EL – 117 LITERRAY
Module 9 CRITICISM
Course: Literary Criticism
Unit No. 9
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. Trace the development of Feminism
2. Determine the method used by Feminist
3. apply the method to a text
Engage
Before reading the exploration text, Try to answer the question below. This will
not be part of the recorded output,
How do you understand the term Feminism ?
Explore
Feminism
Introduction
After placing Jane Tompkins's quote on the overhead projector, Professor Brown asked
members of his twentieth-century literature class their reactions. Immediately many hands
sprang up.
"How ridiculous," shouted Robert; "the world is full of women. I’ll can't even leave my house
in the morning without seeing several: my mother, for starters, then my five older sisters.
And, boy, they aren't extensions of any man. My oldest sister is working on her Ph.D. in
chemistry, the next two are elementary school teachers, and the last two are executive
assistants for major accounting firms in the city."
"But you’ve just proven Tompkins's argument," quipped Karen. "T know for a fact that your
mother does not work outside the home. Any financial security she has comes from your
father. Second, your sister's major professor at the university is a male, and she is working
on his project for her dissertation. Third, your other sisters are all working for men, in
positions that our society has prescribed for females: elementary school teachers and
secretaries. Tompkins is right. Men view women as mere extensions of themselves, as rungs
in a ladder to be stepped on to reach the heights of their careers, and as mere bodies to
satisfy their sexual desires, not as equals or as persons to be respected in their own right."
"What nonsense," yelled Tom. "All women have to do is work as hard as we nmen and they
will earn the right to be professors or to be the boss instead of the employee. Can we men
help it if for centuries women have chosen to stay at home and raise the kids instead of
earning a living in work force? Now they want to be the engineer, the superintendent, the
professor, or the chair of the board without first being the student or the laborer."
"But that's the point," responded Karen. "You men have not allowed us the opportunity to
become the student or the laborer. For centuries you have suppressed us, keeping us away
from the social, political, and economic centers of power in our culture. And now, when we
have just begun to assert our rights as human beings, you call us radicals, braless
bubbleheads, or raving feminists. All we want is the chance to be us: women who are
respected and valued as human beings in our own right, holding our own opinions, and
functioning in jobs that can and will make a difference in our society. Give us the chance,
and we will show you men that women are not second-class citizens, but individuals who can
and must set their own goals, dream their own dreams, and help change their own world
into a better place to live.
"The viewpoints Professor Brown's students have espoused represent some of the points of
conflict surrounding feminism and feminist criticism today. Like Robert, many men think that
women are valued human beings who are not extensions of any man. Becoming doctors,
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
teachers, and secretaries, today's women, they claim, are leading lives of their own
choosing not ones dictated by men. Other men, like Tom, believe that women have
historically chosen not to work outside the home, thereby keeping themselves out of the
work force. When they begin to work outside the home, declare men like Tom, these women
must therefore start at the bottom rung of the employment ladder and work their way up to
management positions.
But it is Karen's arguments that crystallize the center of feminism: the assertion that men,
either unconsciously like Robert or consciously like Tom, have oppressed women, allowing
them little or no voice in the political social, and economic issues of their society. By not
giving voice and value to women's opinions, responses, and writings, men have suppressed
the female defined what it means to be feminine, and thereby devoiced, devalued, and
trivialized what it means to be a woman. In effect men have made women the
"nonsignificant Other."
Feminism's goal is to change this degrading view of women so that all women will realize
that they are not a "nonsignificant Other," but that instead each woman is a valuable person
possessing the same privileges and rights as every man. Women, feminists declare, must
define themselves and assert their own voices in the arenas of politics, society, education,
and the arts. By personally committing themselves to fostering such change, feminists hope
to create a society in which the female voice is valued equally with the male.
Historical Development
Although many people believe present-day feminists and their accompanying literary
theories and practices find their beginnings in the women's liberation movement of the
1960s, the true roots of feminist criticism lie in the early decades of the twentieth century
during what has been dubbed the Progressive Era. During this time, women gained the right
to vote and became prominent activists in the social issues of the day, such as health care,
education, politics, and literature. But equality with men in these are has remained outside
their grasp.
In 1919, the British scholar, teacher, and early feminist Virginia Woolf laid the foundation for
feminist criticism in her work A Room of One's Own, in which she declared that men have
treated women, and continue to treat them, as inferiors. It is the male, she asserted, who
defines what it means [Link] female and who controls the political, economic, social, and
literary structures. Agreeing with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the foremost nineteenth-
century literary critics, that great minds possess both male and female characteristics, she
believed that a female Shakespeare could achieve literary prominence in the twentieth
century if women scholars, teachers, and critics would only pave the way. But the Great
Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s focused humankind's attention on
other matters and delayed the development of such feminist ideas.
With the 1949 publication of the French write Simone de Beauvoir's/ The Second Sex,
however, feminist interests began to surface again. Heralded as the foundational work of
twentieth-century feminism, Beauvoir’s text declares that both French and Western societies
are patriarchal that is, they are controlled by males. Like Woolf before her, Beauvoir
believed that the male in these societies defines what it means to be human, including,
therefore, what it means to be female. Since the female is not male, Beauvoir asserted, she
becomes the Other, an object whose existence is defined and interpreted by the male, who
is the dominant being in society. Always subordinate to the male, the female finds herself a
secondary or nonexistent player in the major social institutions of her culture, such as the
church, government, and educational systems. According to Beauvoir, a woman must break
the bonds of patriarchal society and define herself if she wishes to become a significant
human being in her own right and to defy male classification as the Other.
With the advent of the 1960s and its political activism and social concerns, feminist issues
found new voices. Moving from the political to the literary arena throughout the 1960s and
1970s, feminist critics began examining the traditional literary canon and discovered
abundant evidence of male dominance and prejudice that supported Beauvoir's assertion
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
that males considered the female "the Other," an unnatural or deviant being. First,
stereotypes of women abounded in the canon: women were sex maniacs, goddesses of
beauty, mindless entities, or old spinsters. Second, while Dickens, Wordsworth, Hawthorne,
Thoreau, Twain and a host of other male authors were "canonized," few female writers
achieved such status. Third, for the most part, the roles of female, fictionalized characters
were limited to secondary positions, more frequently than not occupying minor parts within
the stories or simply conforming to the male's stereotypical images of women. And fourth,
female scholars such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir were ignored, their writings
seldom if ever referred to by the male crafters of the literary canon.
Having chosen the works that comprise the canon, these male professors, scholars, and
writers assumed that all readers were males, assert feminist critics of this era. Women
reading such works could unconsciously, then, be duped into reading as males. In addition,
since most of the university professors were males, more frequently than not female
students were trained to read literature as if they were males. But the feminists of the 1960s
and 1970s now postulated the existence of a female reader who was affronted by the male
prejudices abounding in the canon. Questions concerning the male or female qualities of
literary form, style, voice, and theme became the rallying points for feminist criticism, and
throughout the late 1970s books that defined women's writings in feminine terms
proliferated.
Having highlighted the importance of gender, feminist critics then discovered a body of
literary works Written by females that the ır male counterparts had decreed inferior and
therefore unworthy to be part of the canon. In America, Kate Chopin's late-nineteenth-
century novel The Awaking served as the archetypal, rediscovered feminist text of this
period, while in England Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (1962) and in France Monique
Wittig’s Les Guerilleres (1969) fulfilled these roles. Throughout the universities and in the
reading populace, readers turned their attention to historical and current works by women.
Simultaneously, works that at tempted to define the feminine imagination, to categorize and
explain female literary history, and to define the female aesthetic or concept of beauty
became the focus of feminist critics.
The ongoing debate concerning definitive answers to these key feminist interests continued
throughout the decade of the 1980s, as it does today. Coined by the feminist scholar Elaine
Showalter, the term gynocriticism has now become synonymous with the study of women as
Writers and provides critics with four models concerning the nature of women's writing that
help answer some of the chief concerns of feminist criticism. Each of Showalter's models is
sequential, subsuming and developing the preceding model(s), as follows: (1) the biological
model, with its emphasis on how the female body marks itself upon the text by providing a
host of literary images and a personal, intimate tone; (2) the linguistic model, Concerning
itself with the differences between women's and men's use of language and with the
question of whether women can and do create a language peculiar to their gender and
utilize such a language in their writings; (3) the psychoanalytic model, based on an analysis
of the female psyche and how such an analysis affects the writing process, and (4) the
cultural model, investigating how the society in which female authors work and function
shapes women's goals, responses, and points of view.
Since no one critical theory of writing dominates feminist criticism, it is understandable that
three distinct geographical strains of feminism have developed: American, British, and
French. For the most part, American feminism emphasizes the actual text with all its textual
qualities, such as theme, voice, and tone, while at the same time being suspicious of anyone
theory that would attempt to explain the differences between male and female writings. It
has found its home in American universities, in departments of English and women's studies.
British feminism, on the other hand, declares itself to be more political than American
feminism, advocating social change. Often viewed as Marxist, British feminism is more
ideological and therefore seemingly more concerned with social and cultural change than its
American counterpart. Finding its home outside the university in the publishing world,
journalism, and politics, British feminism attempts to analyze the relationship between
gender and class and to show how the dominant power structures controlled by men
influence all of society and oppress women.
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
Unlike American or British feminism, French feminism concentrates on language, analyzing
how meaning is produced through various linguistic symbols. Such an analysis usually leads
these critics into other areas of study, such as metaphysics, psychology, and art. Most
recently, these theorists have speculated that a style of writing peculiar to women exists.
Lcriture féminine or "women's writing," they maintain, is fundamentally different from male
writing and obtains meaning through the writing process.
No matter what they emphasize in theory, however, all feminist critics assert that they are
on a journey of self-discovery that will lead them to a better understanding of themselves.
And once they understand and then define themselves as women, they believe they will be
able to change their world.
Assumptions
To the onlooker, feminist theory and practice appear to be a diffuse, loosely connected body
of criticism that is more divided than unified, housing more internal disagreements than
unity among its adherents than perhaps any other approach to literary analysis. Since it
claims no ultimate spokesperson but many different voices, there exists not one but a
variety of feminist theories. Behind all these seemingly contradictory voices and theories,
however, is a set of principles that unites this criticism.
Although feminist critic’s ideas concerning the directions of their criticism vary, feminists
possess a collective identity: they are women (and some men) who are struggling to
discover who they are, how they arrived at their present situation, and where they are
going. In their search, they value differing opinions, thereby giving significance to the
personal as opposed to a school of theorists or a codified and authoritative collection of
texts. Their search, they assert, is political, for their aim is to change the world in which they
live, a world that they maintain needs to be changed and must be changed if all individuals,
all cultures, all subcultures, and both sexes are to be valued as creative, rational beings who
can contribute to their societies and their world.
Such a revisionist, revolutionary, and ideological stance seeks to understand the place of
women in society and to analyze everything that affects women as writers and their writings
in what feminists believe is a male-denominated world. In this m1seuline worked, the
feminists declare that it is man who defines what it means to be human, not woman.
Because a woman is not a man, she has become the "Other," the not-male. Man is the
subject, the one who defines meaning; woman is the object, having her existence defined
and determined by the male. The man is therefore the significant figure in the male/female
relationship while the female is subordinate. Such female insignificance did not first appear
in the twentieth century, declare feminists such as Jane Tompkins and others. Long before
the existence of our present-day, male-dominated world, societies have been governed, for
the most part, by males. These patriarchal societies, say the feminists, have simply passed
down their erroneous beliefs from generation to generation, culminating with the
predominant Western assumption that women are less than, not equal to, men. Arbitrarily
using the male as the standard, these societies apparently agree with Aristotle's as section
that "the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities." Or they quote and support
St. Thomas Aquinas's conviction that all women are simply imperfect men. And some in
Western society still believe that Freud is correct when he argues that female sexuality is
based upon the lack of a penis, the male sexual organ.
Feminist critics wish to show humankind the errors of such a way of thinking. Women, they
declare, are people in their own right; they are not incomplete or inferior men. Literature
and society have frequently stereotyped women as angels, barmaids, bitches, whores,
brainless housewives, or old maids; women must break free from such oppression and
define themselves. No longer, assert these critics, can they allow male-dominated society to
define and articulate their roles, their values, and their opinions.
To free themselves from such oppression, say feminist critics, women just analyze and
challenge the established literary canon that has helped ape the images of female inferiority
and oppression ingrained in our culture. Women themselves must create an atmosphere
that is less opprese by contesting the long-held patriarchal assumptions concerning their.
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
Since no female Aristotle has articulated a philosophy or coined a batcry for women's
equality, all women must muster a variety of resources clarify, assert, and implement their
beliefs. Through reexamining the blished literary canon, validating what it means to be a
woman, and Solving themselves in literary theory and its multiple approaches to a ,women
can legitimize their responses to texts written by both males females, their own writings,
and their political, economic, and social itions in their culture.
Methodology
as there is no single feminist theory but many theories, so there exists one but a variety of
feminist approaches to a text. Wishing to challenge change Western culture's assumption
that males are superior to fees and therefore are better thinkers, more rational, more
serious, and e reflective than women, feminist critics may begin their debunking of e
superiority by exposing stereotypes of women found throughout theory canon. Women, they
argue, cannot be simply depicted and classify as either angels or demons, saints or whores,
brainless housewives or ntric spinsters. Such characterizations must be identified and
challenged, and such abuse of women by male authors must be acknowledged ways men
have consciously or unconsciously demeaned, devalued, and personalized women.
Having identified the antifeminist characterizations that occur in y texts, the feminist critic
may then turn to the American, the English, non-Western literary canon, seeking to discover
works written by en. This is more frequently than not a difficult task, since males have ten
the majority of texts. The American literary canon, for example, is dedly male. With the
works of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and other notables filling the pages of the canon, little or
no room is allowed for writings of Susan Warner, E. D. N. Southwick, and Mary E. Wilkins
man, three of the most widely read authors in nineteenth-century rica. Feminists assert that
these female authors must be rediscovered having their works republished and reevaluated.
When complete, this discovery will necessarily bring to the surface a valuable body of
female ors who share common themes, historics, and often wriling styles.
Other feminist critics suggest that we reread the canonized works of authors from a
woman's point of view. Such an analysis is possible, maintain, by developing a uniquely
female consciousness based on female experience rather than the traditional male theories
of reading, writing, and critiquing, Known as gynocriticism (see the Historical Development
section of this chapter for additional information), this female model of literary analysis
offers four areas of investigation:
1. Images of the female body as presented in a text. Such an anatomical study, for example,
would highlight how various parts of the female body, such as the uterus and breasts, often
become significant images in works authored by women.
2. Female language. Such a concern centers on the differences between male and female
language. Since we live in patriarchal societies, it would be fair to assume, say feminists,
that our language is also male-dominated. Do women speak or write differently from men?
Although there is little consensus on the answers to these questions, critics interested in this
kind of investigation analyze grammatical constructions, recurring themes, and other
linguistic elements.
3. The female psyche and its relationship to the writing process. Such an analysis applies the
psychological works of Freud (whose theories most feminists wish to debunk) and Lacan to a
text and shows how the physical and psychological development of the female evidences
itself in the writing process through a variety of psychological stages.
4. Culture. By analyzing cultural forces (such as the importance and value of women's roles
in a given society), critics who emphasize this area of study investigate how society shapes
a woman's understanding of herself, her society, and her world.
Whatever method of feminist criticism we choose to apply to a text, we can begin textual
analysis by asking some general questions: Is the author male or female? Is the text
narrated by a male or a female? What types of roles do women have in the text? Are the
female characters the protagonists or secondary and minor characters? Do any stereotypical
characterizations of women appear? What are the attitudes toward women held by the male
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
characters? What is the author's attitude toward women in society? How does the author's
culture influence her or his attitude? Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the significance
of such imagery? Do the female characters speak differently from the male characters? By
asking any or all of these questions of a text, we can begin our journey in feminist criticism
while simultaneously helping ourselves to better understand the world in which we live.
In the following feminist interpretation of Susan Glaspell's Trifles, which of the questions
posed above does the author use in her analysis? Is the critic more concerned with the
author's understanding of feminist issues? The characters? The readers? According to the
essay, what is the main point of the play? Has this interpretation brought to your attention
any feminist issues with which you were previously unaware? If so, what are they?
Student Essay.
Feminist Criticism and Susan Glaspell's Trifles
"Are women human?" the British scholar Dorothy Sayers wondered in the 1940s; after
examining the evidence of attitudes toward women and the roles of women in her society,
Sayers concluded a sardonic "No." Men are human: they reason, they find pleasure in their
work outside the home, and they enjoy freedom of choice. Women are not like men: they act
solely on intuition, they belong in the home (whether they enjoy it or not), and they make no
choices outside of whatever male influence exists in their lives. Women, therefore, are not
human (Sayers, Are Women Human? Eerdmans, 1971).
For modern feminist literary scholars, little has changed in western society since the writings
of Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Sayers, and other
notables of the female literati. Feminist writers posit that our culture continues to be
economically, politically, and socially dominated by the male; men hold the majority of
powerful positions in business, politics, education, and the home. Despite heightened
awareness against stereotypes, our society gives authority to the reasoning and rational
male, not the female who supposedly acts according to a mysterious intuition of dubious
value. Even when she does succeed in her career, a woman must submit to male
expectations of femininity or risk the stereotype that "women in power are masculine. “In
our culture women most often experience life as interiors whose very identities depend on
the men around them.
With this cultural milieu in hand, Susan Glaspell wrote her play Trifles in 1916. Using the
setting of a small-town murder investigation, the playwright explores the larger issues of the
experience of women in marriage and society. Throughout the play, Glaspell educates her
audience through two distinct female experiences: that of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters as they
interact with their husbands and George Henderson, and that of Minnie Wright's story-
within-the-story, which Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters develop over the course of the play.
Beginning with the first-hand interaction, Glaspell immediately presents several obvious
stereotypes. She describes George Henderson, the county attorney, as a young man, with
his first words (the first words in the play) setting the tone for his continuing volley of
patronizing comments about "the ladies." By the play ‘send, Henderson, the stereotypical
young gallant, will miss the truth concerning the murder because of his inability to take the
women seriously.
At first, the two women seem to be additional formulaic characters. In the list of characters,
for example, the women are defined solely by their husbands: Glaspell never reveals their
first names, and even outside the company of men the women address each other as Mrs.
Hale and Mrs. Peters. Describing Mrs. Peters as "a slight wiry woman" with "a thin nervous
face," Glaspell continues the stock characterization by having Mrs. Peters' actions and
comments for the most part bear out this physical description. Her nervous body, for
instance, reflects her tentative mindset, and she submits to the men and defends their
actions ("Of course it's no more than their duty") more readily than does Mrs. Hale. For the
larger “more comfortable looking" Mrs. Hale, who spearheads the deception of the men, a
defiant attitude accompanies a robust frame. But while the men in Trifles remain consistent
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
throughout the play to their stereotypes, the women gain a new independence from their
expected roles. Glaspell uses these female stock characters SO that they can achieve
together a subversion which neither of them alone could have accomplished.
As the play begins, all five characters gather in the Wright kitchen. After a preliminary
recapitulation by farmer Hale of the discovery of the murder, the county attorney discovers
spilled cherry preserves on a kitchen shelf. A discussion ensues among the five characters in
which all three men generalize about the nature of women. In response to Mrs. Peters'
statement that the jailed Minnie Wright frets about her fruit jars, the sheriff exclaims, "Well,
can you beat the women! Held for murder and worrying' about her preserves." By his saying
"women" and not "woman," we learn that the sheriff assumes that not only Minnie Wright
remains oblivious to her situation but also that all women think just as Minnie Wright does.
Another male, Lewis Hale, explains Minnie's seemingly frivolous concern with, "Well, women
are used to worrying over trifles," and Henderson caps the argument with an indulgent "And
yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?" Treated not as individuals
but as a mysterious subculture, the women react in defense and "move a little closer
together."
The men then remark upon the untidy state of the kitchen which they assume directly
reflects upon the nature of Minnie Wright. Having heard her neighbor accused of poor
housekeeping as well as murder, Mrs. Hale risks condescension and defends the disorder of
the kitchen ("Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they
might be"). When Henderson assumes that the cheerlessness of the house stems from
Minnie Wright's lack of "the homemaking instinct," Mrs. Hale holds another view: "I don't
think a placed be any cheer fuller for John Wright's being in it." Convinced that nothing that
would point to any motive exists in the kitchen, the three men move upstairs to the murder
scene.
Left behind, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover a p0ignant motive in the disarrayed kitchen.
The women reveal themselves to be keen listeners as they recount to each other the
previous comments made by the men. Through a process of deduction worthy of Sherlock
Holmes, they piece together their own theory from the clues in the kitchen. But as the
women gradually analyze the evidence of the deserted loaf of bread, the half wiped table,
the erratic sewing, and the strangled bird, a hesitancy to believe in their conclusions
develops. To illustrate visually this hesitancy, Glaspell writes in the stage directions that Mrs.
Hale "Picks up loaf, then abruptly drops it. In a manner of returning to familiar things. "For
these women, reasoning itself seems to be foreign, and it frightens them. As they realize
that the truth which they are grasping escapes the men entirely, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters
resort to pregnant silences and practicality ("Wonder how they are finding things upstairs."
"| wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it?").
At this point the men enter and deride what they see as the women's irrelevant musings
about knotting and quilting. Mrs. Hale resents their comments, and, when the men g0
outside, she moves beyond speculation and begins to destroy the evidence against Minnie
Wright. Acting on their reasoning, the women hide the dead canary from the lawmen. When
the men return from the barn, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters speak of trifles and superstitions
even as they realize that Minnie had revenged the years of emotional abuse and the violent
death of her canary.
Educating her audience through the interaction between male and female on stage, Glaspell
furthers the instruction through the background story of the relationship between Mr. and
Mrs. Wright. Trifles asks the question of motive, a question which is answered through the
deductions of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. A broken jar of preserves, a dirty towel and table,
irregular stitching, and a bird with its neck "other side to" provide enough physical evidence,
however trivial, for the women to empathize with their unfortunate sister. Although she
merely hints at first that John Wright was a difficult man, Mrs. Hale becomes harsher as the
evidence mounts: she compares him to "a raw wind that gets to the bone," and she says of
Minnie Wright, "She used to sing. [Mr. Wright killed that, too." Remembering the carefree
youth of Minnie removes any sympathy Mrs. Hale might have had for the murdered
husband.
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”
Romblon State University
San Fernando, Romblon
Technology Education Department
RSU-SFC TED Form No. 005: Course Module Format
Both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters recall incidents in their own lives which relate to those
experiences of Minnie Wright. Mrs. Peters remembers a boy who took a hatchet to her
kitten. Contemplating the loneliness of Minnie, Mrs. Hale says, "I know how things can before
women." Mrs. Peters knew that stillness when her baby died in Dakota. A recognition of the
similar elements in female life draws these women together and effects a subversion of the
law, the male law to which Mrs. Peters herself is married.
Through plot and subplot Glaspell highlights the repression women encounter in their
relationships with the men of our society. Because George Henderson, Henry Peters, Lewis
Hale, and the deceased John Wright believe that women are irrational and preoccupied with
trifles, the women come to believe it of themselves. But Glaspell educates her female
characters as well as her audience; Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters believe in and act upon their
reasoning before the curtain falls. Ultimately, all three women subvert the male hierarchy:
Minnie Wright breaks the law, and Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale deceive it.
Activity:
Make your own interpretation of My Last Duchess using Feminism . Provide title for your
essay.
NOTE: READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY.
1. This assignment will be accomplished individually.
2. The interpretation or analysis must be brief but meaningful using Feminism approach.
3. Formatting:.
a. Font Style: Arial
b. Font Size: 12 pts
c. Page Size: 8.5” by 11” (Letter Size Format/Short)
d. Page Margin: 1” (All Margins)
e. Line Spacing: 1.5
3. The assignment should be an MS Word Document and must be submitted with the
following File Name on through google classroom or email.
Deadline.. April 22, 2021 emelia_ramos@[Link]
Your Surname Your First Name_Assigment _______
Prepared by: EMELIA B. RAMOS, Ph.D.
References:
Ashcroft, B. et al. (1991). The empire writes back (theory and practice in post-colonial
literatures). New York: Routledge
Charles, Bresler E. (1994). Literary criticism: An introduction to theory and practice. New
Jersey: Prentice hall Englewood’s Cliffs
Selden, Raman. (1976). Practicing Theory and Reading Literature. Kentucky: The University
Press of Kentucky Eagleton, Terry. (1983). Literary Theory an introduction. Cornwall, UK:
Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Richer, David H. (1989). The critical tradition classic texts and contemporary trends. Boston:
St. Martin’s Press Davis, Robert C. (1986). Contemporary Literary Criticism. New York:
Longnam Inc.
“Shine and Serve with Honor and Excellence.”