Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination.

Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis: “Feminist Criticism”

The chapter opens with a definition of feminists as those “opposed to sexism—the belief that women are innately inferior to men” (70). Tyson critiques the overly simplified popular understandings of feminists and their positions on issues, clarifying why feminist arguments matter. She points to the feminist objection over the use of the “universal he (also called the generic he or the neutral he)” (71), arguing that feminists are correct in confronting this language convention because the masculine does not necessarily represent the views of people of other genders. This patriarchal view has negative implications for inclusion across domains, including in cinema, literature, and medicine.

Traditional Gender Roles

Tyson opens with a brief definition of traditional or patriarchal gender roles, or the idea that men have one inherent set of characteristics (like “rational, strong, protective,” etc.) and women have another (like “weak, nurturing, and submissive”; 72). These traditional gender roles are sexist. Feminists reject traditional biological essentialist understandings of gender and instead see gender as socially constructed, meaning that gender roles are created and perpetuated by society. Traditional gender roles are destructive for both men and women in that they obligate people to adhere to damaging gender stereotypes.

Tyson analyzes traditional fairy tales, particularly “Cinderella,” as examples of how these gender stereotypes are reproduced and place unrealistic expectations on both men and women. For instance, the model of Prince Charming implies that men have to be “unflagging superproviders without emotional needs” (75), whereas the female characters in the stories are either “good girls” who adhere to traditional feminine gender roles (e.g., Snow White) or “bad girls” who do not (e.g., the wicked queen).

Tyson notes that women experience forms of everyday sexism throughout their lives, which is damaging to their health and well-being.

Getting Beyond Patriarchy

In this section, Tyson discusses different approaches to overcoming patriarchal ideologies and how feminism pulls from other domains of critical theory to do so. She notes that this struggle is “dynamic,” involving movement forward and backward over time, rather than a single linear progression. 

While psychoanalysis and Marxism both have sexist elements, such as Freud’s theory of “penis envy,” feminists find other elements of these theories helpful in understanding sexism. For instance, Marxism can clarify female oppression under capitalism. Structuralism and deconstruction have also contributed to feminist theory.

Feminism, like other modes of critical theory, is an inherently subjective mode of interpretation. Rather than avoiding subjectivity, Tyson urges students to be aware of, and upfront about, their own subjective position and how their experiences color their interpretations. This is an example of how The Role of Personal Connections to Literature shape one’s understanding of works.

French Feminism

French feminist theory has two key branches, materialist feminism and psychoanalytic feminism. Materialist feminism studies how the patriarchy controls the material conditions used to oppress women. The foundational theorist of this branch is Simone de Beauvoir, whose landmark text The Second Sex (1949) argues that “one is not born a woman, one becomes one” (81). De Beauvoir presents a social constructivist understanding of gender, arguing against traditional gender roles like marriage and claiming that women need to understand themselves as an organized unit to confront the patriarchy. 

In the 1970s, Marxist Christine Delphy coined the term “materialist feminism” to describe how just as the lower classes are oppressed by the upper classes, women are oppressed by patriarchy within the family unit and are therefore an oppressed class regardless of socioeconomic status. She argues that the unpaid housework obligations of women across classes is an example of this oppression. Sociologist Colette Guillaumin argued that the primary form of women’s oppression is “sexage,” or the treatment of women as material objects and the appropriation of their time and labor by men.

French psychoanalytic feminism studies how women’s individual psyches are impacted by the patriarchy and the way it represses their thoughts. Hélène Cixous argued that “patriarchal binary thought” is manifest in language that shapes patterns of understanding (84). For instance, the male/female hierarchical binary opposition is mirrored in binaries like active/passive or head/heart. 

Cixous argued that a new language, écriture féminine—a fluid, antilinear mode—was needed to break down and think outside these patriarchal binaries. Examples include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and the works of Clarice Lispector. Luis Irigaray argued that in using patriarchal language, women are not actually the originators of their own thoughts, but rather are forced into a position of objectivity through the historical male gaze. To get beyond this, Irigaray argues for “womenspeak,” a form of polysemous language grounded in “female sexual pleasure.”

Contra Cixous and Irigaray, Julia Kristeva has argued that there is no essential “feminine.” Seemingly essential biological differences between women and men are in fact socially constructed through their treatment under patriarchy. It is the treatment of biological differences under patriarchy (as in the difficulty of obtaining a hysterectomy versus the ease of a vasectomy), rather than the differences themselves, that matter. 

Thus, Tyson believes that for many French feminists, unlike their Anglophone counterparts, there is no meaningful distinction between sex and gender. Kristeva argues that patriarchal language and thought patterns can be overcome through the “semiotic dimension of language” (87), or the parts of language that derive from the way we speak, like tone and gesture, rather than what is said.

Multicultural Feminism

Multicultural feminism addresses the experience of non-white, non-wealthy, and/or otherwise marginalized women. Intersectionality, termed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is the understanding of different axes of oppression/privilege across a complex nexus of racial, language, class, ability, and other personal characteristics. 

Tyson outlines some examples of these varying oppressions, such as Crenshaw’s legal argument in DeGraffenreid v General Motors (1976) that Black women at General Motors were discriminated against more than their white female or Black male counterparts. Black women in the United States find themselves in a “double bind,” without the “gender solidarity” of white women or the “racial solidarity” of Black men.

Other women of color or other marginalized groups find themselves in similar but different situations. Chicana theorist Aída Hurtado argues that patriarchy is “culturally specific.” Tyson notes some of these cultural specificities faced by transwomen, Asian American women, Indigenous women, etc.

A multicultural feminist approach requires “the questioning of privilege” across multiple domains through self-reflexivity (93).

Gender Studies and Feminism

Advances in gender studies that call into question gender essentialism have changed feminist theory in the following ways.

Alternatives to the Current Way We Conceptualize Gender

New findings call into question gendered understandings. For instance, it was long widely believed that male aggression was caused by testosterone, but recent findings by Robert M. Sapolsky suggest that aggression is caused by social and environmental factors; the aggression subsequently increases testosterone levels, rather than the other way around. Further, there is no scientific basis for the notion of the “maternal instinct” to care for children.

Next, Tyson reviews international and/or Indigenous examples of gender that transcend the gender binary, such as how some Indigenous gender roles were defined by interest and ability rather than “biological sex.”

The Relationship Between Sex and Gender

Heterosexuality, or male-female attraction, underpins traditional gender roles, and the enforcement of those roles is driven by antigay bias, e.g., the fear that a woman may act like a man while with a man.

A Summary of Feminist Practices

This section is a summary of common feminist principles:

1. Women are oppressed by the patriarchy.

2. Women are othered in patriarchal societies.

3. Patriarchal ideology is found throughout “Western civilization.”

4. Sex is biological, and gender is cultural.

5. Feminism advocates for equality for all people.

6. All cultural products, including books, and experiences are shaped by “gender issues.”

The Four Waves of Feminism

Feminism has evolved over time and is generally categorized into four historical “waves,” or epochs, of feminist beliefs. The first wave of feminism (1840s-1920s) centered on obtaining equal legal rights for women, such as the right to vote. The second wave of feminism (1960s-1980s) continued this fight into different legal domains, such as workplace rights, and fought gender stereotypes. The third wave of feminism (1990s-2000s) confronted workplace sexual harassment and foregrounded intersectional analysis. The fourth wave of feminism (2010s-present day) advocates for sex positivity, body positivity, and gender diversity while confronting forms of everyday sexism.

Feminism and Literature

Feminist analysis often involves reading “against the grain” of literary works in the male-dominated literary canon, as in a critique of female representation in Death of a Salesman.

Other works, like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, can be read with the grain as a critique of sexism. Some works both critique and reproduce patriarchal ideology, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which portrays strong women but also shows women in traditional gender roles.

The goal of feminist literary analysis is to better understand the role of women in the world and their experiences, as well as to understand and critique patriarchy. This is an example of Literary Analysis as a Form of Social Justice.

Some Questions Feminist Critics Ask About Literary Texts

Tyson provides a series of questions that summarize feminist approaches to literature, highlighting how patriarchal ideology often drives characterizations of female characters and the plot (105):

1. To what extent does the work promote or critique patriarchal ideology?

2. How does the work represent intersectionality?

3. How does the work present masculinity and femininity?

4. Does the work reflect the value of sisterhood, particularly as a mode of survival and/or resistance?

5. To what extent is the reception history of the work shaped by patriarchal ideology?

6. Does the book contribute to “women’s literary tradition” through form, narrative, or other elements?

“…Next They’ll Throw Everything Overboard…”: A Feminist Reading of The Great Gatsby

In her feminist reading of The Great Gatsby, Tyson argues that the novel reproduces and reinforces “patriarchal gender roles” (106). She begins with a description of the historical context in which the novel was written, the Roaring Twenties, and the emergence of the figure of the “New Woman,” or flapper, who bucked many traditional expectations of women at the time. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was married to one such woman, Zelda, and the novel reflects his uneasiness with the emerging figure and her nonconformity. 

Tyson then analyzes first the minor and then the major female figures and the language used to describe them to justify this argument. For instance, Myrtle Wilson is described as “violently affected” and “sexually aggressive.” All the major female figures are “punished” by the events of the novel for their nonconformity. Tyson concludes her reading by connecting this literary “punishment” with the contemporary practice of “blaming the victim” for her sexual assault or harassment. She writes about a personal experience of sexual harassment and how it shaped her reading of The Great Gatsby.

Questions for Further Practice: Feminist Approaches to Other Literary Works

Tyson provides model questions to guide feminist literary analysis. These questions explore how feminist concepts, such as patriarchal ideology, intersectionality, and gender, can deepen a reader’s understanding of texts. Topics include the following (114-15):

1. Intersectionality, feminine sexual desire, and a critique of patriarchy in “The Storm” by Kate Chopin, with a particular focus on the characters of Calixta and Clarisse

2. The representation of the patriarchy in Beloved and sisterhood as a mode of resistance/survival

3. The representation and impact of traditional gender roles in the poems “When I Was Growing Up” and “Typing the Menu” by Nellie Wong

4. Intersectionality in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, particularly as shown through the character of Esperanza

5. Masculinity and femininity in Heart of Darkness, especially as articulated by Marlow