Feminism in Brief (English Literature)

 Feminism in English Literature 

Inequalities have existed since the dawn of civilization and women have been fighting against all sorts of discriminations: legal, economic, religious and social. The various factors responsible for their suppression were misogyny, romantic glorification and patriarchy. Irrationally romanticized, they were not allowed to play a significant role as independent, self confident individuals. This was compounded by other unjust social, political and biological factors which produced a rationale or opposition to their rights. As a consequence, they did not enjoy a comfortable position in society.

          Women in the recent past have launched a liberation movement called Feminism demanding equal rights and equal status for themselves. Feminism means “the belief and aim that woman should have the same rights and opportunities as men”.¹ In other words, “Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Feminists are persons whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism.” ² Precisely defining “feminism can be challenging, but pragmatically, a broad understanding of feminism includes women acting, speaking and writing on women’s issues and rights, identifying social injustice in the status quo and bringing their own unique perspective to bear on issues”.³

Feminism has emerged as a worldwide movement to secure women's social, political, legal, moral & cultural rights on the one hand and love, respect, sympathy and understanding from males on the other. Feminism recognizes the inadequacy of male - created ideologies and struggles for the spiritual, economic, social and racial equality of women, sexually colonized and biologically subjugated. It is a concept emerging as a protest against male domination and the marginalization of women. It focused women’s struggle for recognition and survival and made them realize that the time has come when they should stop suffering silently in helplessness. Then only they can develop their moral and intellectual potentialities and qualities.

Diverse cultures, societies and situations do make women diverse in nature, but there are certain issues which are universal to the whole of womankind. A woman of any origin, belonging to any strata of society goes through emotional upheavals in life. In her work The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan who is regarded as the harbinger of the second wave of American feminism brings out the fact that ‘women, who apparently have everything to make them happy and comfortable, cannot trace the source of dissatisfaction and the cause of the emotional distress that they suffer’. A woman is never regarded as an autonomous being since she has always been assigned a subordinate and relative position. The modern woman does not find any sense in such self- sacrifice and yearns for self-expression, individuality.  She is trying to free herself of the dependence syndrome.

Feminism, concerns women’s cause, their subjugation to men folk, their inferior status, their exploitation- physical, social, political, economic. Feminists all over the world have been raising such issues with a pious wish that the women must be considered equal to men. They should not be discriminated because of their sex. They have been generally forced to fell anguish and anxiety. Thus feminism is a movement giving voice to women’s subordinated position in society and discrimination, encountered by them because of sex. So, equality, freedom and justice are central to the movement of feminism for bringing about a radical change in society. Margaret Benton’s views are very relevant in this connection. She writes:

We are feminists because we believe not only that

the evidence shows the oppression of women, but,

further, that such oppression is wrong. We also

believe that society should be changed to end all

forms of oppression.⁴

The feminist perspective on literature, whether in a third world country or elsewhere, has had to confront issues of similar persuasion: male chauvinism, sexist bias, psychological and even physical exploitation, hegemonistic inclination is not merely the male but also the female sections of society, the utter disregard for the females psychological, cultural, familial and spiritual quests. Feminism recognizes the inadequacy of male created ideologies and struggles for the spiritual, economic, social and racial equality of woman sexually colonized and biologically subjugated. Feminism is a concept emerging as a protest against male domination and marginalization of woman. But the development of feminist thought at the outset of this century has brought about a perceptive change in our outlook towards woman. Now, women are one with man and not their “otherness”.

       Women were not demanding only equal rights and equal status, but they also resisted the insidious power of the literature that forced them to suppress their feelings and approved the patriarchy as the only viable solution to a social order. Feminist scholarship originates and participates in the larger efforts of feminism to liberate women from the structures that have marginalized women and as such, it seeks to redefine ideas of male and female. Feminists claim that literature bears the stamp of male domination. A major portion of literature has been written from the male point of view either by ignoring or suppressing woman’s point of view. The ideology of gender is inscribed and it is produced and reproduced in cultural practice. Feminists examine experiences of the women from all races, classes and cultures. The traditional images of women as an evil force, a temptress, an inferior being, and as an impediment in man’s spiritual path have been totally discarded in favor of a more human, egalitarian image mainly due to the efforts of the feminists and the male humanists. In short the main motive of Feminist is to make women conscious about their struggle for recognition and survival and made them realize that the time has come when they can save themselves from the anguish and anxiety of the modern world, which they bear silently in helplessness.   

Feminism has its antecedents going all the way back to ancient Greece. Feminism also surfaces in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, who blatantly values experience over authority. After the French Revolution, Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women argued that the ideals of the Revolution and Enlightenment should be extended to women, primarily through access to education. Mary Wollstonecraft posits that women should be given the same rights as that of men. Then only they can develop the moral and intellectual potentialities and equalities. The nineteenth century witnessed the flowing of numerous major female literary figures in both Europe and America, ranging from the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. Modernist female writers include Hilda Doolittle, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das etc. So, it is clear from that ever since antiquity women have been fighting to free themselves from the oppression by their male counterparts which is responsible for their anguish and anxiety.