Feminist Criticism
A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a “patriarchal” society that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and women’s cultural identification as a merely negative object, or “Other,” to man as the defining and dominating “Subject.” There are several assumptions and concepts held in common by most feminist critics:
1. Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.
2. The concepts of “gender” are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs, effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization.
3. This patriarchal ideology also pervades those writings that have been considered great literature. Such works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and leave the woman reader an alien outsider or else solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting.
To apply this theory, one focuses on the relationships between the genders. Under this theory you would examine the patterns of thought, behavior, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between the sexes. For example, The Crucible can be seen as the story of the dominance men have over women both physically and psychologically; The women are not allowed to determine the course of their own lives, and their efforts to do so are almost always stymied and overruled by the men patriarchal Puritan society.
My Notes:
Daisy
Smart but powerless
Depressed by her status
Unable to make noble choices
Is money connected to gender here?
She seemed to have her own—sort of—
Before she married
Described as lovely, beautiful, an object that men desire
They throw away their dreams to possess her
Gatsby does because he can
Yet when they have her, they are
Unhappy with what they have because…
In the end men speak for her
To take control she tries to correct a wrong and
Reconnect with Gatsby—because she’s oppressed by
Tom; however it doesn’t work because she has internalized
The idea that a man is not legit unless he’s
Upper class. He status is not enough. She identifies herself
Through her husband.
Thus her fate, being whisked around, confined in a way to
Shallow relationships, to endure infidelity, to be at her husband’s
Whim is like a prison.
Jordan
Althetic jaunty cheater, can’t connect with anyone
Maintains a sense of power by keeping everyone at a distance
Is attracted to wholesome Nick, whom rejects her, or is it the other
Way around. She’s trying to compete in a man’s world, but who bails her out
When she’s caught cheating, what does she do when her best friend crumbles and
Nick dumps her, she gets engaged.
Myrtle
Literally confined
A vibrant woman with a ashen ghostly husband
Her escape is Tom, who represents money, mobility, a kind of freedom—albeit false—
That she yearns to have. She’s not satisfied with her situation in life, a man who
Is actually quite good to her. She too has internalized a role—she really wants to
Be submissive, to be the other, in this case the other woman. And
Her attempt to make herself real results in a broken nose.
Wait, it’s very Victorian in a way…it’s literature of confinement.
A Question for the female reader: Do you feel left out or that your asked to identify with the males in the novel?