Title: What Is the Feminist Approach to Literary Criticism? | Pen and the Pad
Headings: What Is the Feminist Approach to Literary Criticism?
What Is the Feminist Approach to Literary Criticism?
Historical Origins of the Movement
Challenges to the Literary Canon
Textual Analysis

Content: Historical Origins of the Movement
Modern feminist literary criticism had its roots in the post-World War II feminist movement that spilled over into the intellectual circles of America's colleges and universities. The true origins of the movement can be traced as far back as the late 18th century with Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" (1792). Other writers such as John Stuart Mill, Margaret Fuller and Simone de Beauvoir followed suit from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. From the 1960s onward, feminist literary critics proliferated. The approaches of feminist literary critics vary according to the personal interests of each writer. In fact, as Timothy H. Scherman, associate professor of English at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago has noted, "there are no 'rules'-no 'recipe'-­to doing feminist criticism." Challenges to the Literary Canon
One major approach to feminist literary criticism revolves around the desire to challenge or redefine the literary canon that has been dominated by men. In particular, as Scherman again notes, "feminist criticism makes space for and listens to women's voices previously muted or drowned out by dominant patriarchal literary-critical practices." In this sense, feminist literary criticism takes a particular stand against what the academic community has considered to be the norm for what it considers to be "literature." This critique of traditional scholarship is an approach that rejects traditional norms on the assumption that traditional literary analysis has a political and ethical agenda biased against women.