Feminist Criticism in The Wilderness by Elaine Showalter summary

 

Elaine Showalter’s Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness is a significant work in the field of literary criticism. In fact women are surviving and struggling to make their identity in the society. The writing of the women reflect their own experience and position in the society where they exist as an individual and as a female as well. Showalter’s essay is a specimen to her struggles to find a concept that can suggest the feminine to escape from its stereotypical associations with inferiority. Showalter has focused on the concept of Gynocriticism to prove her opinion.

 

Feminist critical theory and practice is the product of the Feminist Movement that took place during the 1960s and 1970s. It is a critique of the patriarchal mode of thinking and its political approach towards literature and literary criticism. The patriarchal mode of thinking subordinates women to men in familial, religious, political, economic, social, legal and artistic domains. This patriarchal ideology teaches women to internalize these concepts in the process of their socialization. Among those eminent feminist critics  Elaine Showalter is an influential American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics. Gynocriticism concerned with the specificity of women’s experience and women’s writing.

 

The essay primarily highlights the need for feminist theories to work out a framework they can share. She shows that by stating "An early obstacle to constructing a theoretical framework for feminist criticism was the unwillingness of many women to limit or bound an expressive and dynamic enterprise" To Showalter, the real obstacle of not forming theoretical framework for feminist criticism was because many women are unwilling to establish that and they limited themselves to the expressive and dynamic style.

 

She argues that woman must work both inside and outside the male tradition simultaneously. Showalter says the most constrictive approach to future feminist theory and criticism lies in the focus on nurturing a new feminine cultural perspective within a feminist tradition that at the same time exist within the male tradition, but no which it is not dependent and to which it is not answerable. Showalter continues to argue that there are essentially two kinds of feminist theories. The first concerns itself with the women as a reader and may be called feminist critic. The second concerns itself with the women as a writer and may be called Gynocritics. It deals with the women as the producer of the textural meaning. Showalter suggests gynocritics theories which are centered on the experience of women as writers.

 

Gynocriticism is a term coined in the seventies by Elian Showalter to describe a new literary project intended to construct "a framework for the analysis of woman literature". By expanding the historical study of woman writers as a distinct literary tradition. Gynocritics sought to develop new models based on the study of flame experience to the replace male of literary criticisms. gynocriticim was designed as a "second phase" in feminist criticism. Turning to force on, and interrogation of female authorship, images, the feminine experience and ideology and the history development of the female literary tradition.

 

Gynocriticism also examines the female struggle for identity and the social construct of gender. According to Elian Showalter, genocritics is the study on not only the female as a gender status but also the internalized consciousness of the female.  Comprising recognition of a distinct female canon where a female identity is sought free from the masculine definition and opposition.

 

Gynocriticism accordingly challenged the Freudian psychoanalytic perspective whereby the female inherently suffers envy of men and feeling of an adequacy and injustice, combined of feeling of intellectual inferiority.  Gynocriticism stressed that this prejudice has concealed the female literary tradition to the point of imitating the masculine.

 

She continues to show that the critics seem to be still wandering in the wilderness since there is still disinterestedness of the theory of criticism. Moreover, the situation of criticism is still bound exclusively to the masculine domain. She states that clearly by saying:

“But if, in the 1980s, feminist literary critics are still wandering in the wilderness, we are in good

company; for, as Geoffrey Hartman tells us, all criticism is in the wilderness. Feminist critics may be startled to find ourselves in this band of theoretical pioneers, since in the American literary tradition the wilderness has been an exclusively masculine domain.

 

This quote shows what Showalter aims at by saying " we too must make our home", she states here that feminist criticism should not continue to be in the wilderness. They should make their own theoretical views of criticism. “Women have no wilderness in them, they are provident instead, content in the tight hot cell of their hearts, to eat dusty bread”.

 

 

She is of the view that the feminist critic’s assignment of interpretation of works has to be satisfied with Pluralism. This aspect of her essay concludes with the message to the readers that, feminist criticism is supposed to possess its own subject, lay the foundation of its own system and the most is its own voice. She goes on to show feminist criticism lacks "theoretical basis". She states that till the time there has not been any theoretical manifesto for feminist criticism. She states that clearly as: “Until very recently, feminist criticism has not had a theoretical basis; it has been an empirical orphan in the theoretical storm. In 1975, I was persuaded that no theoretical manifesto could adequately account for varied methodologies and ideologies which called themselves feminist reading or writing.”

 

Showalter, then, moves further to show real examples of feminist critics by commenting on Virginia Woolf who, to Showalter, devoted herself to expressive style. She shows that Virginia Woolf in her essay represented her life experience, and how she didn't allow to the library. Her writing style is" reflexive". By showing this example Showalter asks the other female writers to change the style of writing. To make ourselves as equal to the masculine domain. What Showalter condemns in Virginia Woolf's essay is the reflexive personal writing and presentation of her own

personal experiences rather than bringing up new critical views to improve feminist criticism. Hence, Woolf has made such presentation of the essay in personal reflection, Showalter considered this not to be a real contribution to the development of feminist criticism. To Showalter feminist criticism does not need any personal reflections rather it needs to a set of rules and views to structure a way of judgment to feminist discourse.

 

As far as Showalter is concerned,  feminist criticism has become an act of resistance to theory since the women feminist critics themselves have cared on the reflexive style and the dynamicity of asserting self-authority. Therefore, Showlater states: “criticism was an act of resistance to theory, a confrontation with existing canons and judgments, what Josephine Donovan calls 'a mode of negation within a fundamental dialectic'. Showalter thinks that women have been too much dominated with male critical theory. Feminist critics have sought to modify it.

 

Elaine Showalter’s three phases of feminism: the “feminine” (women writers imitate men), the “feminist” (women advocated minority rights and protested), and the “female” (the focus is now on women’s texts as opposed to merely uncovering misogyny in men’s texts).

 

 

The "Feminine" Phase:

During this phase, women writers predominantly imitated the styles and themes of male authors, often conforming to traditional literary norms and expectations.

An example of this phase is the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, an 18th-century writer and philosopher. While Wollstonecraft's seminal work "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792) laid important groundwork for feminist theory, her literary style and approach were largely influenced by the male-dominated intellectual landscape of her time.

Another example is George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), a Victorian novelist known for her realist fiction. Eliot's works, such as "Middlemarch," often explored social and psychological themes traditionally associated with male authors, albeit with a keen awareness of women's experiences.

 

The "Feminist" Phase:

In this phase, women began advocating for their rights and protesting against patriarchal structures, both within literature and society at large.

An example from this phase is Virginia Woolf, a key figure in the early feminist movement and a prominent writer of the early 20th century. Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" (1929) is a seminal feminist text that explores the ways in which women writers have been historically marginalized and denied access to literary spaces.

Another example is the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which produced influential texts such as Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" (1963) and Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics" (1970). These works critiqued traditional gender roles and called for social and political change.

 

The "Female" Phase:

In this phase, the focus shifts from imitating or critiquing male-authored texts to celebrating and analyzing women's writing on its own terms.

An example of this phase is the emergence of writers like Toni Morrison, whose novels such as "Beloved" (1987) and "Sula" (1973) center on the experiences of African American women and explore themes of race, gender, and identity from a distinctly female perspective.

Additionally, the rise of literary criticism focused on women's texts, such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's "The Madwoman in the Attic" (1979), exemplifies the shift towards analyzing literature through a feminist lens that prioritizes women's voices and experiences.