ELAINE SHOWALTER AND THE FEMALE TRADITION
ELAINE
SHOWALTER AND THE FEMALE TRADITION
According to the Oxford
dictionary, the meaning of feminism is “the advocacy of women’s rights on the
ground of equality of the sexes”. Feminism is not about only women centered but
it is about natural rights of women. Then what are the natural rights of women?
The natural right of woman is not a term which used in 21st century
but it is originated in the period of 11th to 16th
century.
Why the discussions on feminism become
important? There are some facts which indicate our attention towards the
discussion on feminism. First, men and women are biologically and physically
different. Second, women possess only 1% of land in the world. The possessing
of land always relates to men. Third, 80% of refugees around world are
women.
In the 11th century, women were not
allowed to preaching and talking on a social stage. Hildegard of Bingen was
born at the end of the 11th century. She became nun and later the
abbess, of a small Rhineland convent. She known for her musical talents and
preaching tours all through German empire, at that time only priest were
allowed to preach. She questioned to society that why she can’t preach. This was the starting of feminism. In the
period of early 14th – 15th century, women were suffered
from the child birth. They had no control on their own body. They were only
known for generating human beings. They were also not allowed to discuss and
talk. But they discussed about their sufferings from the sexuality of men.
Margery Kempe, a contemporary of Julian’s produced an account of her own life.
It was the first autobiography in English. Her biography was revolutionary
because it talked about woman suffering and sexuality by perception of woman.
Women were also not allowed to discuss about God because of sin of Eve. In the
early 15th century, Julian of Norwich said- “Just because I am a
woman, must I therefore believe that I must not tell you about the goodness of
God….”2. It was a religious belief that women are inferior to man.
We cannot say that
feminism is all about women’s writing. Feminism is about the subordination of
woman in the society. The important aspect of feminist is the empowerment of
woman in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the feminist
writers were not considered as idle women. They were considered as agitators.
In the earlier days,
there was hardly any mention that woman as a different identity in any upheld
theories. The female identity has four aspects. The first aspect of female
identity is “a personal identity”. The second aspect of female identity is “a
social identity”. The third aspect is “a power relation” and fourth is “a
mobilized political identity”.
Showalter is concerned
by the sterotypes of feminism that see feminist critics as being ‘obsessed with
destroying male artists’. Showalter wonders if such sterotypes emerge from the
fact that feminism lacks a fully articulated theory. Another problem for
showalter is the way in which feminists turn away from theiry as a result of
the attitudes of some male academics: theory is their property. In Toward a
Feminist poetics showalter divides feminist criticism into two sections.
The first is the woman as reader or feminist critique.
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