The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes: The Female Aim for Power Literary criticism is the assessment of literature pertaining to the critic’s reaction towards the text. We learn that there is a multitude of modes that influence which way we analyze the work. One in particular being Feminist criticism, initially developed to convict men of their prejudice towards women (Approaches to Literature). Feminist writers such as Virginia Woolf, argue that women should be able to write what they desire without any concern about their gender (Feminist Criticism). Feminist criticism stresses three main ideas, one being that social and political aspects of a woman’s life should be the main focus. It also endeavors for the re-analysis of works that have already been examined and for literature and its analysis to be from androgynous views and experience (Feminist Analysis: Literary Criticism). Feminist criticism can be segregated into power, victim and androgynous interpretations, all perspectives containing the female experience. In The Red Shoes by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, we witness the calamity of a poor motherless child striving to maintain the possession of the only sentimental thing she has in her life; her red shoes. As this impecunious little girl follows her desire for the red shoes and eventually achieves it, she is punished and falls into a life of disability. Her story of the fight for what she desires can therefore be classified into the victim feminist perspective.
In the story, the red shoes contain a number of significant meanings pertaining to lacanian and archetypal views. The first representation of the red shoes under lacanian psychoanalysis relates to his statement that the subject vaingloriously exemplifies themselves within language (Lacanian Psychoanalysis). So through lacanian interpretation, the red shoes could resemble the little girl, herself. “They were crude but she loved them” (The Red Shoes). The color red resembles the unconditional love that she never received.