Feminist Literary Theory
March 23, 2008 by ilrlo
I enjoyed Appleman’s chapter about feminist literary theory chiefly because this chapter focuses on teaching students to look at texts and life experiences through different perspectives which leads to a greater understanding of and critical thought about the world around us. Appleman (2000) states that “theory helps us recognize the essential quality of other visions: how they shape and inform the way we read texts, how we respond to others, how we live our lives” (p. 75). Teaching feminist literary theory asks students to take a more critical look at the gendered stereotypes, prejudices, and assumptions/ignorance that may exist in literature and in the media that surrounds them and influences them. Students may need to get out of their comfort zones in order to try on this lens, but, once involved in using this perspective, they may find new connections to the text through their own experiences or observations. Perhaps, they won’t, but being able to analyze a text or situation in multiple ways is a useful tool in any occupation and provokes higher thinking. Appleman seems to easily incorporate studying feminist literary theory with studying other theories such as Reader-Response and Marxist. I like the connections between theories. Using Reader-Response in conjunction with looking through a feminist lens can help students to better understand feminist literary theory.
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I am wondering whether you have approached feminist criticism with a class before. I could see my classes not responding well to the criticism. Last semester, we had a debate about gender when we read “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” I had some boys who made some misogynist, controversial comments about women wanting to be raped. The classroom quickly exploded into a screaming match between the girls and the boys (particularly the football players). I could see them having a hard time just accepting feminist critical theory. Do you have any ideas about how you could approach it in a potentially sensitive classroom?
Hi ilrlo:
Loved your blog and it addressed a specific question I had in my own blog. I liked that you mentioned the practice of combining literary theories to extract more than one view point out of your students. I did this today to call attention to the fact that several times in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses adjectives like womanish and effeminate to describe weak males. He did create several strong female characters, as Appleman pointed out, but he still uses feminine adjectives in a negative way. My question is how do you stop these conversations from becoming a boys against the girls or us against them type situation?
Cheers,
Tragalibro