I'm new to feminism-some advice?

[LadyOfTheManor]

Hello,
I am studying English lit (phd) and the theme of "feminism" has crept up into some literature. Tbh I'm trying to get my head around it-there is an AIBU thread but it's a little over my head.

From what I gather, feminism is about being treated equally to men-as human beings-and the freedom of choice...?

Is that the underlying concept?

Can't really imagine getting through an A level without being aware of the concept but clearly it can be done if you're 'not remotely interested'. Wish I'd applied that to all that 'signifier' 'sign' business.

Pot luck in that case.

Modernism covered Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Yeats...we briefly touched on Mrs.Dalloway (Woolf) but not from a feminist perspective.

Well, to go back to your original question, it might be helpful to get hold of a book on literary theory and have a look at the chapter on feminism. That should give you a general idea of feminist thinking in the context of literary analysis, which I think is what you're after.

Good luck. :)

Joyce is a pretentious asshole. Yes I agree with that.

Ok, well thanks for the help I've had, I shall get on with reading those links. Thanks

Thanks- I'll get on it now!

As your specialism was in C 15th/16th, you'll have read the writings and lives of several free and powerful women I imagine :)

Since ordinary people didn't have a vote then, the issue of political presence was very different. Your period, though, is one in which landowning women were very cross about an insidious transfer of rights towards men. It had been going on since around C12. All the warring and stuff that happened around then facilitated the rights of males to wrest power over the land, money and bodies of women (although women were still left to run things while the men were off to war).

Shaespeare and other contemporary playwrights made great comedy (and sadness) out of spirited women, which you might find reflected in contemporary literature.

Depending on what your perspective is, could it be interesting to compare your eras?
The majority of mediaeval writers were noblewomen but there are also letters written by nuns, plus some farmers and such. I see similarities between their concerns, fears & hopes and those of modern women.

I'm a bit at you all implying that the OP isn't doing a PhD because she's bypassed feminism/feminist criticism so far. I did a three year English degree at a top uni and the only feminism-related work I did was by my own choice (e.g. we were studying modernist lit and I chose to focus on feminist perspectives etc).

OP - the first thing I would say is don't close your mind to it, if you're into literature then I presume you like hearing other people's stories. Well, look on the feminist aspect as another way of telling a story. You may find that things that have niggled at you become clearer, or you see things in a totally different way. You don't have to agree with it all, obviously.

Feminism is the struggle to have women recognised as people, basically.

Have you read A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf?

If you're looking for ideas, how about a contrast & compare between life for women in the Tudor era (ish) and women around WW2 in Britain? In both eras, you can find amazing sources in letters and diaries written by women, alongside works for publication that presented a more idealised (?) picture of womanhood. Both were times of massive social change and women shouldered the burdens of that.

If you've not read any women's personal writings from around WW2, you might like "Can any woman help me?" There's also a lot of cynical female humour in published work from that era.

Shakespeare pandered to his female audiences by giving women more spirit & wit than their men. Sparky women tend to win out, while men who try to put one over on a woman rarely succeed.

It'll be easier just to look at C15-C16 from a feminist pov (pretty dire, actually). Depends on how much investigation you want to do.
Good luck :)

it's 'can any mother help me', not woman. (it's also my 'if i've ever got a year spare' thesis, doing a comparative study between mothers in that particular mass-observation study and mn ) i don't like the book though.

try kate millett and simone de beauvoir - they feature on most eng lit undergrad courses.

i bet you did your ma at a very well respected uni too. yet more evidence that the canon (and academia in terms of course content) is dominated by men.

on our undergrad course, we were expected to write criticism from a marxist viewpoint, a feminist viewpoint, a... well, you get the picture. it wasn't a very well-respected uni though.

love to know what you are researching - tis not my era (was looking at gendered space in the literature of the inter-war period most recently) but i'm dead nosy.

I know, I saw that the second I'd posted - reminded myself, though, I've been promising to send it to my mother for ages!

Top recs there, mad :) I love S de B.

I like the sound of your course. I suspect your tutor was my old English A-level teacher! Can't quote anything, but I can give you a decent summary of the prevailing social/political/economic environment when it was written

i would love to be able to quote.
brain like a sieve. i have to write everything down and reference it instantly or it's lost forever. one day i'll have to defend a blardy thesis, and i'll be sitting there like a goldfish, wondering what i wrote about.

you can visit the mass obs archive and dig around y'know. fascinating. i would love there to be another one - even a comparision of the use of language/grammar would be fabtastic. i love the imperial war museum archive too. letters from conscientious objectors in prison to their families, soldiers love letters to wives and sweethearts, fascinating stuff. (lots of stuff about vegetables too...)

Ageing Grace- funnily enough I am hosting a literary conference on the evolution of literature, and I'm using slightly post WW2 as my starting ground!

Thanks for the links:

"Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed" was thoroughly interesting!

I am slowly opening my mind!

This is a fun, basic take on 'what is a feminst?'.

tomatonation.com/culture-and-criticism/yes-you-are/

Can I suggest you look up some of the work of Dale Spender She's written a lot of both introductory and fairly interesting feminist literary criticism.

I did drama and film - not lit - at uni but key feminist thinkers I recall include bell hooks (from an african-american feminist perspective), Julia Kristeva, Laura Mulvey and Marina Warner.

I think Ways of Seeing is a good one to look at as well - chapter on the male gaze.

That's a good one charitygirl and reminds me of the Rebecca West quote:

"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

i love that quote.

rebecca west is interesting... i always mean to dig out more of her stuff but never get round to it. thanks for reminding me!