46 Practicing Gender Criticism

Now that you’ve learned about feminist, postfeminist and queer theory, practiced these methods of analysis with “January, 1795” and “The Eyepatch,” and reviewed some examples, you will complete a theoretical response to a text using one of these three gender criticisms as your approach. You will read three different texts below. Choose one text and respond to the questions in a short essay (500-750 words).

I have included questions to guide your reading. You may choose to respond to some or all of these questions; however, your response should be written as a short essay, and you will need to come up with a thesis statement about your chosen text. Post your short essay as a response to the Gender Criticism Theoretical Response discussion board. I have included the theoretical response assignment instructions at the end of this chapter.

Checklist for Practicing Feminist, Postfeminist, and Queer Theory Criticism

All three approaches are concerned with representations of gender and sexuality in texts. Here’s a checklist that may help you. You do not need to address every item on this list.

  1. Choose a Theoretical Approach: Identify whether you will use feminist, postfeminist, or queer theory in your analysis.
  2. Character Analysis: Examine the characters/speakers in the text, looking for stereotypes based on sex or gender and considering how these stereotypes interact with the discourse of the time when the texts were written. For postfeminist and queer theory, also consider binary oppositions and privileged meanings.
  3. Author’s Background: Think about how the author’s sex or gender identity has influenced the work. Because these three critical approaches are intersectional, you may also want to consider race, socioeconomic status, or other identities.
  4. Symbolism and Imagery: Analyze symbols and imagery, exploring how they may represent gender or sexuality and reinforce or undercut stereotypes (e.g., phoenix, eagles, and doves in “The Canonization”).
  5. Themes and Motifs: Identify recurring themes and motifs in the text. Explore how these elements reflect the experiences of women or queer people.

1. Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” by William Shakespeare is in the public domain.

Questions

  1. What is the gender and sexuality of the speaker? What is gender and sexuality of the person being addressed in the poem? Can you find evidence to support your answer in the text itself?
  2. What cultural assumptions or constructions did you bring to your answer to question one? How does considering alternative possibilities open up our reading of the poem?
  3. If the beloved is a woman, what stereotypes does the poem’s symbolism reinforce about aging and beauty?
  4. What does the speaker value in a romantic partner? How do these values compare with your contemporary values?

2. Excerpt from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Dorothea’s native strength of will was no longer all converted into resolute submission. She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons. But every one around her disapproved. Sir James was much pained, and offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected.

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea could have nothing to object to her.

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, “You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn’t believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine.”

“I never called everything by the same name that all the people about me did,” said Dorothea, stoutly.

“But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, “and that is a proof of sanity.”

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. “No,” she said, “I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.”

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her husband she remarked, “It will be well for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning.”

“My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of no use,” said the easy Rector.

“No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon.”

“Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor.”

“That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A woman’s choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don’t exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon business yet.”

“For heaven’s sake don’t touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it to him unnecessarily.”

“I have never entered on it,” said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands. “Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking of mine.”

“Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. At first she walked into every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if they were a speech to be heard by her husband. Then, she lingered in the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence. The pity which had been the restraining compelling motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was unjust. One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious. The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon, she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, “I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in—Dorothea?” Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which had really determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him. How could it be otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble, she counted on Will’s coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday, before she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman’s pew; but when she entered his figure was gone.

Excerpt fromMiddlemarch by George Eliot is in the public domain.

Questions

You may need to do a little research to answer these questions.

  1. George Eliot is the pseudonym used by the English author Mary Anne Evans. Why do you think she wrote under a male pseudonym? Does knowing that the author is actually a woman change how you read or interpret the text?
  2. The dedication page to Middlemarch reads “To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.” What does this dedication reveal about gender and sexuality in 19th century Victorian England? How does this text complement that information?
  3. What gender stereotypes do you see in the text? How are these gender stereotypes subverted?
  4. How does the role of gender and sexuality in this text compare with Mary Robinson’s poem “January, 1795”?

3. Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace

At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.
She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean
darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those
who can’t sleep, those who never awaken.
My granddaughter sleeps on the breast of her mother with milk on
her mouth. A fly contemplates the sweetness of lactose.
Her father is wrapped in the blanket of nightmares. For safety he
approaches the red hills near Thoreau. They recognize him and sing for
him.
Her mother has business in the house of chaos. She is a prophet dis-
guised as a young mother who is looking for a job. She appears at the
door of my dreams and we put the house back together.
Panther watches as human and animal souls are lifted to the heavens by
rain clouds to partake of songs of beautiful thunder.
Others are led by deer and antelope in the wistful hours to the vil-
lages of their ancestors. There they eat cornmeal cooked with berries
that stain their lips with purple while the tree of life flickers in the sun.
It’s October, though the season before dawn is always winter. On the
city streets of this desert town lit by chemical yellow travelers
search for home.
Some have been drinking and intimate with strangers. Others are
escapees from the night shift, sip lukewarm coffee, shift gears to the
other side of darkness.
One woman stops at a red light, turns over a worn tape to the last
chorus of a whispery blues. She has decided to live another day.
The stars take notice, as do the half-asleep flowers, prickly pear and
chinaberry tree who drink exhaust into their roots, into the earth.
She guns the light to home where her children are asleep and may
never know she ever left. That their fate took a turn in the land of
nightmares toward the sun may be untouchable knowledge.
It is a sweet sound.
The panther relative yawns and puts her head between her paws.
She dreams of the house of panthers and the seven steps to grace.
“Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace” from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems by Joy Harjo is All Rights Reserved.  Copyright © 1996 by Joy Harjo. Used with Fair Use Exception.

Questions

  1. What are the roles of mothers and fathers in the poem? How do these roles conform to or disrupt stereotypes?
  2. The author of this poem, former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. What intersections among gender and culture do you see in this poem?
  3. The panther is a a power mythological creature in Cree mythology. In this poem, what is the panther’s gender? Why is this significant to our understanding of the poem?

Theoretical Response Assignment Instructions

For each of the critical approaches we study in Critical Worlds, you will write a short response that demonstrates your beginning understanding of the concept by applying the approach to a text. Treat these responses as short essays. The responses are intended to help you find what you do and don’t understand about the critical approach so that we can discuss the approach as a class.

Instructions

Step One: At the end of each section in Critical Worlds, you will find a chapter called “Practicing [Theoretical Approach].” (For example, “Practicing New Criticism”) Read all the works in this section and be prepared to discuss them on our class discussion board or in class.
Step Two: Choose one of the works to write about in your response. For example, you will read all four of the short works in the New Criticism section, but you will only respond to one, perhaps “Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Refer to our course schedule for due dates.
Step Three: Use the questions that follow the one work you’ve chosen to prompt your response. Your final response should be written as a short essay that considers the key elements of each question, 500-750 words in length (3-4 complete paragraphs). When you directly quote the text, use MLA style and include page or line numbers in parenthetical citations for later reference. Do your best, and please reach out if you need help.
Step Four: Submit your response by copying and pasting it into the discussion board forum designated for this assignment. Do not attach your response as a Word document. Refer to the course schedule for due dates. I strongly recommend that you draft your response in Word of another software program that includes a grammar and spelling checker.
Step Five: Online students are required to respond to two classmates who chose different texts from the one you chose for your response. These responses should both be 100-150 words in length (200-300 words total) and are due by Sunday. Students who attend class in person are not required to post responses to classmates because we will discuss the works in class together. 

Grading

Each short response is worth 25 points.
  • 15 points: theoretical response
  • 10 points: online discussion (5 points per response) OR class attendance.
Responses will be graded on adherence to requirements and thoroughness and thoughtfulness of work—not simply on completion. A response that meets the requirements but is perfunctory in manner may receive a “C.”
Note: I do not expect you to apply the theory perfectly to earn a high grade. These responses are about practicing an approach, not mastering it.

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