dominance of heteronormative culture. The goal is to undermine the dominant culture’s understanding of binary gender (men/women) and sexuality (gay/straight). This is a particularly interesting area of inquiry for literary texts and involves some new ways of interpreting and understanding things such as place and time in literature. I think the three examples of scholarship in this section do a good job of demonstrating the differences among these three approaches.

As I noted, both postfeminist and Queer Theory come after feminism and are deconstructive approaches to gender in a literary text. Feminist criticism is not considered a deconstructive approach, though it does share some of the principles of New Historicism in considering that our understanding of women, both as writers and characters, is dependent on the dominant culture.

Slide Two: Why and How?

Let’s learn more about why we might choose these critical approaches and how we can use them to analyze literary texts. For this slide, I chose a picture of Hermione Granger. Whatever you think of J.K. Rowling as an author right now (and that’s a whole separate conversation), I like Hermione as a strong female character. Hermione is a written woman, and she is also a character who is written by a woman author, J.K. Rowling. In feminist, postfeminist, and Queer Theory approaches, we can consider both the author’s gender and the characters in our analysis. We can consider Hermione Granger as a written woman, and we can consider J.K. Rowling as the woman who wrote her. This isn’t like New Criticism—we are not doing death of the author in this approach. The author’s identity matters in this type of criticism. As another example that we’ll see in Camille Paglia’s postfeminist scholarship, we can consider Emily Dickinson as a writer as well as the way gender is treated in Emily Dickinson’s poetry

One thing I want to stress is that there’s not really right or a wrong way to do feminist, postfeminist or Queer Theory criticism. Any approach that considers gender works as long as you can support it with evidence from the text. I mean, I personally think that Camille Paglia’s approach to Emily Dickinson as a sadomasochist is a little bit out there, but she supports her argument with evidence from the text, and it certainly helps me to consider the text and its meaning differently. If you can support your own argument with evidence from the text, you’re doing it right.

With feminist criticism, you’ll focus both on how women have written and how women have been written. With postfeminism and Queer Theory, you will be focusing more on gender stereotypes and looking how they operate in the text, and for Queer Theory, especially, you will be deconstructing the idea of the binary with respect to both sexuality (gay/straight) and gender (male/female).

I’m sure you’re all aware of the contemporary discourse about gender, where politicians are trying to define and limit gender to the binary. Queer Theory would say, “Excuse me? Let me show you all the ways there aren’t just two genders, that gender is a cultural construct whose identifiers shift over time.” Queer Theory interrogates gender stereotypes: where they might come from; how they operate in the text; how they might reinforce or subvert heteronormative cultural structures. We will go over the terminology in more detail later in the presentation, but just keep in mind that some of the terms we learned in New Historicism/Cultural Studies and in postcolonial and ethnic studies criticism are often used in feminist, postfeminist, and Queer Theory analysis.

One goal of this type of criticism is to break down our preconceptions and prejudices about sex and gender. That’s why I just love that Shakespeare text you’ll work with in the “Practicing” chapter of this section. Why do we assume that the gender of the speaker in this poem is male and the person who is addressed is female? Is there anything in the actual text of the poem to support these assumptions? These approaches can open even familiar texts to different possible interpretations.

As the Shakespeare example shows, you can use any of these three methods on any text from any period. You’re not limited in asking these types of questions by when something was written. The model text I have used for feminist criticism was written by Mary Robinson in 1795.

However, I did choose a contemporary text by a queer author for your queer theory example, a short story called “The Eyepatch.” As an aside, this author happens to be my amazing daughter, and she’s letting me republish her story, which was originally published in “The Talking River Review,” here. The protagonist of the story is a non-binary person, and I think it’s interesting to consider what this choice means in terms of craft and impact. Also, just like we might consider women as writers with feminist approaches, we want to consider queer authors when that information is available to us. I wanted to make sure you had an example of literature written by a queer author.

Slide Three: Scholarship

I chose three very different excerpts of scholarship for this section, and I think all three do a good job of introducing you to the terminology and critical approaches. For feminist criticism, I started with Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational text to feminist criticism, The Second Sex. You’ll read a brief excerpt from this book (and in all your spare time, I recommend the entire book if you haven’t encountered it in another course). This quote is well known: “One is not born but becomes a woman.” Let’s pause for a moment and think about what de Beauvoir means. The idea behind this is that the concept of woman is a cultural and social construct. In other words, our idea of woman is human (and perhaps largely man)-made.

Does that idea resonate with you? If you’ve never thought about this before, then thinking about it now is a feminist act. If you identify as a woman, how do you know that you are a woman? If you do not identify as a woman, how do you know that you are not a woman? Try to consider the question outside the obvious response of “biological sex characteristics.” Other than these differences, what is a woman? De Beauvoir asks us to consider this question from a perspective of dominant and dominated cultures.

Our postfeminist example comes from Camille Paglia, an absolutely unapologetic combatant in the culture wars of the past 30 plus years. I mean, Emily Dickinson as a sadomasochist—that’s definitely a postfeminist reading! But as I noted, Paglia can support that reading with evidence from the text. It’s a good example of postfeminist criticism, and Paglia is considered along with Susan Faludi and a few others to be a prominent post-feminist critic. She’s still active in her scholarship. You may read about her in The New York Times, for example. I also like Paglia as an example because of her connection to the culture wars. As I mentioned previously, postfeminism overlaps with cultural studies in many ways and is particularly concerned with pop culture.

Camille Paglia’s 1990 book Sexual Personae was based on a dissertation she finished in 1974. The dissertation was definitely before its time. She finally published the book in 1990, and it’s considered foundational to postfeminist critical theory. I chose the Emily Dickinson chapter from this book because I do think the central premise is in-your-face and outrageous. These types of readings are common in postfeminist criticism. Paglia is basically saying, “What if instead of thinking of Emily Dickinson in a traditional feminist sense as a victim who was oppressed by the men in her life, instead we see Dickinson as an empowered person using the male gaze to her advantage? Paglia writes, ““It is a sentimental error to think Emily Dickinson the victim of male obstructionism.” That’s a classic postfeminist approach, one that deconstructs a more traditional feminist reading of the situation and the text.

Finally, we have an excerpt from Judith Butler, who is associated strongly with both feminist criticism and queer theory. Butler started out as a prominent feminist critic working within that lens and then evolved toward queer theory. Their 2011 book Bodies that Matter is what I chose to excerpt here, but Gender Matters from the 1990s is considered by many to be a foundational text for Queer Theory

If you have a hard time reading Butler, you’re not alone. Their ideas are really tough (similar to Foucault and Derrida in difficulty). We’ll talk about that when we look at limitations for queer theory criticism. Butler’s work can be technical and relies heavily on philosophers like Derrida and the ideas of deconstruction. The jargon can feel hard, but their ideas, when we unpack them, are intriguing. Judith Butler is saying the same thing here that Simone de Beauvoir said about being a woman. Butler is saying that sex is a cultural norm. Obviously, we have bodies, but what that means to us is not static; it’s not intrinsic or internal. It’s a norm that our culture imposes on us. Our culture needs to put us in boxes to make us intelligible to each other. This is a challenge we’re working with in our society right now.

Slide Four: Feminist Criticism

So how do we do these types of criticism? Keep in mind you don’t have to do all these things when you’re doing feminist criticism. You could just focus on any one of the things on this list. But these are some different approaches that you might take with feminist criticism. You could look at how gender roles and stereotypes are shaping identities in a text by examining the characters. For example, thinking back to Katherine Mansfield’s story “A Cup of Tea” that we read as an example of Marxist criticism, if we were doing feminist criticism, we could look at the characters of the wife and the husband, how they are depicted and how gender stereotypes play into their interactions. Why does the wife need her husband to think she is pretty? Why does she care so much about this, and how does she use her femininity to achieve her goals?

When you’re doing this type of criticism, you’ll want to think about who has the power to act (sometimes called agency). Do all the characters have autonomy? This is also a question to consider when you read the passage by George Eliot (the pen name for Maryanne Evans) from Middlemarch. This novel is considered to be one of the best English novels ever written. How are male and female characters represented? How did their interactions either contribute to or challenge traditional gender norms?

If you’re doing theme exploration, keep gender in the center of your target. You might look at sexism, women’s rights, or how femininity and masculinity are constructed. You could also consider how societal attitudes are reflected in the text.

For language and symbolism, think about the model AI essay for this section. ChatGPT focused on the eagle as a masculine image and the dove as a feminine image, and the phoenix can be our neutral or non-binary image. That would be a really interesting approach to take to “The Canonization.” Those are three examples of how a symbol in a text might be associated with gender.

Authorial intent and context both can matter in this type of criticism. For example, we could investigate Mary Robinson as a writer. We would know more about who she was and what her relationship to other English Romantic poets was. We would consider how she operated in that society to help us interpret her poem.

Finally, intersectionality is often tied to feminist criticism. This concept has become increasingly important in literary analysis, and it means that we don’t just consider gender when we look at a character’s or an author’s identity. We could also consider social class, race, etc. This would mean our critical analysis included an intersection of different theories such as feminist, Marxist, and ethnic studies criticism. We’re not just stuck with people as women or men in the text; we can look at their other identities as well.

Slide Five: Postfeminist Criticism

Next we have postfeminist criticism. Look how different this list is from feminist criticism. One thing I immediately notice is the jargon. A trope in this sense is just a convention or a standard we often see associated with this type of criticism. With postfeminism, there’s a very strong focus on individual empowerment or what we sometimes call choice feminism. This is the idea that as a woman, I get to decide what feminism looks like. We see this in defense of the tradwife culture right now. Nobody else can tell me what feminism is.

Choice feminism resonates with me personally. I was a stay-at-home mom for a long time. Was I still a feminist if I was staying home and raising my kids? Choice feminists say, yes! But some traditional feminists might say no. I was “betraying the cause,” by taking on a traditional subordinate gender role.

Postfeminism argues that many of the goals feminism set were achieved, and that women now have more individual empowerment, more control over what feminism means to them individually. Another postfeminist idea is that traditional gender roles aren’t necessarily relevant anymore. So you can look at how the narrative either reinforces or subverts feminist goals or traditional gender roles.

You don’t have to do everything on this slide to do postfeminist criticism. These are different approaches you might take. You can look at ambiguities and contradictions because this is a deconstructive stance toward a text. Looking at ambiguities in the text where things about gender and sexuality aren’t clear could also be a post-feminist approach. Consider the complexities of gender dynamics and look for places where we see conflicts or different perspectives on agency for the character. Under what circumstances are they allowed to act?

As I said earlier, there’s definitely a cultural studies slant for post-feminist criticism. Pop culture and media studies are both connected to these ideas. Have you heard of Madonna Studies or Taylor Swift Studies programs? These are real academic courses and programs, and they represent a postfeminist approach to these pop culture icons. Madonna is a post-feminist icon in some ways. She’s all about choice feminism. She’s just going to be whoever she wants to be. No one’s going to tell her who she is. If you’re thinking, what does postfeminism look like, Madonna is a great choice (and I think Beyonce is her successor). I think of her because she’s reinvented herself multiple times. She’s whatever she wants to be.

Global and cultural perspectives can definitely be brought in to postfeminist criticism. Remember, this can be kind of an intersectional approach,

For temporal considerations, it would be appropriate to think about the historical context with this type of criticism, but it’s less important than it is with feminist criticism. With feminist criticism we are more concerned with the historical context than we are with postfeminism. But with temporal considerations, we might consider how a text is received differently over time. Think back to New Historicism and how we considered the scholarly reception of Langston Hughes’s work. Critical reception changed over time. I am actually curious about that with Mary Robinson. I want to know more about when people started reading her work.

Slide Six: Queer Theory

Finally, let’s look at Queer Theory. This is also a deconstructive approach to texts with a focus on the binaries of gender and sexuality. You’ll see the word “heteronormative” used frequently with this type of lens. Just like the word “patriarchy” is a clue that you’re dealing with feminism, “heteronormative” signals a Queer Theory approach to a text. Binary is another common term in Queer Theory. “Deconstructing the binary” is a common Queer Theory phrase.

You’ll definitely be looking for queer identities in the text and perhaps in the author’s life. Think about how characters navigate and express gender identity and also their sexuality.

You can also think about the author as queer. We see a lot of interest right now about the identities of both Emily Dickinson and Louisa May Alcott, who asked her friends to call her Lou. In both of their cases, this is speculative, but many authors today have confirmed their queer identities. It’s important to consider how queer authors write and are received.

The idea of language and subversion is similar to what we learned about in postcolonial and cultural studies. How does the text subvert cultural expectations or norms?

Queer time and space is an area of particular interest to scholars right now. If I were using a Queer Theory lens to examine Adrienne Kennedy’s play, I might consider how the play’s nonlinear structure and double set subverts our expectations for drama. We are seeing lots of scholarship right now on the idea of space and place, how time and space are represented in the text with the idea that nonlinear or non-normative structure is often associated with this particular theory. If you read a text that’s nonlinear or that doesn’t have a traditional plot arc, Queer Theory might be a good approach for analyzing that text. How does the text disrupt our conventional/cultural ideas about place and space? If you’re questioning the gender binary, it opens up opportunities to question everything. This approach opens up the text to a variety of readings.

I’ve mentioned throughout the course that critical theory and literature develop in conversation, and I think we are definitely seeing that in current literary fiction. Many of the books I have read in the past few years use nonlinear structures. I think that queer theory is influencing the way authors frame texts.

Finally, intersectionality is also important for queer theory. You’ll also know you’re reading queer theory because your head will hurt. It’s difficult stuff. I personally have been playing around with Microsoft Copilot to help explain the more difficult concepts in the reading. These generative AI tools can be useful for breaking things down.

Slide Seven: January, 1795

In class, we read “January, 1795” together and also looked at the poem “London” from one of Mary Robinson’s slightly more famous contemporaries, William Blake. We decided that Mary’s poem was better. So why don’t we read Mary Robinson today? We all know who William Blake is. But I had to do a Google search for “British women poets in the 1800s” to encounter Mary Robinson. Why was she excluded from the canon? Is it because Blake is a better poet? Or are there other things to consider?

Reading this poem is a feminist act. Mary Robinson was a really good poet. She has a mastery of form and meter, and her poem is full of irony and wit. Think back to the beginning of the course, when I asked you what literature was. My goal is that you will finish this course feeling empowered to decide for yourself. Feminist, postfeminist, and queer theory approaches all work to blow up the Western canon. Because of these critical approaches, we have seen the so-called canon—the works “defined” as literature—open up to new and interesting voices. At the same time, we have to remember that this doesn’t mean that works by Western white men do not have value. These books are great too! We’re just noticing that these great authors have contemporaries who are equally or even more skilled, but who are not studied as much as their white male counterparts. If we had a friendly competition to see who could write the best poem about London in the late 1700s, I think Mary Robinson wins. But Blake’s poem made it into the canon, while hers did not.

This is one important feminist theory approach to the text. We ask questions about the canon and the social constructs that led to certain authors being excluded and certain other authors being excluded.

We also consider what an 18th century woman writer might look like. We are feminists when we read her work. But was Mary a feminist? What were her own beliefs about the nature of women? Fortunately, we have so many of her poems that we can start to construct some ideas about what she thought about women’s roles based on what she wrote. This is what an 18th century feminist looks like, painted by Joshua Reynolds, a famous portrait painter from this time. How does changing our reading of the poem from “written woman” to “woman as writer” change our understanding of the poem?

When we look at “January, 1795,” we might ask this question about this line: “wives who laugh at passive spouses.” What does this line tell us about who is really in charge? Who has autonomy? Based on Robinson’s poem, English women in 1795 seem to have some autonomy and agency. What evidence do we see for this in the text?

Slide Eight: Terms to Use

I’ve already been using a lot of the terms on this slide, and we have also encountered them in previous sections, but let’s go over them briefly again.

Canon refers to “serious” works of literature. I sometimes ask students why there are no Roman women authors. The answer is usually something along the lines of, “Oh, they just didn’t want to write. They were at home with the children (etc.).” But we know this isn’t true because their male contemporaries wrote about them. There are no Roman women authors today because even though they were popular and acknowledged during their lifetimes, their works did not survive from antiquity. Feminist theory asked a simple question: “Why aren’t women in the canon?” And it refuses this simple and incorrect answer. Women aren’t in the canon because they were excluded from the canon. Of course, this raises a whole new set of questions.

The constructed self is the self that we create. This is an important concept for post-feminist and Queer Theory criticism. This is a collection of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that a person has created about themselves within the cultural influences they exist under. What types of things influence your constructed self? How do you know who you are?

America Ferrara’s iconic monologue in the Barbie movie is a fantastic example of a feminist approach to the constructed self because she exposes how the culture makes it impossible for women to be all the constructed selves that she lists and society still expects women to be all these things. When we think about feminist approaches to texts, we have to ask the hard question: where does this constructed self for women come from?

Exclusion is the idea that’s tied to the constructed self, that what we see in literature depends on two things: The cultural values that we bring to the text, but also the cultural values of the time that was written. We will inevitably read a text differently than the text that was written.

Gender is complicated. It’s the male/female constructed identity, while sex is biological. Gender does not necessarily match sex assigned at birth. In feminist criticism, the idea of the binary is important. Feminist criticism is looking at women and men and the stereotypes based on women and men. Post-feminist and queer theory are deconstructing the idea that this binary even exists. They’re saying, well, there’s no such thing as women or men. Gender is a constructed identity.

That’s not true in feminism. Feminism to some extent thinks women are constructed, but there’s no subversion of the connection between gender identity and sex assigned at birth. Basically, women are women and men are men in feminist criticism. Keep in mind that no one in any of these theories is saying that biological sex doesn’t exist.

We have talked a lot about patriarchy already. It literally means “father ruled.” You’ll know you’re dealing with feminist criticism if you see this word. Patriarchy describes a culture where men set up the power structures and systems. It’s similar to what we studied in CRT where there’s the idea that there’s systemic racism. Patriarchy is the idea that there’s systemic sexism and that this is baked into our culture.

As I mentioned above, when we use the word “sex” in any of these approaches, we are talking about sex assigned at birth (biological). We can observe stereotypes that are based on sex or gender. I love the example of the word “hysterical.” It literally comes from the Greek word for uterus. The connotation is of a woman who’s out of control. You can’t use the term for men. There’s a stereotype carried in the word’s etymology.

We previously saw the word “other” when we looked at postcolonial criticism. This word occurs in Simone de Beauvoir’s reading. This is a member of a dominated out group, and their identity is considered somehow lacking or not normal, so they may be subject to discrimination by the in group.

We talked about intersectionality. This is the idea that our identities—race, class, sex, gender—are all a mix and there can be overlapping and interwoven systems of discrimination or disadvantage. In groups can also have intersectional privilege.

Queer is related to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms.

Finally, you’ll know you’re dealing with queer theory if you see the word “heteronormative.” That’s a worldview that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation. Queer Theory might explore how a text subverts the heteronormative assumptions of the culture that produced it.

Slide Nine: Limitations

There are definitely some limitations to all of these critical approaches, and you can read more in detail in your textbook. Essentialism goes back to that question of what is a woman? Can we really universalize the experience of women? Feminist theory sometimes tries to do that. That’s one of the things postfeminism is pushing up against by emphasizing the individuality and choices women have.

Another concern is that we might neglect other identities when we’re focusing so heavily on women and men and stereotypes. There’s the obvious risk of overlooking the male perspective, and we might not focus as much on the historical and cultural contexts in a feminist approach.

With post-feminism, there’s definitely an oversimplification of feminist goals. They have to really oversimplify what feminism is going for in order to say that the goals have been achieved, despite obvious progress.

With choice feminism, is it really true that every choice is equally valid? I don’t know how to handle this limitation, especially in light of the current backlash women are facing in the area of reproductive health.

With the focus on individualism, there may be a lack of intersectionality in this type of approach. But the commodification of feminism might be my own biggest concern. I used the example of Madonna before, and I think you can make an argument that she also represents the commodification of feminism.

Finally, with Queer Theory, there’s a concern with complexity and jargon. This might be the biggest limitation. There are so many interesting ideas there, but you’re going to have to work really hard to unpack them. All the limits that apply to deconstruction also apply to Queer Theory.

Queer Theory can also be subjective in its approach. And there’s the problem of limited representation right now in this particular field. We might inadvertently reinforce stereotypes by choosing a single representation of an identity. We may not always appreciate nuance and complexity.

 Slide Ten: Checklist and Theoretical Response

As you choose a text for “Practicing Gender Criticisms,” remember that all three approaches are concerned with representation of gender and sexuality, and you don’t have to do every one of these things. This is your checklist for your homework this week. The first thing you need to decide is what approach you’ll take. The guiding questions should point you toward an obvious direction, but if you feel like you want to take a different approach, just make sure you let me know whether you’re applying feminist, postfeminist, or Queer Theory criticism to the text you chose.

You could do a character analysis looking at gender in the text. You could look at the author’s gender. You could do a deconstructive reading that focuses on gender and symbolism for gender. You could look at symbols and imagery and consider how they reflect gender stereotypes and cultural norms around gender. And you can look for themes and motifs. One interesting approach might be to look at time and space and how these play out in the text.

Whichever approach you choose, I think you’ll have fun with this. Just remember to keep gender at the center of your target. And remember that there’s not really a wrong answer for this type of criticism. Just make sure you support your argument with evidence from the text. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out! I really look forward to seeing your responses and application of these theories.