Title: Feminist Approaches to Literature | Great Writers Inspire
Headings: Feminist Approaches to Literature
Feminist Approaches to Literature
The Traditions of Feminist Criticism
Depictions of Women by Men
Rise of the Woman Writer
Women Writers and Class
Also see sections on the following writers:

Content: How do more modern A-level set texts, like those of Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, or Maya Angelou, fit into any of these traditions of criticism? Depictions of Women by Men
Students could begin approaching Great Writers Inspire by considering the range of women depicted in early English literature: from Chaucer's bawdy 'Wife of Bath' in The Canterbury Tales to Spenser's interminably pure Una in The Faerie Queene. How might the reign of Queen Elizabeth I have dictated the way Elizabethan writers were permitted to present women? How did each male poet handle the challenge of depicting women? By 1610 Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's The Roaring Girl presented at The Fortune a play based on the life of Mary Firth. The heroine was a man playing a woman dressed as a man. In Dr. Emma Smith's podcast on The Roaring Girl, Smith breaks down both the gender issues of the play and of the real life accusations against Mary Frith. In Dr. Emma Smith's podcast on John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, a frequent A-level set text, Smith discusses Webster's treatment of female autonomy. Placing Middleton or Webster's female characters against those of Shakespeare could be brought to bear on A-level Paper 4 on Drama or Paper 5 on Shakespeare and other pre-20th Century Texts.