study questions

Some Questions about Feminist Literary Criticism

1. According to Richter, what is the characteristic common to the six essays in chapter 7?

2. What are the three stages of the “evolutionary sequence” of feminist literary criticism?

3. How does Julia Kristeva divide feminist thought? What important differences do you see between these two ways of discussing the history of feminist literary criticism?

4. What is the theoretical importance of criticism focused on understanding how women are represented?

5. Why, according to Judith Fetterley, do women need to be resisting readers? What importance does this argument have for ideas about the literary canon?

6. What is a “genderlect”? Were you already familiar with some of the “observations” about the differences between how men and women speak? Why do you think these studies have been so popular?

7. What, according to Lilian Robinson, are the choices critics face when considering a female tradition of writing? Which choice does she advocate? Do you agree?

8. When Gilbert and Gubar claim that women authors used a “cover story,” what do they mean? What are some of the objections raised against their approach?

9. What important development has created divisions within American feminism? What significant disagreement has divided Anglo-American from French feminist literary theorists?

Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own (1929)

1. Why is it significant that Woolf's essay is partly fictional? Why doesn't she write completely in non-fictional mode about the limitations real women face in writing literary works?

2. Woolf imagines the career of of Shakespeare's fictional sister, Judith. What happens to Judith, and why? How does Judith's fate show that "genius" is not above history and material circumstance?

3. What is the great difficulty encountered by women who sought to write, that even the most neglected and poor male writer did not have to face?

4. Why, according to Woolf, is Shakespeare so little known as a person? What was granted to him that would not have been granted to a sister with equal potential?

5. What contrast between Jane Austen / Emily Bronte and Charlotte Bronte does Woolf make? What limitations did Austin and Emily Bronte reject that Charlotte Bronte was unable to reject?

6. What, according to Woolf, is the effect of “tradition” on women writers?