feminist literary thesis statement

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42 What Are Feminist Criticism, Postfeminist Criticism, and Queer Theory?

Feminist Criticism

Feminist criticism is a critical approach to literature that seeks to understand how gender and sexuality shape the meaning and representation of literary texts. While feminist criticism has its roots in the 1800s (First Wave), it became a critical force in the early 1970s (Second Wave) as part of the broader feminist movement and continues to be an important and influential approach to literary analysis.

Feminist critics explore the ways in which literature reflects and reinforces gender roles and expectations, as well as the ways in which it can challenge and subvert them. They examine the representation of female characters and the ways in which they are portrayed in relation to male characters, as well as the representation of gender and sexuality more broadly. With feminist criticism, we may consider both the woman as writer and the written woman.

As with New Historicism and Cultural Studies criticism, one of the key principles of feminist criticism is the idea that literature is not a neutral or objective reflection of reality, but rather, literary texts are shaped by the social and cultural context in which they are produced. Feminist critics are interested in gender stereotypes, exploring how literature reflects and reinforces patriarchal power structures and how it can be used to challenge and transform these structures.

Postfeminist Criticism

Postfeminist criticism is a critical approach to literature that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s as a response to earlier feminist literary criticism. It acknowledges the gains of feminism in terms of women’s rights and gender equality, but also recognizes that these gains have been uneven and that new forms of gender inequality have emerged.

The “post” in postfeminist can be understood like the “post” in post-structuralism or postcolonialism. Postfeminist critics are interested in exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed and represented in literature, but they also pay attention to the ways in which other factors such as race, class, and age intersect with gender to shape experiences and identities. They seek to move beyond the binary categories of male/female and masculine/feminine, and to explore the ways in which gender identity and expression are fluid and varied.

Postfeminist criticism also pays attention to the ways in which contemporary culture, including literature and popular media, reflects and shapes attitudes towards gender and sexuality. It explores the ways in which these representations can be empowering or constraining and seeks to identify and challenge problematic representations of gender and sexuality.

One of the key principles of postfeminist criticism is the importance of diversity and inclusivity. Postfeminist critics are interested in exploring the experiences of individuals who have been marginalized or excluded by traditional feminist discourse, including women of color, queer and trans individuals, and working-class women. If you are familiar with t he American Dirt controversy, where Oprah’s book pick was widely criticized because the author was a white woman, is an example of this type of approach.

Queer Theory

Queer theory is a critical approach to literature and culture that seeks to challenge and destabilize dominant assumptions about gender and sexuality. It emerged in the 1990s as a response to the limitations of traditional gay and lesbian studies, which tended to focus on issues of identity and representation within a binary understanding of gender and sexuality. According to Jennifer Miller,

“The film theorist Teresa de Lauretis (figure 1.1) coined the term at a University of California, Santa Cruz, conference about lesbian and gay sexualities in February 1990…. In her introduction to the special issue, de Lauretis outlines the central features of queer theory, sketching the field in broad strokes that have held up remarkably well.”

While queer theory was formalized as a critical approach in 1990, scholars built on earlier ideas from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, as well as the works of Judith Butler, Eve Sedgewick, and others.

Queer theory is interested in exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed and performative, rather than innate or essential. As with feminist and postfeminist criticism, queer theory seeks to expose the ways in which these constructions are shaped by social, cultural, and historical factors, but additionally, queer theory seeks to challenge the rigid binaries of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Queer theory also emphasizes the importance of intersectionality, or the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with other forms of identity such as race, class, and ability. It seeks to uncover the complex and nuanced ways in which multiple forms of oppression and privilege intersect.

Queer theory focuses on the importance of resistance and subversion. Scholars are interested in exploring the ways in which marginalized individuals and communities have resisted and subverted the dominant culture’s norms and values, observing how these acts of resistance and subversion can be empowering and transformative.

Learning Objectives

Use a variety of approaches to texts to support interpretations (CLO 1.2)
Using a literary theory, choose appropriate elements of literature (formal, content, or context) to focus on in support of an interpretation (CLO 2.3)
Be exposed to a variety of critical strategies through literary theory lenses, such as formalism/New Criticism, reader-response, structuralism, deconstruction, historical and cultural approaches (New Historicism, postcolonial, Marxism), psychological approaches, feminism, and queer theory (CLO 4.1)
Understand how context impacts the reading of a text, and how different contexts can bring about different readings (CLO 4.3)
Demonstrate awareness of critical approaches by pairing them with texts in productive and illuminating ways (CLO 5.5)
Demonstrate through discussion and/or writing how textual interpretation can change given the context from which one reads (CLO 6.2)
Understand that interpretation is inherently political, and that it reveals assumptions and expectations about value, truth, and the human experience (CLO 7.1)

Scholarship: Examples from Feminist, Postfeminist, and Queer Theory Critics

Feminist criticism could technically be considered to be as old as writing. Since Sappho of Lesbos wrote her famous lyrics, women authors have been an active and important part of their cultures’ literary traditions. Why, then, are we sometimes not as familiar with the works of women authors? One of the earliest feminist critics is the French existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). In her important book, The Second Sex, she lays the groundwork for feminist literary criticism by considering how in most societies, “man” is normal, and “woman” is “the Other.” You may have heard this famous quote: “One is not born a woman but becomes one.” (French: “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient”). This phrase encapsulates the essential feminist idea that “woman” is a social construct.

Feminist: Excerpt from Introduction to The Second Sex (1949), translated by H.M. Parshley

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question “what is a woman”? To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete 3 hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam. Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman, the relative being …’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel: ‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself … Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’ The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality – that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts. It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumézil on the East Indies and Rome. The feminine element was at first no more involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus, Sun-Moon, and Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and unlucky auspices, right and left, God and Lucifer. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are ‘strangers’ and suspect; to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’; Jews are ‘different’ for the anti-Semite, Negroes are ‘inferior’ for American racists, aborigines are ‘natives’ for colonists, proletarians are the ‘lower class’ for the privileged. Excerpt from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (translated by H.M. Parshley) is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

How do you feel about de Beauvoir’s conception of woman as “Other”? How are her approaches to gender similar to what we have learned about deconstruction and New Historicism? Could feminist criticism, like Marxist, postcolonial, and ethnic studies criticism, also be thought of as having “power” as its central concern?

Let’s move on to postfeminist criticism. When you think of Emily Dickinson, sadomasochism is probably the last thing that comes to mind, unless you’re postfeminist scholar and critic Camille Paglia . No stranger to culture wars, Paglia has often courted controversy; a 2012 New York Times article noted that “ [a]nyone who has been following the body count of the culture wars over the past decades knows Paglia.” Paglia continues to write and publish both scholarship and popular works. Her fourth essay collection, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education , was published by Pantheon in 2018.

This excerpt from her 1990 book Sexual Personae , which drew on her doctoral dissertation research, demonstrates Paglia’s creative and confrontational approach to scholarship.

Postfeminist: Excerpt from “Amherst’s Madame de Sade” in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia (1990)

Consciousness in Dickinson takes the form of a body tormented in every limb. Her sadomasochistic metaphors are Blake’s Universal Man hammering on himself, like the auctioneering Jesus. Her suffering personae make up the gorged superself of Romanticism. I argued that modern sadomasochism is a limitation of the will and that for a Romantic like the mastectomy-obsessed Kleist it represents a reduction of self. A conventional feminist critique of Emily Dickinson’s life would see her hemmed in on all sides by respectability and paternalism, impediments to her genius. But a study of Romanticism shows that post-Enlightenment poets are struggling with the absence of limits, with the gross inflation of solipsistic imagination. Hence Dickinson’s most uncontrolled encounter is with the serpent of her antisocial self, who breaks out like the Aeolian winds let out of their bag. Dickinson does wage guerrilla warfare with society. Her fractures, cripplings, impalements, and amputations are Dionysian disorderings of the stable structures of the Apollonian lawgivers. God, or the idea of God, is the “One,” without whom the “Many” of nature fly apart. Hence God’s death condemns the world to Decadent disintegration. Dickinson’s Late Romantic love of the apocalyptic parallels Decadent European taste for salon paintings of the fall of Babylon or Rome. Her Dionysian cataclysms demolish Victorian proprieties. Like Blake, she couples the miniature and grandiose, great disjunctions of scale whose yawing swings release tremendous poetic energy. The least palatable principle of the Dionysian, I have stressed, is not sex but violence, which Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Emerson exclude from their view of nature. Dickinson, like Sade, draws the reader into ascending degrees of complicity, from eroticism to rape, mutilation, and murder. With Emily Brontë, she uncovers the aggression repressed by humanism. Hence Dickinson is the creator of Sadean poems but also the creator of sadists, the readers whom she smears with her lamb’s blood. Like the Passover angel, she stains the lintels of the bourgeois home with her bloody vision. “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” she announces with a satisfaction completely overlooked by the Wordsworthian reader (389). But merely because poet and modern society are in conflict does not mean art necessarily gains by “freedom.” It is a sentimental error to think Emily Dickinson the victim of male obstructionism. Without her struggle with God and father, there would have been no poetry. There are two reasons for this. First, Romanticism’s overexpanded self requires artificial restraints. Dickinson finds these limitations in sadomasochistic nature and reproduces them in her dual style. Without such a discipline, the Romantic poet cannot take a single step, for the sterile vastness of modern freedom is like gravity-free outer space, in which one cannot walk or run. Second, women do not rise to supreme achievement unless they are under powerful internal compulsion. Dickinson was a woman of abnormal will. Her poetry profits from the enormous disparity between that will and the feminine social persona to which she fell heir at birth. But her sadism is not anger, the a posteriori response to social injustice. It is hostility, an a priori Achillean intolerance for the existence of others, the female version of Romantic solipsism. Excerpt from Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

It’s important to note that these critical approaches can be applied to works from any time period, as the title of Paglia’s book makes clear. In this sense, post-feminist scholarship is similar to deconstruction and borrows many of its methods. After reading this passage, do you feel the same way about Emily Dickinson’s poetry? How does Paglia’s postfeminist approach differ from Simone de Beauvoir’s approach to feminism?

Our final reading is from Judith Butler , who is considered both a feminist scholar and a foundational queer theorist. Their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is considered an essential queer theory text. Expanding on the ideas about gender and performativity, Bodies that Matter (2011) deconstructs the binary sex/gender distinctions that we see in the works of earlier feminist scholars such as Simone de Beauvoir.

Queer Theory: Excerpt from “Introduction,” Bodies that Matter by Judith Butler (2011)

Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? -Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs If one really thinks about the body as such, there is no possible outline of the body as such. There are thinkings of the systematicity of the body, there are value codings of the body. The body, as such, cannot be thought, and I certainly cannot approach it. -Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “In a Word,” interview with Ellen Rooney There is no nature, only the effects of nature: denaturalization or naturalization. -Jacques Derrida, Donner le Temps Is there a way to link the question of the materiality of the body to the performativity of gender? And how does the category of “sex” figure within such a relationship? Consider first that sexual difference is often invoked as an issue of material differences. Sexual difference, however, is never simply a function of material differences that are not in some way both marked and formed by discursive practices. Further, to claim that sexual differences are indissociable from discursive demarcations is not the same as claiming that discourse causes sexual difference. The category “sex” is, from the start, normative; it is what Foucault has called a “regulatory ideal.” In this sense, then, “sex” not only functions as a norm but also is part of a regulatory practice that produces the bodies it governs, that is, whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of productive power, the power to produce-demarcate, circulate, differentiate-the bodies it controls. Thus, “sex” is a regulatory ideal whose materialization is compelled, and this materialization takes place (or fails to take place) through certain highly regulated practices. In other words, “sex” is an ideal construct that is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize “sex” and achieve this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms. That this reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is never quite complete, that bodies never quite comply with the norms by which their materialization is impelled. Indeed, it is the instabilities, the possibilities for rematerialization, opened up by this process that mark one domain in which the force of the regulatory law can be turned against itself to spawn rearticulations that call into question the hegemonic force of that very regulatory law. But how, then, does the notion of gender performativity relate to this conception of materialization? In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act” but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names. What will, I hope, become clear in what follows is that the regulatory norms of “sex” work in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative. In this sense, what constitutes the fixity of the body, its contours, its movements, will be fully material, but materiality will be rethought as the effect of power, as power’s most productive effect. And there will be no way to understand “gender” as a cultural construct which is imposed upon the surface of matter, understood either as “the body” or its given sex. Rather, once “sex” itself is understood in its normativity, the materiality of the body will not be thinkable apart from the materializatiqn of that regulatory norm. “Sex” is, thus, not simply what one has, or a static description of what one is: it will be one of the norms by which the “one” becomes viable at all, that which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility. At stake in such a reformulation of the materiality of bodies will be the following: (1) the recasting of the matter of bodies as the effect of a dynamic of power, such that the matter of bodies will be indissociable from the regulatory norms that govern their materialization and the signification of those material effects; (2) the understanding of performativity not as the act by which a subject brings into being what she/he names, but, rather, as that reiterative power of dis.course to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains; (3) the construal of “sex” no longer as a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but as a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies; (4) a rethinking of the process by which a bodily norm is assumed, appropriated, taken on as not, strictly speaking, undergone by a subject, but rather that the subject, the speaking “I,” is formed by virtue of having gone through such a process of assuming a sex; and (5) a linking of this process of “assuming” a sex with the question of identification, and with the discursive means by which the heterosexual imperative enables certain sexed identifications and forecloses and/ or disavows other identifications. This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet “subjects” but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject. The abject designates here precisely those “unlivable” and “uninhabitable” zones of so cial life, which are nevertheless densely populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject, but whose living under the sign of the “unlivable” is required to circumscribe the domain of the subject. This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the defining limit of the subject’s domain; it will constitute that site of dreadful identification against which-and by virtue of which-the domain of the subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy and to life. In this sense, then, the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, “inside” the subject as its own founding repudiation. The forming of a subject requires an identification with the normative phantasm of”sex,” and this identification takes place through a repudiation that produces a domain of abjection, a repudiation without which the subject cannot emerge. This is a repudiation that creates the valence of “abjection” and its status for the subject as a threatening spectre. Further, the materialization of a given sex will centrally concern the regulation of identificatory practices such that the identification with the abjection of sex will be persistently disavowed. And yet, this disavowed abjection will threaten to expose the self-grounding presumptions of the sexed subject, grounded as that subject is in repudiation whose consequences it cannot fully control. The task will be to consider this threat and disruption not as a permanent contestation of social norms condemned to the pathos of perpetual failure, but rather as a critical resource in the struggle to rearticulate the very terms of symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility. Lastly, the mobilization of the categories of sex within political discourse will be haunted in some ways by the very instabilities that the categories effectively produce and foreclose. Although the political discourses that mobilize identity categories tend to cultivate identifications in the service of a political goal, it may be that the persistence of disidentification is equally crucial to the rearticulation of democratic contestation. Indeed, it may be precisely through practices which underscore disidentification with those regulatory norms by which sexual difference is materialized that both feminists and queer politics are mobilized. Such collective disidentifications can facilitate a reconceptualization of which bodies matter, and which bodies are yet to emerge as critical matters of concern. Excerpt from Bodies that Matter by Judith Butler is licensed All Rights Reserved and is used here under Fair Use exception.

You can see in Butler’s work how deconstruction plays a role in queer theory approaches to texts. What do you think of her approach to sexuality and gender? Which bodies matter? Why is this question important for literary scholars, and how can we use literary texts to answer the question?

In our next section, we’ll look at some ways that these theories can be used to analyze literary texts.

Using Feminist, Postfeminist, and Queer Theory as a Critical Approach

As you can see from the introduction and the examples of scholarship that we read, there’s some overlap in the concepts of these three critical approaches. One of the first choices you have to make when working with a text is deciding which theory to use. Below I’ve outlined some ideas that you might explore.

Character Analysis: Examine the portrayal of characters, paying attention to how gender roles and stereotypes shape their identities. Consider the agency, autonomy, and representation of both male and female characters, and analyze how their interactions contribute to or challenge traditional gender norms.
Theme Exploration: Investigate themes related to gender, power dynamics, and patriarchy within the text. Explore how the narrative addresses issues such as sexism, women’s rights, and the construction of femininity and masculinity. Consider how the themes may reflect or critique societal attitudes towards gender.
Language and Symbolism: Analyze the language used in the text, including the representation of gender through linguistic choices. Examine symbols and metaphors related to gender and sexuality. Identify instances of language that may reinforce or subvert traditional gender roles, and explore how these linguistic elements contribute to the overall meaning of the work.
Authorial Intent and Context: Investigate the author’s background, motivations, and societal context. Consider how the author’s personal experiences and the cultural milieu may have influenced their portrayal of gender. Analyze the author’s stance on feminist issues and whether the text aligns with or challenges feminist principles.
Intersectionality: Take an intersectional approach by considering how factors such as race, class, sexuality, and other identity markers intersect with gender in the text. Explore how different forms of oppression and privilege intersect, shaping the experiences of characters and influencing the overall thematic landscape of the literary work.

Postfeminist

Interrogating Postfeminist Tropes: Examine the text for elements that align with or challenge postfeminist tropes, such as the notion of individual empowerment, choice feminism, or the idea that traditional gender roles are no longer relevant. Analyze how the narrative engages with or subverts these postfeminist ideals.
Exploring Ambiguities and Contradictions: Investigate contradictions and ambiguities within the text regarding gender and sexuality. Postfeminist criticism often acknowledges the complexities of contemporary gender dynamics, so analyze instances where the text may present conflicting perspectives on issues like agency, equality, and empowerment.
Media and Pop Culture Influences: Consider the influence of media and popular culture on the text. Postfeminist criticism often examines how cultural narratives and media representations of gender impact literature. Analyze how the text responds to or reflects contemporary media portrayals of gender roles and expectations.
Global and Cultural Perspectives: Take a global and cultural perspective by exploring how the text addresses postfeminist ideas in different cultural contexts. Analyze how the narrative engages with issues of globalization, intersectionality, and diverse cultural perspectives on gender and feminism.
Temporal Considerations: Examine how the temporal setting of the text influences its engagement with postfeminist ideas. Consider whether the narrative reflects a specific historical moment or if it transcends temporal boundaries. Analyze how societal shifts over time may be reflected in the text’s treatment of gender issues.
Deconstructing Norms and Binaries: Utilize Queer Theory to deconstruct traditional norms and binaries related to gender and sexuality within the text. Explore how the narrative challenges or reinforces heteronormative assumptions, and analyze characters or relationships that subvert or resist conventional categories.
Examining Queer Identities: Focus on the exploration and representation of queer identities within the text. Consider how characters navigate and express their sexualities and gender identities. Analyze the nuances of queer experiences and the ways in which the text contributes to a more expansive understanding of LGBTQ+ identities.
Language and Subversion: Analyze the language used in the text with a Queer Theory lens. Examine linguistic choices that challenge or reinforce societal norms related to gender and sexuality. Explore how the text employs language to subvert or resist heteronormative structures.
Queer Time and Space: Consider how the concept of queer time and space is represented in the text. Queer Theory often explores non-linear or non-normative temporalities and spatialities. Analyze how the narrative disrupts conventional timelines or spatial arrangements to create alternative queer realities.
Intersectionality within Queer Narratives: Take an intersectional approach within the framework of Queer Theory. Analyze how factors such as race, class, and ethnicity intersect with queer identities in the text. Explore the intersections of different marginalized identities to understand the complexities of lived experiences.

Applying Gender Criticisms to Literary Texts

As with our other critical approaches, we will start with a close reading of the poem below (we’ll do this together in class or as part of the recorded lecture for this chapter). In your close reading, you’ll focus on gender, stereotypes, the patriarchy, heteronormative writing, etc. With feminist, postfeminist, and queer theory criticism, you might look to outside sources, especially if you are considering the author’s gender identity or sexuality, or you might bring your own knowledge and lived experience to the text.

The poem below was written by Mary Robinson, an early Romantic English poet. Though her works were quite popular when she was alive, you may not have heard of her. However, you’re probably familiar with her male contemporaries William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Keep in mind that reading this poem is thus itself a feminist act. When we choose to include historical voices of woman that were previously excluded, we are doing feminist criticism.

“January, 1795”

BY MARY ROBINSON

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses; Theatres, and meeting-houses; Balls, where simp’ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing; Placemen mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal.

Authors who can’t earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking; Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.

Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o’er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring.

Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken.

Some in luxury delighting; More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid.

Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff’rent roads.

Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen’rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit, Taking place of vet’ran merit.

Honest men who can’t get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded; Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

“January, 1795” by Mary Robinson is in the Public Domain.

Questions (Feminist and Postfeminist Criticism)

What evidence of gender stereotypes can you find in the text?
What evidence of patriarchy and power structure do you see? How is this evidence supported by historical context? Consider, for example, the 1794 contemporary poem “London” by William Blake. These two poems have similar themes. How does the male poet Blake’s treatment of this theme compare with the female poet Mary Robinson’s work? How have these two works and authors differed in their critical reception?
Who is the likely contemporary audience for Mary Robinson’s poetry? Who is the audience today? What about the audience during the 1940s and 50s, when New Criticism was popular? How would these three audiences view feminism, patriarchy, and gender roles differently?
Do a search for Mary Robinson’s work in JSTOR. Then do a search for William Blake. How do the two authors compare in terms of scholarship produced on their work? Do you see anything significant about the dates of the scholarship? The authors? The critical lenses that are applied?
Do you see any contradictions and ambiguities within the text regarding gender and sexuality? What about evidence for subversion of traditional gender roles?

Example of a feminist thesis statement: While William Blake’s “London” and Mary Robinson’s “January, 1795” share similar themes with similar levels of artistry, Robinson’s work and critical reception demonstrates the effects of 18th-century patriarchal power structures that kept even the most brilliant women in their place.

Example of a postfeminist thesis statement: Mary Robinson’s “January, 1975” slyly subverts gender norms and expectations with a brilliance that transcends the confines of traditional eighteenth century gender roles.

To practice queer theory, let’s turn to a more contemporary text. “The Eyepatch” by transgender author and scholar Cassandra Arc follows a gender-neutral protagonist as they navigate an ambiguous space. This short story questions who sees and who is seen in heteronormative spaces, as well as exploring what it means to see yourself as queer.

“The Eyepatch”

The lightning didn’t kill me, though it should’ve. The bolt pierced my eyes, gifted curse from Zeus or Typhon or God. I remember waking up in that hospital, everything was black. I felt bandages, pain, fire. I tried to sit up, but a hand gently pushed me back into the bed. I heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of scrubs rubbing against each other. I smelled the pungent disinfectant in the air. I heard the slow methodical beep of a heart rate monitor. That incessant blip-blip-blip was my heart rate. I heard the thunder of my heart beating to the same methodical rhythm. A metronome to a wordless melody of ignorance, an elegy to blindness.

I wasn’t awake long. They put me back to sleep. To salvage my face. My burned face, my charred face. I should’ve died. The next time I woke the bandages were gone. I could see the doctors, but I couldn’t see me. They wouldn’t let me see me, told me they would fix my face, make it look good again. I didn’t trust them. The doctors thought their faces were pretty. They weren’t. I asked to see my face. They wouldn’t let me. I’m lucky to be alive, that’s what they said. I’m lucky I can see.

But some things I can’t see. They left the eyepatch on my left eye. Told me the left eye would never work again. My right eye can’t see everything. It sees the doctors, their heads swathed in sterile caps, their wrinkled noses, their empty eyes. It sees the nurses, their exhaustion, their bitterness. It sees the bleak beige walls and the tiny tinny television hanging in the corner by the laminated wood door. It sees the plastic bag of fluid hanging from the metal rack on wheels, the plastic instruments and the fluorescent light panel above my head. But it can’t see my mom, it can’t see my sister. It can’t see myself. They never believe me.

My mom comes to visit me on the third day I’m awake. I hear her enter, smell her usual perfume, lilac with a hint of dirt and rain. I feel her hand hold mine, warmth and comfort and kindness. My right eye can’t see her. She came from the garden to see me, to make sure I’m okay. My right eye can’t see my mom. The doctors don’t believe me. My mom believes me.

The doctors pull her away from me. They say they need to fix my face. She can see me tomorrow. I smell the anesthesia and hear the spurt of the needle as they test to make sure no air bubbles formed in the syringe. I hear my mom crying. She assures me she’ll come back tomorrow. I can’t see her tears. They put me back to sleep.

In my dreams I can see them, my mother and sister. There is no eyepatch on my left eye; it can see them, and it can see me, reflected in the water. We swim across the pond to the island with the tree in the center. The reeds grow tall along the banks. The water smells of fish shit and moss. the reflection is murky except for the shallow blue eyes.

The reflection is broken by a ripple. My sister swims to me, wraps her arms around me, then splashes water directly into my face. Some droplets stick to my forehead and nose, like beads of cold sweat. She giggles, a grin emerges on her freckled face. Her wet blonde hair has strands of moss hanging from it. I smile back and with a quick flick of my wrist she too is drenched. I feel peace from the water. My mother calls us to shore. Storm clouds, she says. The lightning might kill you. That’s what she said then. I didn’t believe her. Thunder echoes like the heartbeat of the sky.

The doctors wake me up. They have thunder too. I cannot see them, can’t see anything. Bandages surround my face. My face is fixed. That’s what they claim. I didn’t see anything wrong before. They wouldn’t let me see me. It’s a miracle. I’m lucky to be alive. I don’t believe them. They apologize for not being able to fix my eye.

My sister comes with my mom today. I can’t see her. She believes me, reminds me about the lightning. It could’ve killed me. When she learns I can’t see her, she cackles. She says she’ll have fun when I come home. She asks when I’ll come home.

I don’t know when I’ll come home. The doctors don’t know. I should’ve died. They want to keep me. My mother wants to take me. They shout at each other. My sister holds my left hand. I can’t see her hand, or mine.

The doctors remove the bandages. They show me a mirror. I see behind me, but I don’t see me . I see the eyepatch float. When I try to remove it the doctors stop me. My eye is too damaged. They tell me to never remove the eyepatch. They hold up a vase. My mom brought me flowers. I can’t see the flowers. They don’t believe me. Their voices are angry. Stop being childish, they say. I lie and say I see the flowers.

Once one of the nurses I can’t see, he brought me food from outside. I saw the bag float in the room. I heard his footsteps. He handed me the brown paper bag and told me to enjoy. He sounded old. I felt a band of metal on his left-hand ring finger when I took the bag. The smell of chicken nuggets and French fries pierced the stale aroma of bleach and disinfectant. I heard the edge of the bed creak, the cushion indented slightly. The invisible nurse told wild tales of dragons and monsters while I ate. He didn’t know when I’ll be home. He watered invisible flowers before leaving. I fell back asleep.

In my dreams I’m still swimming. The sun is blocked by clouds. Drops of rain hit my hair. Mother calls from the cabin on the shore. My sister runs out of the water, her leg kicks water into my eyes. I’m blinded for a moment. I don’t leave. I stay in the water, dropping my eyes level with the water. They both hear the thunder. I don’t hear the thunder. They both see the lightning.

All I feel is heat. I’m blind. The lightning should’ve killed me. The lightning in my eyes, lucky to be alive. My sister screams for help. Smell the ozone. Pungent and sweet. I don’t scream, I can’t scream. I’m dead. I’m alive. The lightning killed me. I can’t see my mom. I can’t see my sister. I can’t see the flowers. The lightning saved me. I can see the doctors, I can see the nurses, I can see the hospital.

The lightning killed me, that’s what they said. They brought me back with lightning, pads of metal, artificial energy. My eye is broken, the one the lightning struck. Three minutes. That’s what they told me. Three minutes of death. My face was burned. I can’t see it. They fixed it.

The doctors worried my body was broken too. The lightning still might kill me. They say I need to move, I need to walk. Lightning causes paralysis, or weakness. They bring in a special doctor. I can’t see this doctor. The other doctors leave. The invisible doctor takes me to a room for walking practice. I think I walk just fine. They hold me anyway. Crutches line the walls, pairs of metal handrails take up the center, and exercise equipment sits off to the right side. The invisible doctor lets go and I fall. My hands are too slow to catch me. My face hits one of the many black foam squares that make up the floor. I turn my head left and see the eyepatch almost fall off in the mirror on the wall. For a second, I think I see me, but I can’t see me. The invisible doctor fixes it and helps me to my feet. They tell me to be like a tree, that I’ll be okay. That I’ll be able to walk again soon. They tell me when I can walk I will go home. I place my hands on the rails. The metal is cold. The doctor yelps in shock and withdraws their hand; it was just static. My arms are weak but they hold me. My legs move slowly, but I can’t walk without the rails.

The invisible doctor takes me back after a while. They tell me I did good work. It’s a miracle I can still move. They tell me lightning takes people’s movement. The lightning should’ve killed me. That’s what they say. They tell me strength should come back to me. Lightning steals that too. Lightning can’t keep strength like it keeps movement.

My mom comes back again. She brings me the manatee, Juno. I can see Juno. Soft gray fabric, small black plastic eyes. I hold her tightly in my arms. Mom wants me home. The doctors still won’t let her take me. Juno will keep me safe, that’s what she said. She brings me homework too, and videos of teachers explaining how the world works. I can see them. I can’t see my mom.

I miss the smell of earth when my mom leaves. I want to smell her garden again. To swim in the pond and feel the moss brush against my skin. I want to feel the peace of the water and hear the crickets sing their lullaby. The invisible doctor tells me I will. They tell me I need to steal my strength from the lightning. They take me back to that room for walking. I only need one hand to guide me now. They tell me I’ll go home soon. They tell me I’m stronger than lightning. I still can’t see them.

Back in my room I learn about lightning. It’s hotter than the sun. I remember the heat I felt and wonder if that’s how it feels to touch the surface of a star. The video says that direct strikes are usually fatal. I’m lucky to be alive. I hold Juno tightly.

It takes a month to steal my strength back from the lightning. I walk without holding the rails. The invisible doctor applauds me and tells me I’m ready to go home. They call my mom. I still can’t see my mom.

I can’t see the trees with my right eye, my good eye. I know where they should be by the shaded patches of dirt in the ground. I can see the grass, the road, the dirt covered green Volvo Station wagon, Mom’s car. My sister shouts for joy and runs toward me. I fall to the ground. Her arms squeeze Juno into my chest. I can’t see my sister.

Mom drives me to the cabin. I can see the towering buildings of the city. In the reflection of the tinted glass, I see the station wagon. The eyepatch floats in the window right above Juno’s head. Mom tells me about what she’ll make for dinner. She killed one of the chickens and plucked carrots and celery from the ground. Soup gives strength. That’s what she said. She reminds me that I’m lucky to be alive.

I can’t see the reeds. Mom stops the car in front of the cabin. I can’t see the cabin, nor the rustic wood threshold. Mom helps me across it. The hand-carved wooden table is invisible, but I can see the small electric stove. I smell the soup, hear the water boil, guide my hand along the wood of the narrow hallway to help me walk. I can’t see my bedroom, nor the bed alcove carved into the wall. My mattress floats in the air as if by magic. I can see the plastic desk my mom bought me for school, and the lightbulb in the ceiling. I see wires in invisible walls.

My sister wants to play. She tugs on my arm. I set Juno into the bed alcove and feel my way back to the main room. Mom reminds me to be careful. She tells my sister to be gentle. She reminds us both that I can’t take off my eyepatch. We both take off our shoes.

My sister guides me to the shore. I enjoy the sensation of dirt beneath my feet and the occasional pain of a rock. We move slowly, some of my strength still belongs to the lightning. She runs in. I can’t see the pond. I can’t see the moss in the pond. I can’t see my sister. My sister asks about the eyepatch. She wants to know why I can’t take it off. I don’t know. She asks about my eye. The dark one. The one filled with abyss. The right eye. She asks why it’s dark. I don’t know. I put my foot in the invisible water. My sister jumps out. Something shocked her. She thinks I shocked her. She gets back in.

I stay close to the shore I can’t see. I don’t want to drown. I don’t want my eyes near the water. There are no storm clouds today. I fiddle with moss between my toes. Mom calls us in for dinner. My sister runs ahead. I try walking on my own. I trip over a tree root that I couldn’t see. I fall and hit my chin on the ground. The eyepatch slides up a bit. I quickly push it back down before it can come off. I can’t take off my eyepatch.

My mom hears the thud and comes running. She helps me to my feet, guides me back to the cabin, and sits me at the table. She brings me a bowl of soup, tells me I need to be careful. She wants me to stay alive. I sip the soup and listen to her sing while she cleans the soup pot. I can’t see my mom.

When I sleep, I dream of before. Before the lightning stole my left eye. Before it stole my strength. I dream of the pond. I dream of the old willow tree on the island. Its dark drooping branches blossoming every spring. The leaves fall on the pond. Nature’s Navy of little boats. The tree is stronger than lightning. I am the tree. I want to see the tree again.

My sister tells me she’ll guide me to the island. I refuse. I can’t see the tree, or the water. My eyes would have to be close to it. The eyepatch might come off. I spend the day holding Juno. My mom brings me a sandwich and sits with me a while. I only know she’s there from the sound of her bouncing leg. She’s nervous. She doesn’t smell of the garden yet. She won’t smell of the garden today. I want to smell of the garden, but I can’t see the garden.

In the evening I sit outside the cabin and listen to the crickets. I’m lucky to be alive. The lightning didn’t kill me. I scratch at an itch under the eyepatch. I feel a shock in my hand and pull it back. I smell the ozone on my fingertip. In my mind I’m in the water again. I remember the heat, the pain. My mom comes running when I scream. She puts Juno in my arms. I feel safe again. I am stronger than the lightning. The lightning didn’t kill me.

While I sleep I am the tree, standing tall, guarding my island. The lightning wants to take it. It strikes at the water around me, burning my Navy of leaves. Once it struck me, but the rain extinguished its flames. I grew back stronger. My Navy rebuilt. The lightning always comes back. I am always stronger.

My sister and I play in the lake. I go out deeper today. My legs can tell how deep I am. We go to the tree. The lightning couldn’t steal the ability to swim. I follow the sound of my sister’s splashing. We push through invisible reeds, I feel the plants surround me. My sister holds my hand and guides me through the canopy of branches. I feel the incomplete ships of Nature’s Navy brush against my face. She puts my hand against the tree. I guide my hand along it until I find the once charred wood where lightning burned it. The lightning should’ve killed us.

My sister and I sit under the tree for a while. I feel the bugs occasionally crawl across my hands. She rests her shoulder on mine. I’m lucky to be alive. The lightning didn’t kill us.

We walk back to the shore. I feel the water, and one of Nature’s boats brush against my foot and look down. I still can’t see the water. I can’t see myself. I can see the Navy. The floating leaves atop the tranquil pond. The tears begin to fall. My sister asks why the tears from beneath the eyepatch are white as ash. I wish I knew.

The crickets sing again that evening. Tonight, they sing the ballad of the tree. Loud and harmonic. I whisper my thanks into the wind. The crickets whistle back. They believe me.

In the morning I wake up before anyone else. I shuffle through the halls and out to the porch to listen to the morning bird song. I let my head weave side to side in tune with their melody. I dance across invisible dirt. A laugh escapes my lips. I jump into invisible water. I sail with Nature’s Navy to the tree.

My soul sits atop resilient roots. Hands find the burned wood, where the lightning almost killed it. I bring the left hand to the eyepatch, where the lightning almost killed me. The wind blows through the leaves. Splashes echo from the opposite shore, sounds of someone swimming. Thunder echoes from my stomach, I rise to return home. Gallivanting down the invisible slope back towards my invisible home.

I trip across a root near the water. The eyepatch sinks beneath the surface of the lake. I yank my head back. The eyepatch slips off. My left hand covers my eye. A shock forces me to pull it away. The eyelid flutters opened. I see the lightning. Nature’s Navy set ablaze by my gaze. My eye touches the sun again as the lightning leaves. The tree set ablaze by my gaze. The crickets echo a lament. The birds resound a harmonizing elegy. The drooping branches fall lower, as if bowing. I bow in return. The splashing water calms.

My left eye sees the water, sees the earth, sees myself. Authentic and whole. It observes my leaves of joy, fingers stretched in shallows. My left eye witnesses my roots of kindness, feet planted on solid shores. It beholds the resilience of my trunk, a beautiful body. The eyepatch floats in the water. I perceive my eyes again, the dark one and the white. my black and white tears drift across the surface of water. Someone shuffles the dirt behind me. I turn with a smile on my face.

Cassandra Arc is an autistic trans woman living in Portland, Oregon. In her writing she likes to focus on themes of healing, gender identity issues, and nature as a means of understanding authenticity. This story was originally published in the Talking River Review and is reprinted here by permission of the author (All Rights Reserved).

Who is the narrator of this story? What do we know about their gender? How do we know this? What does the lightning signify?
What does the eyepatch represent? When the narrator says, “I see behind me, but I don’t see me,” what does this mean? What ideas about social constructs are present in this narrative, and how does the story subvert those social constructs?
How do characters navigate and express their gender identities in the text? Does the story expand your understanding of the queer experience? In what ways? What do you think about the way some things can’t be seen and some things can in the story? How might this experience relate to being queer?
How are time and space treated in this story?
How does the story subvert or resist conventional categories?

Example of a queer theory thesis statement: In “The Eyepatch” by Cassandra Arc, the binary oppositions of light, darkness, sight, and blindness are used to subvert heteronormative structures, deconstructing artificially constructed binaries to capture the experience of being in the closet and the explosive nature of coming out.

Limitations of Gender Criticisms

While these approaches offer interesting and important insights into the ways that gender and sexuality exist in texts, they also have some limitations. Here are some potential drawbacks:

Essentialism: Feminist theory may sometimes be criticized for essentializing gender experiences, assuming a universal women’s experience that overlooks the diversity of women’s lives.
Neglect of Other Identities: The focus on gender in feminist theory may overshadow other intersecting identities such as race, class, and sexuality, limiting the analysis of how these factors contribute to oppression or privilege.
Overlooking Male Perspectives: In some instances, feminist theory may be perceived as neglecting the examination of male characters or perspectives, potentially reinforcing gender binaries rather than deconstructing them.
Historical and Cultural Context: Feminist theory, while valuable, may not always adequately address the historical and cultural contexts of literary works, potentially overlooking shifts in societal attitudes towards gender over time.
Oversimplification of Feminist Goals: Post-feminist criticism may be criticized for oversimplifying or prematurely declaring the achievement of feminist goals, potentially obscuring persistent gender inequalities.
Individualism and Choice Feminism: The emphasis on individual empowerment in post-feminist criticism, often associated with choice feminism, may overlook systemic issues and structural inequalities that continue to affect women’s lives.
Lack of Intersectionality: Post-feminist approaches may sometimes neglect intersectionality, overlooking the interconnectedness of gender with race, class, and other identity factors, which can limit a comprehensive understanding of oppression.
Commodification of Feminism: Critics argue that post-feminism can lead to the commodification of feminist ideals, with feminist imagery and language used for commercial purposes, potentially diluting the transformative goals of feminism.
Complexity and Jargon: Queer Theory can be complex and may use specialized language, making it challenging for some readers to engage with and understand, potentially creating barriers to entry for students and scholars.
Overemphasis on Textual Deconstruction: Critics argue that Queer Theory may sometimes prioritize textual deconstruction over concrete political action, leading to concerns about the practical impact of this theoretical approach on real-world LGBTQ+ issues.
Challenges in Application: Queer Theory’s emphasis on fluidity and resistance to fixed categories can make it challenging to apply consistently, as it may resist clear definitions and frameworks, making it more subjective in its interpretation.
Limited Representation: While Queer Theory aims to deconstruct norms, some critics argue that it may still primarily focus on certain aspects of queer experiences, potentially neglecting the diversity within the LGBTQ+ spectrum and reinforcing certain stereotypes.

Some Important Gender Scholars

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986): A French existentialist philosopher and writer, de Beauvoir is best known for her groundbreaking work “The Second Sex,” which explored the oppression of women and laid the groundwork for feminist literary theory.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): A celebrated English writer, Woolf is known for her novels such as “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Orlando.” Her works often engaged with feminist themes and issues of gender identity.
bell hooks (1952-2021): An American author, feminist, and social activist, hooks wrote extensively on issues of race, class, and gender. Her works, such as “Ain’t I a Woman” and “The Feminist Theory from Margin to Center,” are essential in feminist scholarship.
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): An American poet and essayist, Rich’s poetry and prose explored themes of feminism, identity, and social justice. Her collection of essays, “Of Woman Born,” is a notable work in feminist literary criticism.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: An Indian-American literary theorist and philosopher, Spivak is known for her work in postcolonialism and deconstruction. Her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a key text in postcolonial and feminist studies.
Susan Faludi: An American journalist and author, Faludi’s work often explores issues related to gender and feminism. Her book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” critically examines the societal responses to feminism.
Camille Paglia: An American cultural critic and author, Paglia is known for her provocative views on gender and sexuality. Her work, including “Sexual Personae,” challenges conventional feminist perspectives.
Rosalind Gill: A British cultural and media studies scholar, Gill has written extensively on gender, media, and postfeminism. Her work explores the intersection of popular culture and contemporary feminist thought.
Laura Kipnis: An American cultural critic and essayist, Kipnis has written on topics related to gender, sexuality, and contemporary culture. Her book “Against Love: A Polemic” challenges conventional ideas about love and relationships.
Judith Butler: A foundational figure in both feminist and queer theory, Judith Butler has made profound contributions to the understanding of gender and sexuality. Their work Gender Trouble has been influential in shaping queer theoretical discourse.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: An influential scholar in queer studies, Sedgwick’s works, such as Epistemology of the Closet , have contributed to the understanding of queer identities and the impact of societal norms on the construction of sexuality.
Michel Foucault: Although not exclusively a queer theorist, Foucault’s ideas on power, knowledge, and sexuality laid the groundwork for many aspects of queer theory. His works, including The History of Sexuality, are foundational in queer studies.
Teresa de Lauretis: An Italian-American scholar, de Lauretis has contributed significantly to feminist and queer theory. Her work Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities explores the complexities of sexuality and identity.
Jack Halberstam: A gender and queer studies scholar, Halberstam’s works, including Female Masculinity and In a Queer Time and Place, engage with issues of gender nonconformity and the temporalities of queer experience.
Annamarie Jagose: A New Zealand-born scholar, Jagose has written extensively on queer theory. Her book Queer Theory: An Introduction provides a comprehensive overview of key concepts within the field.
Leo Bersani: An American literary theorist, Bersani’s work often intersects with queer theory. His explorations of intimacy, desire, and the complexities of same-sex relationships have been influential in queer studies.

Share This Book

This essay offers a very basic introduction to feminist literary theory, and a compendium of Great Writers Inspire resources that can be approached from a feminist perspective. It provides suggestions for how material on the Great Writers Inspire site can be used as a starting point for exploration of or classroom discussion about feminist approaches to literature. Questions for reflection or discussion are highlighted in the text. Links in the text point to resources in the Great Writers Inspire site. The resources can also be found via the ' Feminist Approaches to Literature' start page . Further material can be found via our library and via the various authors and theme pages.

The Traditions of Feminist Criticism

According to Yale Professor Paul Fry in his lecture The Classical Feminist Tradition from 25:07, there have been several prominent schools of thought in modern feminist literary criticism:

First Wave Feminism: Men's Treatment of Women In this early stage of feminist criticism, critics consider male novelists' demeaning treatment or marginalisation of female characters. First wave feminist criticism includes books like Marry Ellman's Thinking About Women (1968) Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969), and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970). An example of first wave feminist literary analysis would be a critique of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for Petruchio's abuse of Katherina.
The 'Feminine' Phase - in the feminine phase, female writers tried to adhere to male values, writing as men, and usually did not enter into debate regarding women's place in society. Female writers often employed male pseudonyms during this period.
The 'Feminist' Phase - in the feminist phase, the central theme of works by female writers was the criticism of the role of women in society and the oppression of women.
The 'Female' Phase - during the 'female' phase, women writers were no longer trying to prove the legitimacy of a woman's perspective. Rather, it was assumed that the works of a women writer were authentic and valid. The female phase lacked the anger and combative consciousness of the feminist phase.

Do you agree with Showalter's 'phases'? How does your favourite female writer fit into these phases?

Read Jane Eyre with the madwoman thesis in mind. Are there connections between Jane's subversive thoughts and Bertha's appearances in the text? How does it change your view of the novel to consider Bertha as an alter ego for Jane, unencumbered by societal norms? Look closely at Rochester's explanation of the early symptoms of Bertha's madness. How do they differ from his licentious behaviour?

How does Jane Austen fit into French Feminism? She uses very concise language, yet speaks from a woman's perspective with confidence. Can she be placed in Showalter's phases of women's writing?

Dr. Simon Swift of the University of Leeds gives a podcast titled 'How Words, Form, and Structure Create Meaning: Women and Writing' that uses the works of Virginia Woolf and Silvia Plath to analyse the form and structural aspects of texts to ask whether or not women writers have a voice inherently different from that of men (podcast part 1 and part 2 ).

In Professor Deborah Cameron's podcast English and Gender , Cameron discusses the differences and similarities in use of the English language between men and women.

In another of Professor Paul Fry's podcasts, Queer Theory and Gender Performativity , Fry discusses sexuality, the nature of performing gender (14:53), and gendered reading (46:20).

How do more modern A-level set texts, like those of Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, or Maya Angelou, fit into any of these traditions of criticism?

Depictions of Women by Men

Students could begin approaching Great Writers Inspire by considering the range of women depicted in early English literature: from Chaucer's bawdy 'Wife of Bath' in The Canterbury Tales to Spenser's interminably pure Una in The Faerie Queene .

How might the reign of Queen Elizabeth I have dictated the way Elizabethan writers were permitted to present women? How did each male poet handle the challenge of depicting women?

By 1610 Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's The Roaring Girl presented at The Fortune a play based on the life of Mary Firth. The heroine was a man playing a woman dressed as a man. In Dr. Emma Smith's podcast on The Roaring Girl , Smith breaks down both the gender issues of the play and of the real life accusations against Mary Frith.

In Dr. Emma Smith's podcast on John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi , a frequent A-level set text, Smith discusses Webster's treatment of female autonomy. Placing Middleton or Webster's female characters against those of Shakespeare could be brought to bear on A-level Paper 4 on Drama or Paper 5 on Shakespeare and other pre-20th Century Texts.

Smith's podcast on The Comedy of Errors from 11:21 alludes to the valuation of Elizabethan comedy as a commentary on gender and sexuality, and how The Comedy of Errors at first seems to defy this tradition.

What are the differences between depictions of women written by male and female novelists?

Students can compare the works of Charlotte and Emily Brontë or Jane Austen with, for example, Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles or D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover or Women in Love .

How do Lawrence's sexually charged novels compare with what Emma Smith said about Webster's treatment of women's sexuality in The Duchess of Malfi ?

Dr. Abigail Williams' podcast on Jonathan Swift's The Lady's Dressing-Room discusses the ways in which Swift uses and complicates contemporary stereotypes about the vanity of women.

Rise of the Woman Writer

With the movement from Renaissance to Restoration theatre, the depiction of women on stage changed dramatically, in no small part because women could portray women for the first time. Dr. Abigail Williams' adapted lecture, Behn and the Restoration Theatre , discusses Behn's use and abuse of the woman on stage.

What were the feminist advantages and disadvantages to women's introduction to the stage?

The essay Who is Aphra Behn? addresses the transformation of Behn into a feminist icon by later writers, especially Bloomsbury Group member Virginia Woolf in her novella/essay A Room of One's Own .

How might Woolf's description and analysis of Behn indicate her own feminist agenda?

Behn created an obstacle for later women writers in that her scandalous life did little to undermine the perception that women writing for money were little better than whores.

In what position did that place chaste female novelists like Frances Burney or Jane Austen ?

To what extent was the perception of women and the literary vogue for female heroines impacted by Samuel Richardson's Pamela ? Students could examine a passage from Pamela and evaluate Richardson's success and failures, and look for his influence in novels with which they are more familiar, like those of Austen or the Brontë sisters.

In Dr. Catherine's Brown's podcast on Eliot's Reception History , Dr. Brown discusses feminist criticism of Eliot's novels. In the podcast Genre and Justice , she discusses Eliot's use of women as scapegoats to illustrate the injustice of the distribution of happiness in Victorian England.

Professor Sir Richard Evans' Gresham College lecture The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality can provide crucial background for any study of women in Victorian literature.

Women Writers and Class

Can women's financial and social plights be separated? How do Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë bring to bear financial concerns regarding literature depicting women in the 18th and 19th century?

How did class barriers affect the work of 18th century kitchen maid and poet Mary Leapor ?

Listen to the podcast by Yale's Professor Paul Fry titled "The Classical Feminist Tradition" . At 9:20, Fry questions whether or not any novel can be evaluated without consideration of financial and class concerns, and to what extent Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own suggests a female novelist can only create successful work if she is of independent means.

What are the different problems faced by a wealthy character like Austen's Emma , as opposed to a poor character like Brontë's Jane Eyre ?

Also see sections on the following writers:

Jane Austen
Charlotte Brontë
George Eliot
Thomas Hardy
D.H. Lawrence
Mary Leapor
Thomas Middleton
Katherine Mansfield
Olive Schreiner
William Shakespeare
John Webster
Virginina Woolf

If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: Feminist Approaches to Literature at http://writersinspire.org/content/feminist-approaches-literature by Kate O'Connor, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).

Literary Criticism

Introduction
Literary Theories
Steps to Literary Criticism
Find Resources
Cite Sources
thesis examples

SAMPLE THESIS STATEMENTS

These sample thesis statements are provided as guides, not as required forms or prescriptions.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The thesis may focus on an analysis of one of the elements of fiction, drama, poetry or nonfiction as expressed in the work: character, plot, structure, idea, theme, symbol, style, imagery, tone, etc.

In “A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty creates a fictional character in Phoenix Jackson whose determination, faith, and cunning illustrate the indomitable human spirit.

Note that the work, author, and character to be analyzed are identified in this thesis statement. The thesis relies on a strong verb (creates). It also identifies the element of fiction that the writer will explore (character) and the characteristics the writer will analyze and discuss (determination, faith, cunning).

Further Examples:

The character of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet serves as a foil to young Juliet, delights us with her warmth and earthy wit, and helps realize the tragic catastrophe.

The works of ecstatic love poets Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir use symbols such as a lover’s longing and the Tavern of Ruin to illustrate the human soul’s desire to connect with God.

The thesis may focus on illustrating how a work reflects the particular genre’s forms, the characteristics of a philosophy of literature, or the ideas of a particular school of thought.

“The Third and Final Continent” exhibits characteristics recurrent in writings by immigrants: tradition, adaptation, and identity.

Note how the thesis statement classifies the form of the work (writings by immigrants) and identifies the characteristics of that form of writing (tradition, adaptation, and identity) that the essay will discuss.

Further examples:

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame reflects characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd in its minimalist stage setting, its seemingly meaningless dialogue, and its apocalyptic or nihilist vision.

A close look at many details in “The Story of an Hour” reveals how language, institutions, and expected demeanor suppress the natural desires and aspirations of women.

The thesis may draw parallels between some element in the work and real-life situations or subject matter: historical events, the author’s life, medical diagnoses, etc.

In Willa Cather’s short story, “Paul’s Case,” Paul exhibits suicidal behavior that a caring adult might have recognized and remedied had that adult had the scientific knowledge we have today.

This thesis suggests that the essay will identify characteristics of suicide that Paul exhibits in the story. The writer will have to research medical and psychology texts to determine the typical characteristics of suicidal behavior and to illustrate how Paul’s behavior mirrors those characteristics.

Through the experience of one man, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, accurately depicts the historical record of slave life in its descriptions of the often brutal and quixotic relationship between master and slave and of the fragmentation of slave families.

In “I Stand Here Ironing,” one can draw parallels between the narrator’s situation and the author’s life experiences as a mother, writer, and feminist.

SAMPLE PATTERNS FOR THESES ON LITERARY WORKS

1. In (title of work), (author) (illustrates, shows) (aspect) (adjective).

Example: In “Barn Burning,” William Faulkner shows the characters Sardie and Abner Snopes struggling for their identity.

2. In (title of work), (author) uses (one aspect) to (define, strengthen, illustrate) the (element of work).

Example: In “Youth,” Joseph Conrad uses foreshadowing to strengthen the plot.

3. In (title of work), (author) uses (an important part of work) as a unifying device for (one element), (another element), and (another element). The number of elements can vary from one to four.

Example: In “Youth,” Joseph Conrad uses the sea as a unifying device for setting, structure and theme.

4. (Author) develops the character of (character’s name) in (literary work) through what he/she does, what he/she says, what other people say to or about him/her.

Example: Langston Hughes develops the character of Semple in “Ways and Means”…

5. In (title of work), (author) uses (literary device) to (accomplish, develop, illustrate, strengthen) (element of work).

Example: In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe uses the symbolism of the stranger, the clock, and the seventh room to develop the theme of death.

6. (Author) (shows, develops, illustrates) the theme of __________ in the (play, poem, story).

Example: Flannery O’Connor illustrates the theme of the effect of the selfishness of the grandmother upon the family in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

7. (Author) develops his character(s) in (title of work) through his/her use of language.

Example: John Updike develops his characters in “A & P” through his use of figurative language.

Perimeter College, Georgia State University, http://depts.gpc.edu/~gpcltc/handouts/communications/literarythesis.pdf

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Daisy Miller: A Contemporary Application - Feminist Theory and What it Feels like to be a Girl.

Masters Thesis
Argueta, Angelica
Clark, Irene L
Stallcup, Jacklyn E
Barresi, Dorothy M
California State University, Northridge
Laugh of the Medusa
feminist theory
Judith Butler
post structuralism
Dissertations, Academic -- CSUN -- English.
Helene Cixous
Gender Trouble
Henry James
Daisy Miller
2018-06-07T18:16:29Z
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/203626
by Angelica Argueta
California State University, Northridge. Department of English.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 19-20)

Bibliography
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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Women and literature Feminism and literature'

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Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Women and literature Feminism and literature.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

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Fish, Tamara Lynn. "Feminist traces : women and feminism in college composition and communication, 1963-1992 /." Digital version accessible at:, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Tai, Yu-Chen. "(W)holistic Feminism: Decolonial Healing in Women of Color Literature." The Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1459357822.

Bosch, Marta (Bosch Vilarrubias). "Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/392705.

Kastelein, Barbara. "Popular/post-feminism and popular literature." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1994. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36104/.

Ioannou, Maria. "Beautiful stranger : the function of the coquette in Victorian literature." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/72193.

Hare, Nicola Tracy. "The goddess, the witch and the bitch : three studies in the perception of women." Thesis, University of Port Elizabeth, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/278.

Ip, Sui-lin Stella, and 葉瑞蓮. "Novels of chivalrous women in the magazine Saturday." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1994. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B44569683.

Trainor, Kim. "Feminist poetics from écriture féminine to The pink guitar." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84683.

Chui, Siu Shan Remy. "Reading 'Third World' women's autobiography /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2000. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B22763491.

Dunn, Angela Frances. "The continental drift : Anglo-American and French theories of tradition and feminism." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63972.

Mohanram, Radhika Thiruvalam. "Narrative techniques and subversion in the novels of Edith Wharton." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185791.

Ainsworth, Diann Elizabeth Smith. ""Strangely tangled threads" American women writers negotiating naturalism, 1850-1900 /." Fort Worth, Tex. : Texas Christian University, 2007. http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-12072007-113413/unrestricted/ainsworth.pdf.

Barsby, Tina. "Olive Schreiner : women, nature, culture." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20138.

Brennan, Zoe. "Representations of older women in contemporary literature." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271040.

Schorn, Susan Elizabeth. ""The merciful construction of good women" : actresses in the marriage-plot novel /." Full text (PDF) from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3004374.

Allen-Johnstone, Claire. "Dress, feminism, and British New Woman novels." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dd38da33-efbb-463f-86fd-9fcc1c4f707e.

Rossigali, Rossana. "O lugar do sujeito feminino na revista curitibana A Sempre-Viva (1924-1925)." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UCS, 2017. https://repositorio.ucs.br/handle/11338/3433.

Fraiberg, Allison M. "Beyond indiscretion : agency, comedy, and contemporary American women's writing and performance /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9476.

Aramand, Anne. "Can women have it all?| Hesitant feminism in American women's popular writing." Thesis, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1550547.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are important to discussions of popular literature, as argued by both Jane Tompkins and Cathy N. Davidson, especially in terms of female readers and writers. I will also be exploring the bestselling works of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls which emerged during the first and second waves of feminism and how they expressed a hesitation to give women a happy ending outside domesticity within their respective historical contexts. Next, I will review the current "lean in" culture of the third wave of feminism. I will also show how both Twilight and The Hunger Games continue the pattern of female protagonists that cannot be empowered unless they are wives and mothers. Finally, I will analyze how my own creative writing has been affected by cultural debates involving women's roles. Popular women's writing that emerges in the context of major feminist moments in American history shows ambivalence towards empowering women outside the home. This ambivalence is also reflected in my own writing through poetry. By first examining the work of best-selling women writers in the last two centuries and then analyzing my own writing in concurrence with the evolution of feminist ideals, I will show that women writers display a hesitant feminism despite emerging alongside progressive cultural moments in American history.

Gabel, Joanne E. "Awakening desire and Charlotte Bronte's Heroines the feminist voice /." Instructions for remote access. Click here to access this electronic resource. Access available to Kutztown University faculty, staff, and students only, 1999. http://www.kutztown.edu/library/services/remote_access.asp.

Craddock, Jade. "Women poets, feminism and the sonnet in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries : an American narrative." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4158/.

Flaherty, Patricia. ""Poor girl!" feminism, disability and the other in Ulysses /." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10066/634.

Barlow, Jenna Elizabeth. "Womens historical fiction after feminism : discursive reconstructions of the Tudors in contemporary literature." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86303.

Omberg, Katie. "The liberation of God : women writing a new theology /." South Hadley, Mass. : [s.n.], 2008. http://ada.mtholyoke.edu/setr/websrc/pdfs/www/2008/259.pdf.

Khoury, Nicole Michelle. "Hybrid identity and Arab/American feminism in Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2862.

Keith, Anne Slay. "The Motif of the Fairy-Tale Princess in the Novels of Shelby Hearon." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1986. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500688/.

Brennan, Karen Morley. "Hysteria and the scene of feminine representation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185047.

Rahija, Robin L. "House of Women." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/43.

Huston-Findley, Shirley A. "Subverting the dramatic text : folklore, feminism, and the images of women in three canonical American plays /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p9901243.

Springer, Stephanie M. ""Taming" Feminism: Tracing Women and Culture Through Adaptation." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1363353110.

Petty, Sue. "Working-class women and contemporary British literature." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2009. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/5441.

Nicol, Rhonda M. Harris Charles B. "The spaces between feminism and postmodernism in contemporary women's fiction /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3196671.

Defrancis, Theresa M. "Women-writing-women : three American responses to the woman question /." Saarbrucken, Germany : Verlag Dr. Muller, 2005. http://0-wwwlib.umi.com.helin.uri.edu/dissertations/dlnow/3186902.

Garayta, Isabel. ""Womanhandling" the text : feminism, rewriting, and translation /." Digital version accessible at:, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Evoy, Karen. "Jane Austen : women and power." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66161.

Spriggs, Bianca L. "Women of the Apocalypse: Afrospeculative Feminist Novelists." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/56.

徐少珊 and Siu Shan Remy Chui. "Reading 'Third World' women's autobiography." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31222547.

Hassan, Saman Salah. "Women and literature : a feminist reading of Kurdish women's poetry." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/13903.

Žemaitytė, Erika. "The Image of Writing Women: the Comparative Aspect on Women’s Literature in English." Bachelor's thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2012. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2012~D_20120831_092347-18443.

Arosteguy, Katie O'Donnell. "The clothes do make the woman : the politics of fashioning femininity in contemporary American Chick lit." Pullman, Wash. : Washington State University, 2009. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Spring2009/k_arosteguy_040109.pdf.

Balic, Iva Foertsch Jacqueline. "Always painting the future utopian desire and the women's movement in selected works by United States female writers at the turn of the twentieth century /." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2009. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-11060.

Schmidt, Bonnie Ann. "Print and protest: a study of the women's suffrage movement in nineteenth-century English periodical literature /." Burnaby B.C. : Simon Fraser University, 2005. http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/2409.

Kempen, Laura Charlotte. "Words of deliverance : the (re)constitution of the disenfranchised feminine subject in selected works of West African and Latin American women writers /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6694.

Mostert, Linda Ann. "Feminist appropriations of Hans Christian Andersen's "The little mermaid" and the ways in which stereotypes of women are subverted or sustained in selected works." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1371.

Brum, Gabriela Eltz. "Sexual blinging of women : Alice Walker's african character tashi and issue of female genital cutting." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/4506.

Shaw, Debra Benita. "The feminist perspective : women writing science fiction." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.386254.

Bretag, Tracey. "Subversive mothers : contemporary women writers challenge motherhood ideology /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARM/09armb844.pdf.

Marchant, Jennifer Esther Robertson Susina Jan. "Beauty and the beast the relationships between female protagonists and animals in children's and adolescent novels written by women /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3106758.

González, María Carmen. "Toward a feminist identity : contemporary Mexican-American women novelists /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu148769438939502.

Wambi, Bruno. "La Greve des battu : la femme au pluriel /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p9964007.

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4.6: Literary Thesis Statements

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Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The Literary Thesis Statement

Literary essays are argumentative or persuasive essays. Their purpose is primarily analysis, but analysis for the purposes of showing readers your interpretation of a literary text. So the thesis statement is a one to two sentence summary of your essay's main argument, or interpretation.

Just like in other argumentative essays, the thesis statement should be a kind of opinion based on observable fact about the literary work.

Thesis Statements Should Be

This thesis takes a position. There are clearly those who could argue against this idea.
Look at the text in bold. See the strong emphasis on how form (literary devices like symbolism and character) acts as a foundation for the interpretation (perceived danger of female sexuality).
Through this specific yet concise sentence, readers can anticipate the text to be examined ( Huckleberry Finn) , the author (Mark Twain), the literary device that will be focused upon (river and shore scenes) and what these scenes will show (true expression of American ideals can be found in nature).

Thesis Statements Should NOT Be

While we know what text and author will be the focus of the essay, we know nothing about what aspect of the essay the author will be focusing upon, nor is there an argument here.
This may be well and true, but this thesis does not appear to be about a work of literature. This could be turned into a thesis statement if the writer is able to show how this is the theme of a literary work (like "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid) and root that interpretation in observable data from the story in the form of literary devices.
Yes, this is true. But it is not debatable. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who could argue with this statement. Yawn, boring.
This may very well be true. But the purpose of a literary critic is not to judge the quality of a literary work, but to make analyses and interpretations of the work based on observable structural aspects of that work.
Again, this might be true, and might make an interesting essay topic, but unless it is rooted in textual analysis, it is not within the scope of a literary analysis essay. Be careful not to conflate author and speaker! Author, speaker, and narrator are all different entities! See: intentional fallacy.

Thesis Statement Formula

One way I find helpful to explain literary thesis statements is through a "formula":

Thesis statement = Observation + Analysis + Significance

Observation: usually regarding the form or structure of the literature. This can be a pattern, like recurring literary devices. For example, "I noticed the poems of Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir all use symbols such as the lover's longing and Tavern of Ruin "
Analysis: You could also call this an opinion. This explains what you think your observations show or mean. "I think these recurring symbols all represent the human soul's desire." This is where your debatable argument appears.
Significance: this explains what the significance or relevance of the interpretation might be. Human soul's desire to do what? Why should readers care that they represent the human soul's desire? "I think these recurring symbols all show the human soul's desire to connect with God. " This is where your argument gets more specific.

Thesis statement: The works of ecstatic love poets Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir use symbols such as a lover’s longing and the Tavern of Ruin to illustrate the human soul’s desire to connect with God .

Thesis Examples

SAMPLE THESIS STATEMENTS

These sample thesis statements are provided as guides, not as required forms or prescriptions.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Literary Device Thesis Statement

In “A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty creates a fictional character in Phoenix Jackson whose determination, faith, and cunning illustrate the indomitable human spirit.

The character of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet serves as a foil to young Juliet, delights us with her warmth and earthy wit, and helps realize the tragic catastrophe.

The Genre / Theory Thesis Statement

The thesis may focus on illustrating how a work reflects the particular genre’s forms, the characteristics of a philosophy of literature, or the ideas of a particular school of thought.

“The Third and Final Continent” exhibits characteristics recurrent in writings by immigrants: tradition, adaptation, and identity.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame reflects characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd in its minimalist stage setting, its seemingly meaningless dialogue, and its apocalyptic or nihilist vision.

A close look at many details in “The Story of an Hour” reveals how language, institutions, and expected demeanor suppress the natural desires and aspirations of women.

Generative Questions

One way to come up with a riveting thesis statement is to start with a generative question. The question should be open-ended and, hopefully, prompt some kind of debate.

What is the effect of [choose a literary device that features prominently in the chosen text] in this work of literature?
How does this work of literature conform or resist its genre, and to what effect?
How does this work of literature portray the environment, and to what effect?
How does this work of literature portray race, and to what effect?
How does this work of literature portray gender, and to what effect?
What historical context is this work of literature engaging with, and how might it function as a commentary on this context?

These are just a few common of the common kinds of questions literary scholars engage with. As you write, you will want to refine your question to be even more specific. Eventually, you can turn your generative question into a statement. This then becomes your thesis statement. For example,

How do environment and race intersect in the character of Frankenstein's monster, and what can we deduce from this intersection?

Expert Examples

While nobody expects you to write professional-quality thesis statements in an undergraduate literature class, it can be helpful to examine some examples. As you view these examples, consider the structure of the thesis statement. You might also think about what questions the scholar wondered that led to this statement!

"Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as 'the other world,' the antithesis of Europe and therefore civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality" (Achebe 3).
"...I argue that the approach to time and causality in Boethius' sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy can support abolitionist objectives to dismantle modern American policing and carceral systems" (Chaganti 144).
"I seek to expand our sense of the musico-poetic compositional practices available to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, focusing on the metapoetric dimensions of Much Ado About Nothing. In so doing, I work against the tendency to isolate writing as an independent or autonomous feature the work of early modern poets and dramatists who integrated bibliographic texts with other, complementary media" (Trudell 371).

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa" Research in African Literatures 9.1 , Indiana UP, 1978. 1-15.

Chaganti, Seeta. "Boethian Abolition" PMLA 137.1 Modern Language Association, January 2022. 144-154.

"Thesis Statements in Literary Analysis Papers" Author unknown. https://resources.finalsite.net/imag...handout__1.pdf

Trudell, Scott A. "Shakespeare's Notation: Writing Sound in Much Ado about Nothing " PMLA 135.2, Modern Language Association, March 2020. 370-377.

Contributors and Attributions

Thesis Examples. Authored by: University of Arlington Texas. License: CC BY-NC

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2.1.2.4.5: Feminist Theory- An Overview

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Let’s whet our appetite for literature in a different, maybe more peculiar way. Let’s read a different text, this one from a local Wisconsin cookbook, the Amberg Centennial 1890–1990 Cookbook .American Legion Auxiliary #428, Amberg Centennial 1890–1990 Cookbook (n.p.: n.d.).The two recipes come from the section “Game.”

Duck with Wild Rice

Boil duck, onion, and celery until tender. Remove meat from bones. Set aside. Cook rice. Set aside. Melt butter and sauté onion. Stir in flour and half-and-half to make cream sauce. Add parsley and seasonings. Add cooked duck, rice, mushrooms, and almonds to cream sauce. Bake mixture in a casserole at 350 ° for 30–45 minutes. Serves 6–8.

—Mrs. Charles T. Dekuester (Doris Van Vleit)

Bessie’s Birds

Sauté salted and floured birds in small amount of butter or bacon drippings to brown well. Put rice in bottom of buttered oblong casserole dish. Place birds on top of rice. Sprinkle peppers and onion on top. Pour consommé and onion soup over casserole. Cover casserole with aluminum foil and bake at 350 ° for 45 minutes. Serves 6.

Chicken may be substituted for the birds.

—Mrs. Hugh Guy (Viola Barette)

CLASS PROCESS

Put students in groups of three or four.
Have them read the recipes carefully.
Have them interpret the recipes as they would examine a story or poem.
What “themes” can they find in the recipe text?
Generate class discussion, as you are guided by the discussion following the excerpt.

The recipes reflect a particular view of women and their role in the domestic space. In other words, the woman’s domain is in the house, her workspace the kitchen, where she will cook for her husband (and by extension the children). Notice that each recipe privileges the male name, with the woman’s maiden name—her original name and identity—put in parenthesis. Even the use of Mrs. denotes her married status, whereby Mr. does not tell us the married status of the male. We are in the realm of patriarchy , the condition that demonstrates male domination over women. The recipes are even more interesting, for the section of this cookbook is “Game,” further suggesting particular gender roles: men, the sportsmen, go hunting for this game, while the women, remaining at home, cook up that game for the family. If we interpret these recipes as we might a piece of literature, we can identify particular themes that represent feminist criticism: women are inferior to men in patriarchy; women’s space is the private place of domesticity, the man’s space is public (in this case the rugged wild); the woman’s identity is determined by her husband’s identity (she, like Eve, is dependent on her husband’s rib, so to speak).

Now let’s look at a literary use of the kitchen as a domestic space. Here is the cast of characters and opening set description for Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles (1916). The play was first performed by the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts, with Glaspell playing the role of Mrs. Hale. A year later, Glaspell turned the play into a short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” partly to reach a larger reading audience. The inspiration for the play came from a murder reported in the Des Moines Register .Articles on case: www.midnightassassin.com/sgarticles.html .

GEORGE HENDERSON (County Attorney)
HENRY PETERS (Sheriff)
LEWIS HALE, A neighboring farmer

SCENE: The kitchen is the now abandoned farmhouse of JOHN WRIGHT , a gloomy kitchen, and left without having been put in order—unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf of bread outside the bread-box, a dish-towel on the table—other signs of incompleted work. At the rear the outer door opens and the SHERIFF comes in followed by the COUNTY ATTORNEY and HALE . The SHERIFF and HALE are men in middle life, the COUNTY ATTORNEY is a young man; all are much bundled up and go at once to the stove. They are followed by the two women—the SHERIFF ’s wife first; she is a slight wiry woman, a thin nervous face. MRS HALE is larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking, but she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters. The women have come in slowly, and stand close together near the door. Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1916; Project Gutenberg, 2011), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10623/10623-h/10623-h.htm#TRIFLES .

The following excerpt is the opening of the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”:

WHEN Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away—it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving; her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too—adding, with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scarey and wanted another woman along. So she had dropped everything right where it was.Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers,” in The Best Short Stories of 1917 , ed. Edward J. O’Brien (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1918; University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center, 1996), etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin...ublic&part=all .

Have the students read Trifles .
Ask the students to make a chart on a piece of paper: label the left side “men,” the right side “women.”
Students should then fill in the chart: what symbols are associated with the men and women?

When we turn to the Trifles example, we see how a writer uses this domestic space and its implications to create a symbolic statement about gender. The men all have first and last names and are given an occupation (attorney, sheriff, or farmer); the women are only known by their husband’s names—they are not even given first names. This naming becomes important in the play, for the suspected murderer Minnie Wright is referred to as Minnie Foster by Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, suggesting that she had lost her identity by marrying her husband, who was a cold and cruel man, even preventing her from singing in the choir or having a telephone in the house (see Gretchen Panzer’s sample paper on voice in The Great Gatsby later in the chapter).

Furthermore, the setting of the play is important—all the action on stage takes place in the kitchen, a kitchen that is in disarray. The men, of course, view the messy kitchen as a fault of Minnie’s: she just isn’t a very good housewife and housekeeper, for that is her primary role according to the men. To be a housewife, in addition, means that women are only concerned with “trifles,” insignificant things. Later in the play and the short story we find out that Minnie’s canning—her preserves—have been ruined because the jars have frozen and burst. Again, the men see this as sloppy housekeeping, while the women view the preserves as Minnie’s hard work to care for her family. The idea of “preserves” or “preservation” becomes a central theme in Glaspell’s work, for Minnie must preserve her dignity as a woman, even if it means that she must murder her husband. The great irony of the play and short story is that the women discover the evidence—the strangled bird—that would be enough to convict Minnie of murder, but they withhold this evidence, thus implying that Minnie will be set free. The women create their own justice system, becoming a jury of their peers: women.

Feminism is a powerful literary theory that is dedicated to social and political change. “How to define feminism? Ah, that is the question,” a befuddled Hamlet might ask. A useful definition can be found in Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller’s Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990: A Documentary History (1992). They focus on four central points:

There is evidence that women are treated differently and unequally.
Women are not treated equally in the private and public sphere.
If these points are true, then that’s wrong and becomes a moral problem.
Thus feminism is a commitment to change.Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller, Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990 a Documentary History (Boston: Beacon, 1992).
On the blackboard or whiteboard, have the students generate examples for points 1 and 2 of the list. This should lead to a spirited discussion.

Two other definitions will be useful to you: Barbara Smith argues that “feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, disabled women, Jewish women, lesbians, old women—as well as white, economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”from A History of U.S. Feminisms by Kory Dicker (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008), p. 7. Noted feminist author bell hooks adds, “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganize society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center , 2nd ed. (London: Pluto, 2000).

Feminist literary criticism is also about this commitment to equality, to change, and it works its way by arguing that literature is a powerful cultural force that mirrors gender attitudes. Feminist literary criticism can be categorized into three stages: patriarchal criticism, gynocriticism, and feminine writing.

Patriarchal criticism examines the prejudices against women by male writers. Such criticism analyzes the way that canonical authors—mostly men—create images of women. For example, Gretchen Panzer’s sample paper in this chapter explores how F. Scott Fitzgerald silences Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby , further reinforcing the notion that this great American novel depicts women in demeaning ways.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 2003). This criticism is often focused on close textual study since it will examine how men and women are depicted in literary texts. Patriarchal criticism will be central to this chapter.

Gynocriticism is concerned with women writers, particularly in the ways that women writers have become included within the canon. In American literature, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God are classic examples;Kate Chopin, The Awakening , 2nd ed., ed. Nancy A. Walker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000); Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). these texts, now part of the canon of American literature, have only been seen as such for the past twenty-five years or so. Another interesting example is the evolution of The Norton Anthology of English Literature , which reflects the insertion of women into the canon. The edition for 1968,M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature , rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). which covers the Middle Ages, the seventeenth century, the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the Romantic period, the Victorian age, and the twentieth century, includes no women. That’s right—not one single woman! The latest (eighth) edition of this anthology,Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams, eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature , 8th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). published thirty-eight years later, includes the following women writers:

Middle Ages : Marie De France and Margery Kempe
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : Queen Elizabeth, Mary (Sydney) Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, and Margaret Cavendish
Restoration and eighteenth century : Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Frances Burney
Romantic period : Anna Letitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Victorian age : Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Christina Rossetti
Twentieth century : Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Munro, and Anne Carson

What does it mean, consequently, when there are no representations of women? Historically, if women didn’t exist in the canon, then we did not—we could not—study them. But with the rise of the field of women’s studies in the 1960s, which introduced the idea of feminist literary criticism, we now value the study of women and their accomplishments, as well as thinking about how gender is constructed and perpetuated generally. This evolution about women and literature is mirrored in the evolving contents of the Norton anthology, which also reflects the evolving canon that is more inclusive, particularly to women writers.

Feminine writing explores the notion that women may write differently than men, suggesting that there may be a “women’s writing” that is an alternative to male writing. Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own (1977)Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). traces women’s writing into three stages. The first stage is Imitation or Feminine (1840–80), where women imitated men. The classic examples of this are Charlotte and Emily Brontë (of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights fame, respectively), who took on male names—Currer Bell and Acton Bell.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre , ed. Richard J. Dunn (New York: Norton, 2001); Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights , ed. Richard J. Dunn (New York: Norton, 2003). To give another famous example, George Eliot, who wrote the Victorian classic Middlemarch , was actually Mary Ann Evans.George Eliot, Middlemarch , ed. Bert G. Hornback (New York: Norton, 2000). The second stage of women’s writing is Protest or Feminist (1880–1920), which sees women becoming much more political as writers, reacting directly to male domination in society and literature. Kate Chopin is an example of this stage, as is Virginia Woolf. Finally, the third stage, Self-Discovery or Female (1920–), becomes more radical as women turn inward toward the female, toward the body, creating works that mirror a writing particular to women.

As you can see, to narrowly define feminist literary criticism is difficult, for there are a myriad of approaches to take. Feminism is often referred to in the plural—feminisms—because there is such diversity within feminism about core terms and philosophies. A useful starting point is Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism , edited by Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl .Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl, eds., Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism , rev. ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997). You can examine the table of contents at www.amazon.com/Feminisms-Anthology -Literary-Theory-Criticism/dp/0813523893#reader_0813523893 .

A look at this table of contents will show you the complexity of feminist literary criticism and provide you with some ideas to focus your feminist paper on.

Your Process

Choose a literary work to examine: either a male or female writer.
Look through the table of contents of Feminisms and choose three chapter areas that might lead to a focus for your paper.
Write down several possible working thesis ideas for your paper.
Remember, you may decide to focus your paper on gender criticism or masculinity studies, which are defined in the Key Terms.

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v.8(3); 2022 Mar

Feminism and literary translation: A systematic review

Associated data.

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Feminist translation theory demeans the culture of the patriarchal hegemony of translation. The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the main trends in the studies on feminism and literary translation and to analyse the main ways through which feminist translation theory has been applied by various researchers in the studies of translated novels. To this end, the databases of EBSCO, ProQuest, Taylor and Francis, ETHOS, and Google Scholar have been explored, and thirty-three studies published between 2005 and 2021 have been analysed. A systematic review was used as a research methodology, and the studies were analysed using a content analysis method. The findings revealed that there are very few significant studies on feminism and translation of novels, and at least until the sharp increase in interest in research in the field emerged in 2019. Moreover, other studies have concluded that feminist translation theory has focused on examining the impact of gender consciousness and translator ideology on the translation process, exploring feminist translation strategies, and analysing the transmission of gendered language in the translated text. The findings have provided feminist and translation studies researchers with a comprehensive understanding of the current state of applied feminist translation theory in the studies addressing translated novels.

Feminism; Feminist translation studies; Translated novels; Review.

1. Introduction

The translation is not only a process of transferring linguistic codes from one language to another, but it has also become a political activity ( Li, 2020 ). After the 1990s, scholars started analysing it from the perspective of cultural theories ( Hou et al., 2020 ). In this context, the linguistic theories applied to translation are critiqued, as they “have moved from word to text as a unit, but not beyond” ( Bassnett, and Lefevere, 1990 : 4), and these theories do not take into account the text in its cultural environment. Snell Hornby (1990) introduced the term “cultural turn” to highlight the cultural aspect of translation. Translating is now regarded as a process of rewriting which involves the issues of ideology, power, and manipulation ( Lefevere, 1992 ; Levy, 2000 ). The issue of ideological impact on translations was not fully recognized in the past ( Baumgarten, 2012 ). Against this backdrop, the feminist theory came to be applied to translation.

Feminist theory aims at understanding the nature of gender inequality ( Shuo and Min, 2017 ); by analysing women's life experience and their social roles. It uses various labels to define feminist trends which indicate the social, economic, and historical contexts in which they emerged: French feminism, Enlightenment feminism, liberal feminism, black feminism and so on ( Escudero-Alías, 2021 ). It seeks to challenge methodologies, traditions, and priorities in all spheres of life and demands equal rights for women ( Flotow, 1997 ). It indicates “a world view that values women and that confronts systematic injustices based on gender” ( Chinn and Wheeler, 1985 : 74). It has emerged from feminist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The movements announced “a widespread call for a major reassessment of the concepts, theories, and method employed within and across the academic disciplines” ( Hesse-Bibe et al., 2004 : 57). These movements highlighted the significance of language in constructing womanhood and gender ( Ergu, 2013 ), and thus, in maintaining social inequalities ( Simon, 1996 ).

Feminism attempts to (re)claim language to deconstruct patriarchy. In this context, in the 1970s & 1980s, an alternative woman's language was created taht dismantled patriarch language, and made women linguistically visible. Flotow observed unconventional spellings, subverted semantic and grammatical systems, puns and neologism (as cited in Flotow, 1991 ). Translating these writings requires some resistant translation strategies which laid the ground for feminist translation studies (FTS). The focus of FTS is to include feminist ideology in translation. Feminist translators Godard, and Harwood have an ideological motivation and believed that language and translation are not neutral, “innocent” acts ( Simon, 1996 ), and are significant tools for legitimizing or subverting the status quo ( Castro, 2013 ).

The feminist translation developed in Canada in the multilingual situation having the purpose of subverting the culture of patriarchal hegemony of translation. Canadian feminist translations were seen as the “method of translating the focus on and the critique of patriarchal language by feminist writers in Quebec ( Brevet, 2019 :11). Feminist Translation Studies identifies and critiques “the tangle of concepts which relegate both women and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder” ( Simon, 1996 , p.1). It challenges the notion of fidelity present in Translation Studies. It posits that feminist translators have the right to intervene in the source text to make women visible, where fidelity is seen towards the writing project in which the writers and translators participate, and not necessarily towards the writers or readers ( Simon, 1996 ). Moreover, feminist translation focused on the translator's subjectivity and made women's voice heard in the world ( Lotbiniere-Harwood, S., 1989 ), and the main contributors in feminist translation studies were Flotow (1991) , Simon (1996) , and Godard (1984) . Castro (2009) stated that “Canadian feminist translation (…) is a school of work and thought that defends the incorporation of the feminist ideology into translation because of the need to establish new ways of expression that make it possible to free language and society from their patriarchal burden”.

Feminist translation has an interventionist approach to translation ( Flotow, 1991 ), and intends to “womanhandle” the text ( Godard, 1989 ). The practices of feminist translation involve translating women's work, feminist works, and challenging patriarchal translation of the women's texts ( Simon, 1996 ). The feminist translator uses several feminist translation strategies, such as hijacking, supplementing, prefacing, and footnoting as discussed by Flotow (1991) . In supplementing, “the ST (source text) is supplemented by its translation, matured, developed, and given an afterlife” ( Flotow, 1991 ). The Feminist translator also uses prefaces and footnotes to indicate their presence. Godard's example of prefacing of Brossard's feminist text is commonly presented as an example. Hijacking is another feminist translation strategy in which the translator makes extreme interferences in the translation process by hijacking the Source text ( Flotow, 1991 ).

The Canadian school of feminist translation is usually associated with the first wave of feminist translation ( Le Bervet, n.d ). From the 1990s onwards, the research in feminist translation has moved from the Canadian school to issues based on transnational feminist translation. It finds its alignment with the second wave of feminism in terms of ideas for example, diversity, intersectionality, and inclusivity. Castro (2009) claims that this approach is identified as the second wave of feminist translation which is different from the Canadian school which is identified as a universal paradigm. She says that though the Canadian school has contributed to the TS, there is a need to redefine the aim of feminist translation. The same idea was proposed in 1997 by Massardior- Kenney. The problem comes with the assured stable definition of woman and feminism. There is a clear necessity to acknowledge and accept how complex these terms are. She claims that there is a need to translate women's writing where gender is not explicit and it entangles with other issues. Massardier Kenney (1997) says that a redefinition of feminist translation will “contribute to an examination of the translating activity in general; by emphasizing the importance of gender categories and the mechanisms through which the “feminine” is excluded or is valued” and, to show that “translation is a crucial form of cultural production” (1997, p.66). Starting in 2000, we see that work on feminist translation studies are built on this redefinition by re-evaluating historical texts and their translations, e.g. Wolf (2005) has investigated the works of two 18 th century feminist translators (Gottshed and Huber). Moreover, she has also evaluated publishing house guidelines on non-sexist language. Castro and Ergan also have investigated Feminist Translation in minority languages ( Castro, 2013 ). New areas of research are being explored, e.g. criticism of phallocentric translation of feminist work ( Bogic, 2011 ), investigation of para-translation of feminist work ( Castro, 2009 ). Rosario (2005) posits that post-structuralist translators have shifted toward the more inclusive approach due to the evolution of feminism. The Canadian school of Feminist Translation is not suitable to deal with a plurality of identities. Now the approaches like queer, lesbian, and gay translation have emerged as tools to resist heteronormativity.

This theory of feminist translation has been used to analyse several literary genres, but this present research only takes into account those studies, which have analysed the translated novels only. Furthermore, by applying this theory, various studies have been conducted in different cultural contexts around the world. For example, in the Chinese context, Tang (2018) , by using the feminist perspective, has analysed gender issues in the Chinese translations of Chinese American women's literature. Furthermore, in the Iranian context, Mohammadi (2014) has investigated the role of gender ideology in the Persian translations of Mrs. Dalloway. In the same way, in the American context, Modrea (2005) has investigated the extent to which the translated text is reconstructed as feminist.

The above-mentioned studies indicate that feminist translation theory has been used in various cultural and historical contexts. Moreover, in these studies, various perspectives have been considered: Translation strategies used by feminist translators - Chen and Chen (2016) ; Shuo and Min (2017) ; Qiu (2019) ; Hou et al. (2020) ; Abdel and Allam (2018) ; the impact of gender ideology in the process of translation - Modrea (2005) ; Baya (2019) ; Mohammadi (2014) , and so on. The field lacks a systematic literature review of research on feminist theory applied to novel translation. There is a need of conducting a review of research falling within this paradigm as it will help the feminist theory and translation studies researchers to develop a comprehensive understanding of the current state of application of feminist translation theory in the literary genre of novels by critically evaluating the existing literature. The present study thus fills this gap by reviewing the relevant research and by highlighting the gap for future research in this paradigm. The present study has attempted to answer the following research questions:

1) What are the recent trends in the research on feminism and the translation of novels?
2) What are the ways through which feminist translation theory has been applied in the studies addressing translated novels?

A systematic review method is employed in the present study, based on research questions that govern which studies to be included for review ( Uman, 2011 ). The present study intends to investigate the trends in the research on feminism and translation of novels, and to analyse the ways through which feminist translation theory was applied in such translation. Moreover, there is a difference between literature review and systematic review. A systematic review is thoroughly well organized ( Kowalczyk and Truluck, 2013 ), and the studies are methodically selected from available studies in particular databases. On the other hand, the literature review method is less systematic.

2.1. Data collection and analysis

The research articles, conference papers and dissertations that were relevant to the research questions and aims of this research were collected from EBSCO, ProQuest, Taylor and Francis, Ethos and Google Scholar, written in English and published during 2005–2021. The present study investigated the trends and ways feminist translation theory was applied in the included studies over the last sixteen years. The selection of search terms, “feminist translation and novel”, “feminism, translation, novel”, “Feminist identities and translation novel”, was guided by research questions.

Feminist translation is “a method of translating the focus on and critique of "patriarchal language" by feminist writers” ( Flotow, 1991 ). Feminist identity in translation explains how a female image is translated in the translated texts. These terms of “feminist translations” and “feminist identity in translation” were searched along with the word “novel” to collect the studies on feminist translations or feminist identities in the translated novels. From the corpus of analysis, the researchers included only relevant research works for analysis.

The included studies were analysed by performing content analysis. It allowed researchers to compare, contrast and categorize the data ( Fraenkel and Wallen, 2000 ). The two research questions were divided into various subcategories. The first research question was based on descriptive information. On the other hand, the second research question demanded a detailed reading of the included studies. Consider the following Table 1 in this regard:

Table 1

Subcategories within research questions.

After inputting the search terms on EBSCO, ProQuest, Taylor and Francis, Ethos and Google Scholar, only those articles/theses which met the search criteria were included (i.e., those that were completely accessible, deal with feminism, and translated novels, and excluding studies that fall within the following criteria: books and chapters on feminist translation, research articles on feminist translation written in languages other than English; articles discussing feminist translation with theoretical perspectives, articles on feminist translations which are not accessible). Thus, initially the numbers of selected articles from the databases are 32 from EBSCO, 4 from Taylor and Francis, 29 from ProQuest, 298 from Google Scholar, and 14 from Ethos. After the removal of duplicated studies, the resulting studies are 333. The inclusion criteria of the studies included: a) research on translated novels from the feminist perspectives b) publications between 2005 and 2021 c) research article, thesis and conference paper. After examining the title and abstract, 293 studies were excluded as they deal with the non-literary genre. The rest of the forty studies were reviewed for eligibility. Among these studies, seven were removed as they were related to other literary genres (not novels) and with merely descriptive work. After the mentioned process, the thirty-three studies were reviewed in the present study. Figure 1 below (adapted from Liberati et al., 2009 ) is a useful tool to understand this result-filtering process:

The selection process of the studies.

This section will provide readers with an overview of the results found on the trend in the research on feminism and translation of novels, and the extracted aspects regarding the application of the feminist translation theory.

3.1. Trends in the research on feminism and translation of novels

The subcategories in research question number one are by year distribution of the studies, research methods and the languages involved in the source text and target text of the selected novels. Each of these categories will be discussed in this section.

3.1.1. By year distribution of the studies

The distribution of the selected studies on translation of novels and feminism by year is shown in Figure 2 .

Distribution of included studies by publication year.

Figure 2 illustrates the significant rise from 2019 onwards, in the number of interdisciplinary studies on feminist theory and translation of novels (see for example Mei (2019) , Qing Qiu (2019) , Li and Zhang (2019) , and Baya (2019) ). However, the number of studies remained constant in 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2017 (including two studies each year, see for example Paleczek (2010) , and in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014 (including one study each year, see for example Li (2007) .

3.1.2. Research methods used in the reviewed studies

In order to see the trends in the selected studies in our research, it is necessary to know the research methods used in these studies. Figure number three below will illustrate the research methods used in these studies.

Figure 3 highlights that seventeen studies have not explicitly mentioned the adopted research methods (see for example, Paleczek (2010) , and Chen and Zhang (2016) ); where thirteen have adopted qualitative research methods (see Modrea (2005) ; Hsing (2011) etc.) and only two studies have explicitly mentioned that they have conducted studies with the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (see Mohammadi (2014) ). Moreover, only one piece of research done by Bateni et al. (2013) has adopted the corpus-based method.

Research methods used in the reviewed studies.

3.1.3. Languages involved in the ST and TT of the novels in the selected studies

Figure 4 indicates the languages involved in the translation process from the source text to the target text of the selected novels. The language codes have been adopted from the ISO language code list. The blue portion (42.42%) covers a large portion of the figure, showing that most of the analysed translated novels were translated from English into Chinese (n = 14), see for example Hsing (2011) , Chen and Zhang (2016) , and so on. The frequencies of the languages used and examples of the works translated from one language to another are given as follows:

Languages involved in the ST and TT of the novels in the selected studies.

Chinese (zh) - English (en) = 7, (see for example Shou and Min (2017) )

English (en) - Persian (fa) = 3, (see for example Moghaddas (2013) )

Arabic (ar)- English (en) = 3, (see for example Allam (2018) )

Spanish (es) - (English (en) + French (fr)) = 1, (see Modrea (2005)

Polish (pl) - English (en) = 1, (see Paleczek (2010) )

Haitian (ht)-English (en) = 1, (see Mei (2019) )

English (en) – Urdu (ur) = 1, (see Shaheen et al. (2021) )

3.2. Application of feminist translation theory in the translation of novels

This section has dealt with the application of feminist translation theory in the studies addressing translated novels. It means to review which approaches or methods have been used by various researchers when they have used feminist translation theory in their respective studies. We have found three specific ways of applying feminist translation theory; i.e., 1) the impact of gender consciousness and ideology of the translator on the translation activity, 2) feminist translation strategies in the translated novels, and 3) transference of gendered language in the translated novels.” These are discussed in detail in the following section. Moreover, some miscellaneous findings of the research related to the literary translation of novels and feminism are also discussed.

4. Discussion

The current rising number of studies on translated novels from a feminist perspective might be linked to the rising popularity of Feminism, as a social and cultural phenomenon, all around the world, and particularly the rapid development of the interdisciplinary nature of translation studies in recent years. The intense interest in the research on this topic suggests the possibility of a fast increasing admiration in the up-coming years. The analysis of the reviewed studies in terms of languages of the translated works indicates that mostly the novels, which are translated from English (en) - Chinese (zh) (n = 14) have been analysed from the feminist perspectives. Their translations into Chinese in recent years can be attributed to the rapid rise of feminist movements in China, and with the emergence of China as one of the current global superpowers where much literature is being translated into the Chinese language. The following discussion is based on the ways the feminist translation theory has been used in the analysis of the translation of novels, and thus, this section presents the results for the RQ2. The Tables 2 and and3 3 present the main and miscellaneous findings respectively.

Table 2

The main findings of the studies applied feminist translation theory.

Table 3

The miscellaneous findings of the studies applied feminist translation theory.

4.1. Impact of the gender consciousness and ideology of the translator on the translated activity

Most of the studies conducted concerning feminism and the literary translation of novels highlight that the gender consciousness and ideological positions of translators make an impact on the translation process (see Table 2 ). Feminist consciousness is the awareness of women that they belong to the dominated group, and this condition is not natural and socially determined and thus, women need to join together to change the situation, where they can enjoy independence like men ( Lerner, 1993 ). The concept of ideology in translation is linked with a cultural turn in translation that emerged in the 1990s, and can be attributed to the works of Bassnett and Lefevere (1990) , Lefevere (1992) , and Tymoczko (2003) . Translation is not done in a vacuum, but it is a form of rewriting which is influenced by certain ideological poetics and linguistic factors ( Lefevere 1992 ).

Wang, Yu & Chen (2019) analysed the work of Shapiro who had translated one of the Chinese classic novels, Shuihu Zhuan , into English. The translation indicated how the gender consciousness had worked in the process of translation as the translator had mitigated some stereotypes against women present in the ST. This is an example of the translation of one translator, but most of the time, the selected research works are comparative (comparison of translations of male and female translators) mostly conducted in qualitative paradigms. Hsing (2011) worked on the Chinese translations of children's literature written in English by taking the writings of the number of male authors/translators and female authors/translators and had examined how gender differences of the ST and TT authors and translators respectively influenced the translation process. In this study, Hsing concluded that the female translators had intervened in the cultural references, and had produced their own identities. Conversely, male writers and translators had shaped the perspectives at the expense of women by using the language that was stronger and more aggressive, and had silenced women's voices, and thus made them invisible. The analysis depicted the arguments given by Spender (1980) : “women are forced to see their experience and to justify male power from a male perspective from language that has been fashioned and controlled by men” (164). In the same ways, Li (2020) investigated gender influence on translation in the selected Chinese translation of The Color Purple by Alice Walker by taking the two translations of male and female translators and concluded that the male translators had paid no significant attention to gender, whereas female translators had stronger feminist consciousness by better conveying the inner feelings of the females.

In addition, gender differences in the translations of female alienation in the text have also been investigated. Tang (2018) by taking English to Chinese translations of male and female translators concluded that female translators had amplified women's awakening while keeping in view the feminist thoughts, and had chosen the word similar to the source meaning, whereas, male translators had omitted the expressions in ST indicating women's awakening. It indicated two things: either they had not understood women's awakening or they had deliberately ignored feminist thoughts. Thus, it had concluded that a “male translator's attitude towards women's awakening indicates their androcentric perspective that results from their gender conditioning influenced by the Chinese patriarchal culture and lack of knowledge from feminism” (178). Jinga and Lihua (2020) analyzed the English-Chinese translation of Pride and Prejudice by a female (Li Limei) and male translator (Sun Zhili), and concluded that the female translator had indicated more feminist consciousness in the translation activity. Furthermore, there are some studies, which have simply analysed how translations of male translators differ from female translators in terms of linguistic choices. Li and Zhang (2019) selected English to Chinese translations of Persuasion by Jane Austen, and concluded that the female translator had used more exclamatory sentences, rhetorical questions, reduplicated words and phrases, footnotes and final particles than the male translator. Mostly, the studies have highlighted the differences in translation between male and female translators but there is one piece of research found which has highlighted the similarities in their translations. Moghaddas (2013) had taken English to Persian translations of novels and had investigated the influence of translator's gender in the translation accuracy to analyse whether there was a major difference between the translations of male and female translators, and found no significant difference between both of the translations regarding translation accuracy. These studies have investigated the impact of gender consciousness in translated novels.

Moreover, the impact of the translator's ideology on the translation activity has also been one of the main and significant areas of research found in the studies on feminism and literary translations of novels. For example, Shaheen et al. (2021) investigated the ideological position of the translator in the Urdu translation of Brown's The dancing girls of Lahore done by Dr. Naeem Tariq and found that the ideological position of the male translator was reflected in the grammatical and lexical choices of the translation activity, and thus, had exposed the patriarchal structure of Pakistani society. This is the analysis of one translation of the selected novel. However, most of the studies investigating the impact of gender ideology on the translation process are comparative ones, and these have found that most of the time female translators have exhibited feminist ideologies and male translators have non-feminist ideologies. For example, Mingli (2021) investigated the influence of the ideological position of the translators in the English to Chinese translation of To the Lighthouse done by one male translator (Qu Shijing) and one female translator (Ma Ainong), and concluded that Qu had presented the female character as a perfectly idealized Victorian woman, which resonated with the social hierarchical rules for Chinese women at the time. However, the female translator (Ma) had translated under a feminist socio-political perspective when the women's liberation movement was on the rise in China, and thus, had expressed the feminist faith and concepts implicitly between lines. Furthermore, Modrea (2005) analysed the Spanish to English and the Spanish to French translations of Tres Tristes Tigres by Guillermo Cabrera Infante by looking at how the translators' ideologies were expressed in these translations and reviewed the reflection of feminist ideology in the translations of Levine, and few modification and direct translation in Bensoussan's translation. In the same way, in the English to Persian translation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Mohammadi (2014) concluded that the male translator (Darush) had mostly used manipulative words and negative choices while the female translator (Taheri) had used positive choices.

Some studies have also found that the translator's identity as feminist influences the process of translation of the translator's sex or gender identity. For instance, Baya (2019) had taken two Arabic works: Women at Zero Point by Nawel Saadaouis and Memory of the Flesh by Ahlem Mosteghanemi with their English translations done by Hatata (male) and Raphael Cohen (male) respectively. The analysis of the first translation by Hatata had shown that there were feminist thoughts in the translation as he had adopted linguistic strategies to center the female heroine's perspective. Conversely, Raphael Cohen had emphasized the male presence by employing mostly terms that connoted masculinity.

4.1.1. Feminist translation strategies in the translated novels

Another significant area investigated is the analysis of feminist translation strategies in the selected translated novels (see Table 2 ). Mostly, the studies have compared differences between the male and female usage of these strategies, and generally, the research works are analysed qualitatively with few using quantitative research. Firstly, those studies have been analysed, which have taken only one translation of the female translator (which are not comparative ones). Shou and Min (2017) took English-Chinese translations of Washington Irving's The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow and Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and noticed that the translator Zhang Ailing had used the translation strategies of preface, supplementing and hijacking. These categories of translation strategies are attributed to Flotow (1991) where she explained in detail how feminist translators use them in the translation to show the female active presence. Feminist translators use prefaces in the process of womanhandling the text. The strategy of hijacking is linked to the linguistic manipulation performed by feminist translators used when the original text does not align with feminism. The strategy of hijacking is linked to the manipulation by feminist translators in which they use views that they do not link with feminism. These translation strategies are investigated in several studies about feminist translation. For instance, Shou and Min (2017) also analysed the usage of these feminist translation strategies in Chinese -English self-translation of Eileen Chang's The Golden Cangue and found a number of feminist translation strategies described above: prefaces, footnoting, supplementing, and hijacking. Jing – Jing (2019) also found the translation strategies of prefaces and hijacking by analysing English to Chinese translation of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea done by Ailen Chang. In the same way, Chen and Chen (2016) found the translation strategies of supplementing, prefaces and hijacking. Furthermore, most of the studies presented that the comparative usage of feminist translation strategies by the male and female translators has been investigated. Hou, Sun and Li (2020) analysed English to Chinese translations of Emma by Jane Austen done by one male translator (Sun Zhili) and one female translator (Zhu Qingying), and found that the female translator has used more feminist translation strategies than the male translator. In the same way, Qing Qiu (2019) analysed the Chinese translations of the male translator (Qu Shiji) and female translator (Ma Ainong) of the English novel Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse , and concluded that the female translator was more sensitive than the male translator in perceiving the various behaviours and psychology of the translated characters, and had used more the feminist translation strategies of hijacking and supplementing.

The above mentioned studies have employed qualitative approach. There are few studies which have also analysed the feminist translation strategies quantitatively. Allam (2018) in the Arabic to English translation of Reem Bassiouney's Professor Hanna done by Liala Helmy investigated the presence of feminist translational attitude, and concluded that the translation was woman-handled to emphasise female characters by using the feminist translation strategies: 7.2% (prefacing, footnoting), 75.3% (supplementing), 17.5% (hijacking). Additionally, one corpus based study had also been done by Bateni et al. (2013) who prepared the corpus of Persian translations of the novels ( Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Dalloway, Wuthering Heights, Unaccustomed Earth, A thousand Splendid suns and Tess of the d'Urbervilles ) done by both male and female translators. They found that the female translators in this sample had used more of the feminist translation strategies of footnotes and hijacking than the male translators. Moreover, there are some studies that have reviewed the transference of gendered language in the translated text, which will be discussed in the next section (see Table 2 ).

4.2. Transference of gendered language in the translated novels

Palezek (2010) analysed the Polish-English translation of Tokarczuk's Dom dzienny domnocny performed by Antonia Lloyd and criticized the English translation for omitting most of the Tokarczuk play with gendered language and her challenges to the patriarchal structure in the original Polish. Palezek concluded that, although English lacked grammatical gender, it did not lack the corresponding patriarchal constructions. Thus, she acknowledged that it was difficult to transfer gender-specific linguistic concepts from ST to TT, but it was not impossible. Similarly, Miletch (2012) selected Spanish to English translation (done by the researcher himself) of a Venezuelan novel by Isaac Chocrón entitled in Spanish Pronombres Personales . The discussion of his analysis revolved around his own translation interventions as to differences in grammatical gender between the two languages. He stated that the novel had various challenges for the translator from the perspective of gender marking, and that this usually went unnoticed when translated from the traditional point of view. He admitted that he had intervened “as a translator in order to show issues regarding gender in the text” (1). The existence of texts that contained words that could be masculine or feminine in Spanish gave a challenge when transferring the Spanish text into English, a language that does not use grammatical gender, and with different gendered connotations than English. He added, “I did not translate the pronouns as they are usually translated but intervened to mark the particular gender of the pronouns (otherwise unnoticeable in many of the English pronouns such as nosotros, nosotras in Spanish, both -“we”- in English; ellos, ella in Spanish, both -“they”- in English) and to emphasize the gender issues present in the text that I feel combine the grammatical with the human. These are my most noticeable interventions in the text” (72).

The above discussion highlights that the conducted studies are mostly comparative (comparison of the work of male and female translators), and the research scholars have mostly analysed those translations of the novels which already read as feminist ( The Joy Luck, Pride and prejudice, Unaccustomed Earth etc.) with a few non-feminist or actively misogynistic novels ( Shuihu Zhuan, The Old Man and the Sea ). They have highlighted that the gender consciousness and the ideological perspective of the translator leave an impact on the translation process, and that mostly the feminist translators have used those feminist translation strategies identified by Flotow (1991) and named above. Moreover, the issue of the transference of grammatical gender in TT is also seriously considered by feminist translators. Apart from these studies, there are also miscellaneous findings from the selected studies, which also highlight the ways feminist translation theory has been used in the analysis of translated novels (see Table 3 ).

The above-mentioned studies also mention that feminist translation theory has also been applied in the film adaptations, representations of the female body in TT/s, comparison between oriental feminism and western mainstream liberal feminism, among other findings. These are, however, beyond the scope of this piece of research.

5. Conclusion

In summary, this study presented a preliminary systematic review of the intersectionality between feminism and the translation of novels. This is significant research for those who work within the paradigm of feminist translation and it serves as an introduction to understanding the research perspectives on feminism and translation of novels applied and investigated. Moreover, it provides an understanding of the research contexts (languages, novels, investigated aspects) from the selected studies, and provides a solid rationale for further research on the matter. Based on the findings from the reviewed studies, the following needs for future research have emerged:

1. Need to use corpus-based tools: Currently, there are very few corpus-based research in this field. For instance, Bateni et al. (2013) have conducted a corpus-based study of the translated novels. This approach is common today for the systematic review of existing linguistics research. Thus, there is a need of conducting research using corpus analysis tools as they may uncover systematic linguistics patterns in the translated novels.
2. Need to explore the translated works in other languages : Most of the studies which analysed translated works involve English- Chinese translations and vice versa. There is a need to explore the translated works from other language families in different world regions from the perspective of feminist translation studies. Thus, the broader picture, regarding the issues under investigation (for instance, issues of translation from/into linguistic gendered language) can be brought to light in a variety of linguistic and cultural contexts.
3. Need for conducting a comparison of Eastern/Western perspectives in translations: Mostly, the research has been done with the comparison of male and female translations. There is a need to make a comparison of the feminist translations of western and eastern translators. Therefore, the difference in translation because of different cultural/perspectival positions should also be analysed. For instance, if the same work is done by the feminist translators belonging to Eastern and Western cultures, different perspectival positions may reflect on the same issue in their translated text.

Declarations

Author contribution statement.

Musarat Yasmin: Conceived and designed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data.

Isra Irshad: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Wrote the paper.

Funding statement

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Data availability statement

Declaration of interests statement.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

No additional information is available for this paper.

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heroine Elizabeth to study Austen's special perspective on feminism in the patriarchal society. In conclusion, this thesis examines the nature of Jane Austen's pioneering literary feminism, and both the positive and negative characterizations of Elizabeth in the text reveal the writer's feminist value in the Victorian England.
PDF Literary Analysis Thesis Statements
LITERARY ANALYSIS THESIS STATEMENTS A thesis in a literary analysis or literary research paper can take many forms. ... The thesis statement is the announcement of your analytical argument that you intend to make and prove in the duration of your paper. It is a road map for the paper—it tells the ... writer, and feminist. Author: Sophia Botello
4.6: Literary Thesis Statements
One way I find helpful to explain literary thesis statements is through a "formula": Thesis statement = Observation + Analysis + Significance. Observation: usually regarding the form or structure of the literature. This can be a pattern, like recurring literary devices. For example, "I noticed the poems of Rumi, Hafiz, and Kabir all use symbols ...
Why is "The Story of an Hour" considered feminist literature
Therefore, a good thesis statement for an essay that considers the interpretive question about why Kate Chopin's story is considered feminist literature will address the idea that Mrs. Mallard is ...
2.1.2.4.5: Feminist Theory- An Overview
Feminism is a powerful literary theory that is dedicated to social and political change. "How to define feminism? Ah, that is the question," a befuddled Hamlet might ask. A useful definition can be found in Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller's Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990: A Documentary History ...
What is a suitable thesis statement on feminism?
Get an answer for 'What is a suitable thesis statement on feminism?' and find homework help for other Literature questions at eNotes. ... Literature. Latest answer posted March 13, 2020 at 6:44:13 ...
PDF An Analysis of The Main Character Through Feminism Approach in The
A thesis entitled "An Analysis of the Main Character through Feminism Approach in the Novel Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani" has been defended before the Letters and Humanities Faculty's Examination Committee on February, 9 2010 the thesis has already been accepted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of strata 1.
Feminism and literary translation: A systematic review
Feminist translation theory demeans the culture of the patriarchal hegemony of translation. The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the main trends in the studies on feminism and literary translation and to analyse the main ways through which feminist translation theory has been applied by various researchers in the studies of translated novels.