Gynocriticism Summary and Characteristics, Elaine Showalter as a Feminist Critic, Phases of Feminism

 

NTRODUCTION:

Gynocriticism is the study of women's writing. The term “gynocritics” was coined by American feminist and literary critic Elaine Showalter in her essay Towards a Feminist Poetics in 1979. She had deep respect and sympathy with Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf and regarded them towering & leading feminist personalities. She was specialized in Victorian literature, wrote on Pre-Victorian, Victorian, and modern female writers observing their social, cultural, religious and financial status in their own periods.

Gynocriticism refers to a form of feminist literary criticism that is concerned with women as writers. Showalter wanted “to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories”.

Female Literary Canon:

Showalter has tried to form a female literary canon by studying and bringing into the light of various women writers who have been forgotten under the dominance of western canon that predominately contains male writers.

She aims at discovering all great works by female writers and tries to understand their worth in male dominant literature.

She did much research to find out the contribution of female writers in the development of literature.

THREE PHASES:

          Showalter writes that women writing has evolved        from time to time. She puts the evolution of women’s       literature into three phases: “feminine“, “feminist“, and    “female”.

1.   FEMININE PHASE:

The “feminine” phase, from the period of 1840s to the 1880s concerns women writers like George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and many others who wrote in an era of male-dominant literature, where anything produced by women was not taken seriously.

2.   FEMINIST PHASE:

During the “feminist” phase, women’s writing has evolved into a sort of separateness from male writing. Here, feminist identity in rebellion against the patriarchal authority has been mainly projected. This phase is approximated to be around the 1880s to 1920s. It establishes women’s autonomy in writing literature. Major female authors of this phase are Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Gertrude Stein and others.

  

3.   FEMALE PHASE:

The third phase is the most important turning point of feminist literature. Here, the writers are no longer interested in rebellion or revolt. They want to establish their own identity without putting herself in comparison to men. Major female writers of this phase are Margaret Atwood, Meena Alexander, Maya Angelou and others.

MAJOR GYNOCRITICAL TEXTS:

1.   Patricia Meyer Spack The Female Imagination

2.   Ellen Moers Literary Women

3.   Elaine Showalter A Literature of Their Own

4.   Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar The Madwoman in the Attic

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