Feminism In The Story Of An Hour By Kat
Gervanna Stephens
Instructor – Mrs. Lucinda Peart
ENGL331 – Literary Criticism
6 December 2011
Feminism and its function in a critical reading of the short stories The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the poem “Poem in Praise of Menstruation” by Lucille Clifton.
The Feminist movement began as an attempt to underscore the despotism of the patriarchal society that is reflected exceedingly in literature and permit women to be established as equals. According to Paul Ady, associate professor of English at Assumption College in Massachusetts, the feminist literary critic is predisposed to the rebuffing of patriarchal models in literature “that privileges masculine ways of thinking and marginalizes women politically, economically and psychologically” (Lewis).
Feminist criticism scrutinizes gender politics in works and delineates the subtle assembly of masculinity and femininity and their status in relation to each other, their position and marginalization within literary works. Feminism’s purpose ergo is to change the degrading view of women so that all women will realize that they are not a nonsignificant Other, but that each woman is a valuable person possessing the same privileges and rights of every man (Bressler 144). The status of women is what concerns feminism. Jonathan Culler argues that “feminist criticism” is “the name that should be applied to all criticism alert to the critical ramifications of sexual oppression, just as in politics ‘women’s issues’ is the name now applied to many fundamental questions of personal freedom and social justice” (Culler 56). Feminism has its origins in the struggle for women’s rights which began in the late eighteenth century chiefly with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) (Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory). However, it was those that purported the movement in the twentieth century that greatly influenced Feminist
Instructor – Mrs. Lucinda Peart
ENGL331 – Literary Criticism
6 December 2011
Feminism and its function in a critical reading of the short stories The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the poem “Poem in Praise of Menstruation” by Lucille Clifton.
The Feminist movement began as an attempt to underscore the despotism of the patriarchal society that is reflected exceedingly in literature and permit women to be established as equals. According to Paul Ady, associate professor of English at Assumption College in Massachusetts, the feminist literary critic is predisposed to the rebuffing of patriarchal models in literature “that privileges masculine ways of thinking and marginalizes women politically, economically and psychologically” (Lewis).
Feminist criticism scrutinizes gender politics in works and delineates the subtle assembly of masculinity and femininity and their status in relation to each other, their position and marginalization within literary works. Feminism’s purpose ergo is to change the degrading view of women so that all women will realize that they are not a nonsignificant Other, but that each woman is a valuable person possessing the same privileges and rights of every man (Bressler 144). The status of women is what concerns feminism. Jonathan Culler argues that “feminist criticism” is “the name that should be applied to all criticism alert to the critical ramifications of sexual oppression, just as in politics ‘women’s issues’ is the name now applied to many fundamental questions of personal freedom and social justice” (Culler 56). Feminism has its origins in the struggle for women’s rights which began in the late eighteenth century chiefly with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) (Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory). However, it was those that purported the movement in the twentieth century that greatly influenced Feminist
Cited: Bak, John S. “Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 31.1 (Winter 1994): 39-46. Crewe, Jonathan. “Queering ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’? Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Politics of Form.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 14 (Fall 1995): 273-293. Golden, Catherine. “The Writing of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ A Double Palimpsest.” Studies in American Fiction 17 (Autumn 1989): 193-201. Hume, Beverly A. “Gilman’s ‘Interminable Grotesque’: The Narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 28 (Fall 1991): 477-484. Jamil, S. Selina. "Emotions in The Story of an Hour." The Explicator 67.3 (2009): 215+. Academic OneFile King, Jeannette, and Pam Morris. “On Not Reading Between the Lines: Models of Reading in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (Winter 1989): 23-32. ---. To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Penguin, 1990. Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood P, 1995