Feminism and Literature

**FEMINISM AND LITERATURE**

The
emergence of feminist literary criticism is one of the major developments in
literary studies in the past thirty years or so. This article attempts to give
an overall view of feminist literary criticism, its discovery of early women
novelists and feminist readings. Since feminist literary criticism has
re-discovered the forgotten texts, from the 17th century onwards, written by
women whose contribution to the emergence of the novel genre is undeniable, and
included them in the critical evaluations, it is quite important to present
them both in a historical and literary perspective. Thus the first part of this
article is largely devoted to the literary achievements of these early women
writers.

The
second part of the article mainly concentrates on the most re-cent phase of
feminist criticism by trying to offer a theoretical perspective so that the
reader is provided with a broad view of its developments. It would, however, be
an incomplete discussion of feminist literary perspectives if feminist readings
were excluded from the argument. Therefore the third part of the article deals
with feminist readings of texts, showing their crucial differences from the
male readings. My major strategy in this part is to point to a comprehensive
perspective by using the deconstructive critical approach. In fact, throughout
this article the deconstructive approach plays an important role, not only in
arguing how the dominant discourses are challenged and disrupted, but also in
demonstrating that there can be no universal and privileged meanings and values
in literary traditions. Instead, there are only multiple meanings. To exemplify
this view, the article concludes with a deconstructive reading of a postmodern
text.

**I. WOMEN WRITERS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE**

To
understand the nature of feminist literary criticism and its alternative
approach to literature, we must first understand its long history. Although
critics like Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Elleman and Kate Millett were among the
first to reveal the literary history of women's images and to discuss the
dominant stereotyped images of female fictional characters, the history of
feminist criticism goes back hundreds of years in time. It can even be traced
back to Aristotle's declaration that "The female is female by virtue of a
certain lack of qualities," and St. Thomas Aquinas's belief that woman is
an "imperfect man." Texts go-ing back as far as Aristophanes's comedy
Lysistrata, "which is about how women achieved social change by
withholding sexual favours from their men" (Ruthven 16); and Aeschylus's
trilogy, The Oresteia, where Athena wins over Apollo's argument that the mother
is no parent to her child, are among the earliest examples of feminist
criticism. Also, Raman Selden mentions John Donne's "Air and Angels"
where Donne alludes to Aquinas's theory that form is masculine and matter
feminine: "the superior, godlike, male intellect impresses its form upon
the malleable, inert, female matter"(134). Sharon Spencer mentions Sappho
of the 6th century BC as the greatest lyric poet of antiquity" and
Christine de Pisan's work as the "first major work of feminist
criticism" (157). Born in 1364. Pisan attracts our attention because she
"criticised the description of woman's nature drawn by Jean de Meun in
Roman de La Rose" (Spencer 157). Pisan's *Epistre au dieu d'amours* (1399) was writ-ten against the biased
representations of women in de Meun's work. In her *La cite des Dames* (1405), Pisan also argued that God created man
and woman as equal beings. But, it is Mary Wollstonecraft's *A Vindication of the Rights of woman*
(1792) which marks the first modem awareness of women's struggle for equal
rights, and therefore it is the first milestone for the equality of the sexes.
Wollstonecraft was influenced by the ideas of the French revolution concerning
the equal rights of individuals. K.K. Ruthven observes that "the analogy
with slavery, which is present in Wollstonecraft's book, "becomes the
dominant trope in nineteenth-century feminist writing, doubtless because of
feminist involvement in the abolitionist movement" (29). Seventy seven
years later, in The Subjection of Women (1869), John Stuart Mill expressed it
very powerfully: "All men, except the most brutish, desire to have in the
woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a will-ing one,
not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in
practice to enslave their minds" (Norton Anthology Vol.2, 991). Sixty
years later Virginia Woolf's *A Room of*
One's Own *(1929) developed and enhanced these views with a strong female*
sensibility and criticism*. A Room of One*
's Own *became an important precursor of feminist literary criticism. Here,*
Virginia Woolf argues that the male dominated ideas of the patriarchal society
prevented women from realising their creativity and true potential:

**In the first place, to have a room of**
her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question,
unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning
of the nineteenth century... Such material difficulties were formidable; but
much worse were the immaterial. The indifference of the world which Keats and
Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not
indifference but hostility. (52)

As
Virginia Woolf was especially emphasising, women writers had to work against
the grain in order to write. Yet writing was the only way left to women to
assert individuality and autonomy. Excluded from many social, political and
economic activities, women turned to writing. But it was not easy. In her
essay, "Professions for Women." Virginia Woolf states that she had to
kill "the Angel in the House" in order to write her novels and
critical works:

**Had I not killed her she would have**
killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found,
directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a
mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human
relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of
the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women. Killing the Angel
in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer
**(cit. Eagleton 52).**

Reading
this passage we can understand the difficulties involved in being a female
writer. The idea is clear: it is dangerous for any woman who writes to think of
herself as a passive, subordinated being in the house. To be a writer one has
to destroy the stereotyped image of house-wife and mother. In other words,
women writers had before them the enormous task of defying their marginality
and subversion, not only in the house, but in society as well. Mrs. Gaskell's
letter of 25 August 1850, concerning the deplorable conditions of Charlotte
Bronte's life, provides an excellent example to such struggles of female
writers as Woolf was underlining. Mrs. Gaskell writes that the Bronte girls
were not taught anything by their father; it was the servant who taught them to
read and write, and that they lived in extremely miserable conditions. Despite
the unfortunate background of her education and unfavourable circumstances of
her life, Charlotte," writes Mrs. Gaskell, "possesses a charming
union of simplicity and power; and a strong feeling of responsibility for the
Gift..." Mrs. Gaskell continues her letter thus:

**Indeed I never heard of so hard, and**
dreary a life - extreme poverty is added to their trials - it (poverty) was no
trial till her sisters had long lingering illnesses. She is truth itself; and
of a very noble sterling nature - which has never been called out by anything
kind or genial ... She is very silent and very shy: and when she speaks chiefly
remarkable for the admirable use she makes of simple words, and the way in
which she makes language express her ideas. (128-29)

Of
course Charlotte Bronte is not the only exemplary figure who could defy her
conditions and express herself in brilliantly written novels like *Jane Eyre*, *Shirley*, and *Villette*. She
is just one among the multitude of women who had something of importance to say
in fiction. There were many writers like her who had to endure extreme difficulties,
and yet could produce lasting literary works. It is not surprising that most of
the 19th century female writers foregrounded woman as the subject of their
novels, or expressed female experience in their literary rebellion against
their deliberate marginalisation both as women and as writers. In the 19th
century women writers usually invoked a centralised object of power although it
contradicted their aim of creating a resistance discourse. The centralised
object of power was the male authorial discourse. Yet, they had to identify one
way or the other, with power and culture in order to be accepted for
publication. But, the possibilities of transgressive potential were always
there in their writing. Anne Bronte's *The*
Tenant of Wildfell Hall *(1848) is a striking example, which is regarded as*
the first manifesto for women's liberation. Here, Helen Huntingdon is driven to
leave her atrocious husband for an independent existence. Her defying the
current laws of the times came as a shock to the social conventions of the day.
In 1848 the wife and the children were under the husband's control, and it was
impossible to leave a husband without causing legal problems and social
scandal. Yet Anne Bronte's heroine, after so many attempts at reforming her
husband, walks out on him taking her son with her. Here is how Arthur
Hunting-don gives voice to the commonly held ideas about wives; no matter how
badly the husbands may behave, the wife is expected to obey and entertain him
without complaint: "Are the marriage vows a jest: and is it nothing to
make it your sport to break them...?" asks Helen after she encounters her
husband flirting with the wife of his friend. Huntingdon gives a typical answer
to her "'You are breaking your marriage vows yourself.' said he,
indignantly rising and pacing to and fro. 'You promised to honour and obey me,
and now you attempt to hector over me, and threaten and accuse me and call me
worse than a highwayman … I won't be dictated to by a woman, though she be my
wife'"(248). Yet Helen persists in showing the injustice in his behaviour,
and asks him to imagine himself in her place: would he then honour and trust her
under such circumstances? Again the answer is loaded with the double standards
of the day: "'The cases are different,' he replied. 'It is a woman's
nature to be constant - to love one and one only, blindly, tenderly, and for
ever...'" (248). It is this double-sided reality that drives Helen
Huntingdon to seek her independence. This double standard - especially in
education - is evident in most of the 19th century female writing. For example,
in Mrs. Gaskell's last novel, *Wives and*
Daughters *(1866), the highly affectionate and protective father, Mr.*
Gibson, who is an intellectual man of medicine himself, is against his daughter
gaining too much learning. Here is his instruction to his daughter Molly's
governess concerning her education:

**Don't teach Molly too much: she must sew,**
and read and write, and do her sums; but I want to keep her a child, and if I
find more learning desirable for her, I'll see about giving it to her myself.
After all, I'm not sure that reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman
gets married with only a cross instead of her name; it's rather a diluting of
mother-wit; to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the prejudices of
society, Miss Eyre, and so you may teach the child to read. (46)

Although
Molly loves her father and obeys all his orders and fulfils all his demands,
she instinctively realises that it is unjust for him to withhold a rich world
of learning from her. So, "It was only by fighting and struggling hard,
that bit by bit Molly persuaded her father to let her have French and drawing
lessons" (46). But, Mrs. Gaskell writes that, "He was always afraid
of her becoming too much educated" (46). This attitude on the part of the
male character is exemplary of the generally acknowledged patriarchal
perception of women in society in order to control and to limit their power. It
also indicates the masculine resistance to the development of the feminine
identity, because possessing a strong identity means possessing power as well.

Most
of the novels written in the 19th century by women used the house as the
central image, because, like their heroines, female writers were almost
exclusively confined to the house. Their experiences were not as broad as their
male counterparts, because they were isolated especially from business life.
Therefore, the novels display a highly static way of life. Although the female
writers favoured the subjective voice in their fiction due to their limited
experience of the world, they were aware of its disadvantages. First of all, in
a world where the woman is regarded as the object, and not the subject who
could participate in its affairs, the subjective voice was suggestive of a
reaction against standard morality. The female writer had to conform to this
morality in or-der to be accepted for publication. Yet, despite these
difficulties the women novelists developed the subjective voice in their
fiction as the only viable form of expression of the subject in process. Eva
Figes states that, "the position of women, isolated within individual
households, favoured the development of the subjective voice in a fiction which
concentrated on the domestic setting" (151). The significance of their
contribution to the literary establishment lies in the fact that the women
writers have seen the female identity as a continuous process of
-becoming" and thus have reflected its flexibility. This can be considered
as an al-ternative method of character portrayal, and it had been initiated by
the forgotten originators of the novel genre in the 18th century.

The
literary achievements of Eliza Haywood, Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, Sarah
Fielding. Fanny Burney. Elizabeth Inchbald and Maria Edgeworth, to name only a
few, established a tradition of 'subject in process' which later novelists like
Jane Austen, the Brontes, and George Eliot were to pursue. Charlotte Bronte's
dialectical approach to the experiences of women provides an excellent example
of the tradition of subject in process. The tension between personal
powerlessness and desire for power and control in her female characters
produces a process that enables the characters to review the dominant
ideologies of the times. In Jane Eyre (1847), and Villette (1853) the heroine
is able to resist social confinement and social limitations by her independent
mind which combines strong will and moral integrity. Bronte's strong- minded
heroine displays an integrated female subjectivity. Lucy Snowe in Villette
expresses it quite sharply: "I would deliberately have taken a housemaid's
place, bought a strong pair of gloves, swept bedrooms and staircases, and
cleaned stoves and locks, in peace and independence" (382). Less strong
heroines, like Caroline in Shirley (1849) too, are aware of this self in
formation. This is evident in Caroline's inner search for a meaningful identity
and existence: "What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my place in the
world?" (190). To ask such questions usually assumes a belief in the unity
of self, a search for a coherent self that wants to know itself and control
itself. This is also the rebellion of the female consciousness against the male
images of female identity and experience. As Judith Kegan Gardiner points out,
"The concept of female identity shows us how female experience is
transformed into female consciousness, often in reaction to male paradigms for
female experience" (190). Elizabeth Bennet's wish for self-integration,
control and affection in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) also points
to the subject in process: "Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She
wanted to ascertain the feelings of each of her visitors, she wanted to compose
her own, and to make herself agreeable to all." (281). Juliet Mitchell
argues that especially the early women writers emphasised the process of
becoming women within a new bourgeois society:

**They wrote novels to describe that**
process - novels which said: 'Here we are: women. What are our lives to be
about? Who are we? Domesticity, personal relations, personal intimacies,
stories...' The novel is that creation by the woman of the woman, or by the
subject who is in the process of becoming woman, of woman under capitalism
(cit. Eagleton 100).

In
the 19th century the awareness of the defects of the social sys-tem under
capitalism is quite visible in the works of the female writers. The women
novelists, like Mrs. Gaskell, began to question and comment on the social
system in their fiction. Their position is essentially humanist. Eva Figes
argues that the solution the female novelists offered was the
"feminisation of society":

**When women did begin to comment on the**
social system in fiction their outlook was essentially humanist. Leaving aside
isolated statements on the position of their own sex, which occur in the
writings of all women, from Jane Austen to Mary Wollstonecraft, they tended to
stand aside from and indeed, distrust political systems and solutions and view
the problems they described in terms of human relations. In attempting to
analyse the breakdown and failure of human relations they tended to blame male
behaviour, and see the solution in terms of the feminization of society. (152)

The
contribution of women writers to humanist values is represented by a female
identity that counterbalanced what they saw as the essentially destructive and
anti-humanist male attitude and position in society. Therefore, female identity
is represented as subject in process - a subject that is always in
progressivist motion.

Although
the women writers have seen female identity as a process and have emphasised
its flexibility, they could not avoid being subjected to the unjustified claims
on their intellectual powers. Thus, they have always been alienated from the mainstream
of literature and society. Especially in the 19th century, women were debased
for their so-called intellectual inferiority. Female artists were not believed
to have an intellectual and creative capacity equal to that of "great
men" like, among many others, Mozart, Michaelangelo and Milton. They could
achieve equality only in one sense: that they could "die 'grandly' with an
art comparable to a Milton's." This is the great talent that is freely acknowledged
in women, the ability to die like a man, that is cheerfully applauded by De
Quincey, as Angela Leighton has pointed out (160). De Quincey's essay
"Joan of Arc" is typical evidence as to the biased male perception
and deliberate attempts at constructing and establishing the binary oppositions
of male/female hierarchy in the social system:

**Woman, sister, there are some things**
which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will.
Pardon me if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your
choirs, or a Mozart, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar ... Yet, sister
woman ... I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us men
- a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michaelangelo: you
can die grandly (cit. Leighton 160).

Despite
all these attacks and underrating of their creativity, intelligence and
potential, women writers "felt pressured to prove both their reliability
and their physical endurance" (Showalter 78), and they established the
pre-eminent form of literary narrative, the novel. The nov-el genre emerged
with women's literary experiments in the 17th century, which was an age of
transformation into a capitalist society full of un-certainties. Yet the female
novelists have been deliberately kept out of critical consideration. A renowned
critic like Walter Allen starts The English Novel (1954) with the following
statement: "The comparatively sudden appearance at the turn of the seventeenth
century of the novel as we know it was a manifestation of a marked change In
the direction of men's interests" (21). Why Allen overtly accords primacy
to men and their interests is quite significant. Since the "vast majority
of early novels" writes Juliet Mitchell, "were written by large
numbers of women" (cit. Eagleton 100), how can a critic be so ignorant of
their existence? It is quite clear that Allen deliberately excludes them from
the canon by making no reference to their contribution to the formation of the
novel genre. Women writers like Lady Mary Wroath, Anne Wearnys, Margaret
Cavendish (Duchess of Newcastle) are excluded from many critical works written
on the emergence of the novel gen-re. Dale Spender argues that only the
determinedly partisan could produce such a double standard in our literary
heritage:

**'Men of letters' have excluded women**
and women's writing from both participation and consideration within the
literary circle, and they have compounded their errors of judgement with their
failure to mention that there are different rules for the women, whom they have
not included. Only individuals who are determinedly partisan could have for
centuries practised a double standard which judged the woman writer as a true
woman and the man writer was a true writer; only individuals who are in control
and who wish to stay that way could have consistently refused to admit the part
they were playing in keeping women out of the world of letters (46)

Since
the novel is the creation of female writers, the exclusion of so many women
novelists from the canon has caused an enormous degree of reaction from the
feminist critics. Therefore, reconstruction and re-evaluation of the canon as
regards the novel genre has become one of the major tasks of feminist
criticism.

From
the 17th century onwards there were a significant number of women who took to
writing despite the severe disadvantages, "because selling their literary
wares were treated with much the same ribaldry and contempt as
prostitutes" (Spender 14). Therefore, the idea of writing and publication
was regarded as a seriously dangerous issue for moral reasons. Yet, in spite of
all the hindrances, women writers at-tempted to participate in the literary
tradition, and created a new genre, the novel. The first major writer of
importance is Lady Mary Wroath who was born in 1586. Her uncle being Sir Philip
Sidney and her aunt the Countess of Pembroke may have been to her advantage in
the first place. But, her achievement is due only to her own literary talent.
Until the death of her husband and son in 1644, Lady Mary acted as a literary
patron. For example, Dale Spender states that Ben Jonson dedicated much of his
work to her, including in 1610 The Alchemist (12). Then, in order to pay her
debts and to earn her living, she wrote Urania (1621), a pastoral romance which
is a new version of Sidney's Arcadia. Urania is significant because of its
innovative technique. That is, for the first time a writer is using a direct
reference to reality for a realistic representation as regards the similarities
between her characters and the social figures of her time. Although this text
is a variation on the conventions of the pastoral code, it has a bearing on the
development of the novel gen-re. Despite its pastoral fantasy and flowery
style, Urania actually moves away from the fantastic conventions of the
pastoral romance with its realism of content and with its realistic portrayal
of characters. In this respect, its realistic content and its introduction of
realistic dialogue separate Urania from fantasy fiction and make it a precursor
of the realistic conventions. Urania is the first example to narrow the gap
be-tween fact and fiction.

Lady
Mary Wroath was not the only woman writer who broke the line between fantasy
and reality. Many more followed her. Although the literary field was occupied
by 'men of letters' in the 17th century, the women, especially during the
second half of the century, embarked on new forms of writing that brought
fiction closer to reality. They initiated the emergence of the forms of
biography, autobiography and letters by writing exclusively within these forms.
Among these women the most notable ones included Anne Clifford. Lucy
Hutchinson, Anne Fanshawe and Margaret Cavendish. These women wrote
autobiographical sketches that are notable for their realistic details
concerning their times. Especially Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
(1624-1674), introduced realism to the literary conventions. Moreover, she
boldly expressed her opinions about the situation of women. In the
"Preface to the Reader" part of her book The World's Olio (1655)
Cavendish claimed that women would not be victims if they were given the same
education as men. Then, she argued, they would be intellectually equal to men:
"if we were bred in schools to mature our brains and to manure our
understandings, that we might bring forth the fruits of knowledge." In the
Preface to another work, Observations on Experimental Philosophy (1666) she
continued the argument: "I will not say but many of our Sex may have as
much Wit. and are capable of learning as well as Men: but since they want
instructions, it is not possible They should attain to it: for Learning is
Artificial, but Wit is natural" (cit. Spender 38). In her autobiography,
The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life (1656), she documented, with
intensity of detail, the difficulties she and her husband, Cavendish,
experienced while in exile. This autobiography constitutes only one part of her
Nature's Pictures Drawn by Fancie's Pencil to the Life (1656) which is a collection
of tales, fables and dialogues. Here is an example of her use of realistic dialogue
and the expression of her own opinions on women's situation:

**There was a grave Matron, who came to**
visit a young virgin, whom she asked why she did not marry, since she was of
marriageable years. 'Truly', said she, 'I am best pleased with a single life.'
'What!' answered the Matron, 'will you lead Apes in Hell?' The young lady said,
it was better to lead Apes in Hell, than to live like Devils on Earth, for,
said she, 'I have heard that a married couple seldom or never agree, the
Husband roars in his drink, and the wife scolds in her Choler, the Servants
quarrel, the Children cry, and all is disorder, than 'Us thought Hell is, and a
more confused noise.' Said the Matron, 'Such are only the poor, meaner sort of
people that live so: but the noble and rich, when they are drunk are carried
straight to bed and laid to sleep, and their wives dance until their husbands
are sober.' Said the Lady, 'If they dance until their husbands are sober, they
will dance until they are weary'; 'So they do,' replied the Matron (cit. Brigid
MacCarthy)

During
the Restoration period in England one woman writer precedes all others in time
with her authentic realism: Aphra Behn (1640-1689). Virginia Woolf hails her by
claiming: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of
Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their
minds"(66) …. After Aphra Behn came a number of female writers who took
fiction one step further. Delariviere Manley (1663-1724) and Eliza Haywood
(1693-1756) should have their proper place in the history of the novel's
development. Manley introduced the epistolary form, and made use of political
satire, as well as bringing into use "a fantastical rendition of real life
happenings" (Spender 73). Haywood established the epistolary novel, and
she is, therefore the forerunner of Richardson. Eliza Haywood also wrote
sentimental and realistic novels. Her History of Bessy Thoughtless (1751) marks
the true emergence of the novel with its plot, character and dialogue. Haywood
presented the world through women's eyes and gave expression to women's
experiences. Bessy Thoughtless became the source of inspiration for later
novelists like Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Burney's Evelina and Jane Austen's
Elizabeth Bennet are modelled after Betsy. Betsy is the pioneer in the history
of fictional characters who learn from their errors. Eliza Haywood "was as
much an active force (and arguably the greater force)" writes Spender,
"in shaping the novel as were Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding"(107).
Thus, the Duchess of Newcastle, Aphra Behn, and Delariviere Man-ley were
actually the very first writers to initiate the emergence of the novel with
their experiments in the realistic techniques, and Eliza Haywood became not
only an active force in establishing conventions, but also the model to be
followed in the new genre. They are the first representative figures for the
18th century women novelists who gave fiction its popular form. Elizabeth
Inchbald, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth,
Amelia Opie, Mary Brunton, Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays,
all had a share in furthering the novel and ensuring that it had popular appeal
and recognition. As Showalter notes, "From about 1750 on, English women
made steady inroads into the literary marketplace, mainly as novelists"
(16). It is owing to the systematic and extensive research devoted to bringing
these women novelists to light that these early founders of the novel genre
have taken their place in the literary canon of today. This is one of the most
significant contributions of feminist literary criticism. The literary
evaluations of the early texts from the view-points of many different methods
brought a refreshing light to literary studies in general.

**II. FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM: A THEORETICAL**
PERSPECTIVE

**BACK**
TO THE TOP

 Feminist
literary criticism became a theoretical issue with the ad-vent of the new
women's movement initiated in the early 1960s. In fact, feminist criticism
started as part of the international women's liberation movement. The first
major book of particular significance, in this respect, was Betty Friedan's The
Feminine Mystique (1963) which contributed to the emergence of the new women's
movement. In her book Friedan criticised "the dominant cultural image of
the successful and happy American woman as a housewife and moth-er"
(Leitch 308). According to Friedan, in the 1950s women had gone back to the
house abandoning their jobs to men who came back from the war to claim their
positions, and a feminine mystique was created in the media making the
housewife and mother the ideal models for all women. Promoting women's ideal
reality within the domestic realm, this mystique had reduced the identity of
women to sexual and social passivity. Betty Friedan attempted to demystify this
false feminine mystique, which she described as "a world confined to her
own body and beauty, the charming of man, the bearing of babies, and the
physical care and serving of husband, children and home" (cit. Millard
155), in order to renew the women's fight for equal rights. She had started a
new consciousness-raising movement, and played a central role in developing the
new discipline of women's studies.

With
the publication of Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969), feminist criticism
became a challenge to the traditional norms of English studies in the 1970s.
With this book Millet initiated the first modem principles of feminist
criticism by embarking upon a critique of sexist assumptions in male-authored
texts and introducing some of the fundamental terms, such as
"patriarchal," which gained considerable significance in feminist
literary studies. Sexual Politics soon became a cult book among feminist
critics, especially with its politics of female representations in literature.
By "politics" Millet means the operations of power relations in society.
She argues that Western institutions have manipulated power to establish the
dominance of men and subordination of women in society. She also criticises
Freud's psychoanalytical theory for its male bias. With her readings of
passages from established writers like D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman
Mailer and Jean Gen-et, Millet shows the perspectives of a female reader.
Obviously she un-covers negative images of women in their fiction as submissive
sexual objects. In fact, before Millet, the negative images of women both in society
and in literature had produced equally provocative but more cautious responses,
such as Mary Ellman's Thinking About Women (1965). It was with Ellman that
modem feminist criticism was initiated in the United States. Her somewhat humorous
treatment of the stereotypes of women in literature written by men makes Ellman
one of the pioneers in the development of contemporary feminist criticism. With
Ellman, and more forcefully with Millet, feminist criticism has generated much
public debate in women's rights, and in their search for equality in society.
Moreover, the continuing critique or woman's cultural, social and literary
identity as the "other" still sparks off a great deal of controversy
and interest, not only among feminist critics, but also in literary studies in
general. So, consequently, as Elaine Showalter has stated in her article,
"The Feminist Critical Revolution," feminist criticism has altered
the traditional norms of literary study: "Since the late 1960s, when
feminist criticism developed as part of the international women's movement, the
assumptions of literary study have been profoundly altered" (3). The study
of a female tradition in literature has transgressed the boundaries of the
traditional canon both in its theoretical, political and literary assumptions.
Hence, feminist literary criticism has become, to put it in Toril Moi's words,
"an urgent political necessity" (82). The over-riding problem is now,
"how to avoid bringing patriarchal notions of aesthetics, history and
tradition to bear on the 'female tradition "(Moi 82). In this respect, Moi
criticises Showalter who did not avoid these pitfalls" and other feminist
critics, like Myra Jehien, who, she thinks, are not even aware of the problem
(82). In view of the arguments presented above, one can, as far as I am
concerned, point out that to write outside the dominant discourses, aesthetics
and literary theory is al-ready to accept the fact of being an outsider and
posing willingly as "the other". Obviously, the problem of the
relationship between politics or ideological criticism and aesthetics is
already a highly complex one.

Modem
critical theory states that reading a text with the intention of decoding its
meaning(s) is a reductive act, and it imposes some kind of limitation (in the
sense of closure) on the text. This is what feminist literary criticism should
try to avoid if it claims a serious place within the theoretical field of
literature. Toril Moi's argument that "without an aesthetic effect there
will be no political effect" is right in as so far as feminist criticism
deconstructs the binary opposition between politics and aesthetics and takes
them as relational concepts and as value-free categories. If feminist criticism
wants to generate new analytical methods in its readings of literary texts, it
can only achieve its aim by challenging and disrupting the patriarchal
tradition within its dominant discourses, that is, by working from within that
tradition. Besides, feminist critics can no longer claim that they work from
marginalised positions. They now constitute the majority of scholars in a great
number of women's studies departments at the universities both in Europe and in
the United States.

A
re-reading of critical theories and methods of the literary tradition is
possible only if those theories and methods are challenged from within their
own assumptions. This is what French feminist criticism aimed at starting with
Helene Cixous who has challenged the binary opposition of man/woman in the
value system. Cixous has subverted the logocentric logic behind the underlying
paradigms of male/female opposition in culture and literature. Binary systems
validate logocentricism so convincingly that "to decentre logocentricism
would invoke re-versing the values placed on each component in the binary terms
which constitute it" (Ruthven 53). Once the binary opposition of
male/female is reversed, as the first step to construct a new methodological
basis for literary analysis, the signifying supremacy passes on to the once-secondary
term in the hierarchy: "female." The second step is to avoid the
temptation of forcing this term's dominance over the now-secondary term:
"male." In other words, the second step is to avoid the static
closure of the binary opposition. The supremacy of the privileged term, female,
cannot remain in its privileged position to create new values and meanings.

As
Barbara Johnson notes, the deconstruction "of a binary opposition is...
not an annihilation of all values or differences; it is an attempt to follow
the subtle, powerful effects of differences already at work with-in the
illusion of a binary opposition" (xii). The meanings are achieved through
a freeplay between presence and absence of the signifier (that produces
meaning). The deconstruction of a text aims to undo "the domination of one
mode of signifying over another (Johnson 5) The problem is that, meaning is
never truly present, because it is endlessly deferred. It is created in an
infinite process of referring to other signifiers, which, in fact give meaning
to the previous signifier. This goes on infinitely. Thus, one can never reach a
transcendental signified where the process of postponing meaning comes to an
end. It is because "Writing is the endless displacement of meaning which
both governs language and places it for ever beyond the reach of a stable
self-authenticating knowledge" (Norris 29).

There
is no origin of meaning and an end to the signification pro-cess. As Jonathan
Culler notes: "If either cause or effect can occupy the position of
origin, then origin is no longer originary; it loses its meta-physical
privilege. A non-originary origin is a "concept" that cannot be
comprehended by the former system and thus disrupts it" (88). In short,
the feminist literary tradition cannot claim to work outside this freeplay and
assert any presence of origins in its analysis and evaluations of literary
texts by privileging the term "female." The terms female and male can
be studied, however, as a relational and differential process. They are related
to each other as signifiers in an endless signification pro-cess. It is not
possible to stop this process as Derrida has brilliantly demonstrated in his
theory of deconstruction. Therefore, it is necessary to study the female
literary tradition in relation to its male counterpart, and to deconstruct all
the binary oppositions that have been falsely created and accepted over the
centuries as universal and privileged value-systems, or meta-narratives.

So,
no matter how strongly the Western logocentricism has claimed the supremacy of
meta-narratives (such as history, logic, reason, or truth), they have been
challenged since all "origins" have been shattered and all illusions
broken. Now, these meta-narratives all split into multiple discourses. Feminist
literary criticism has played a crucial part in breaking the logocentric
tradition and challenging the supremacy of the privileged concepts and values
in the patriarchal systems. This is its alternative approach to literary as
well as cultural studies.

Today
recent critical theories of literature claim that there is no one single
reality or any dominant narrative that can bind the individual writer in any
way. Since the shattering of all meta-narratives there flourished a plurality
of diversified narratives. Therefore, the ideologies of femininity and female
writing, or the male literary tradition, should no longer be thought of in
terms of universal origins or frameworks. To-day no literary critic can claim
to mobilise the innumerable discourses that are produced to deconstruct each
other. Like any other literary discourse, feminist discourses, too, should be
read intertextually, not only in terms of writer against other writers, but
also in terms of the literary against itself. With the advent of deconstructive
criticism, there is now a way to question and to challenge the ideologies by
which the female writers had written and under-written fiction, and also
against which they had encouraged a sustained reading of that fiction.

Feminist
criticism is especially notable as regards its diversity of aims and methods.
As Elizabeth Abel notes in her "Introduction" to Writing and Sexual
Difference (1982), deciphering the interplay of writing and sexual difference
requires a variety of critical approaches (2). Feminist critics are pluralistic
in their literary methods and theories. Annette Kolodny also states that only
by employing a plurality of methods will we protect ourselves from the
temptations of oversimplifying any text" ("Dancing through the
Minefield" 161). But, as Kolodny also points out, there is a basic
principle that unites feminist literary critics under one roof despite their
plurality of methods:

**What unites and repeatedly invigorates**
feminist literary criticism... is neither dogma nor method but an acute and
impassioned attentiveness to the ways in which primarily male structures of
power are inscribed (or encoded) within our literary inheritance: the consequences
of that encoding for women - as characters, as readers, and as writers; and,
with that, a shared analytic concern for the implications of that encoding not
only for a better understanding of the past but also for an improved reordering
of the present and future (162).

Feminist
literary criticism has been very successful especially in reclaiming the lost
literary women and in documenting the sources. In this respect, feminist
criticism has successfully directed attention to the female intellectual
tradition. Many early works on women writers before the 1960s usually focus on
the female literary tradition. Here it is necessary to point out the difference
between "female" and "feminist" positions in literary
studies. According to Toril Moi in Feminist Literary Criticism: "Feminist
criticism...is a specific kind of political discourse, a critical and
theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and
sexism..." (204). Thus the term "feminist" implies a political
position. As Sharon Spencer argues, feminist criticism "attempts to set
standards for a literature that is as free as possible from biased portraits of
individuals because of their class, race or sex"(158). The term
"female," on the other hand, does not imply a political or feminist
position; it implies a gender difference. Female writing can be taken as the
special female expression of women's perspectives on a variety of social,
cultural and political issues without being committed to the feminist position.
Patricia Meyer Spacks points out that "the difference between traditional
female preoccupations and roles and male ones make a difference in female
writing" (7). Not all women writing have a feminist approach in the sense
that they attempt to raise the consciousness of women, or in the sense of
expanding women's culture-bound images. Female writing, then, can be explained
in terms of gender, not in terms of a collective experience of women or their
political perspectives. Hence, male writers can be feminists but they cannot be
female writers. The same holds true for male critics. The male feminist critic
K.K.Ruthven in his Feminist Literary Studies (1984), for example, has stated
that "the aim of a feminist criticism as of any revolutionary criticism
should be to subvert the dominant discourses, not to make com-promises with
them"(6). He rejects the idea that feminist criticism "is essentially
women's work" (9). Ruthven's book has been condemned by Toril Moi for its
"divisiveness, aggression." and "patronising gestures (Feminist
Literary Criticism 209). This kind of critique shows the female critic's keen
observation of the male vision, and indicates the fact that feminist literary
criticism is the only alternative critical field where women wish to be
dominant in practice.

Since
the 19705 feminist criticism also engaged itself in extensive discussions about
the representations of women in literary tradition and the discovery of the
impressive tradition of female writing, because the novel was actually
represented almost wholly by women. Many critics like Dale Spender, Elaine
Showalter, Juliet Mitchell, among others, have investigated the reason why
"To be seen as a woman writer" was "to be seen in a
subcategory" (Spender 166). Thus women began to re-sent the imposed
literary categories and judgements by openly challenging and disrupting the
logocentric tradition. This disruption of the dominant discourses of the
literary establishment actually started with a number of notable books in the
1970s. These include, Patricia Meyer Spacks's The Female Imagination (1975)
which dealt with English and American novels of the past three hundred years;
Ellen Moer's Literary Women (1976) which discusses the history of women's
writing and which is considered a landmark book; Elaine Showalter's A
Literature of Their Own (1977) which describes the female tradition in the
English novel from the Brontes onward as a development of subculture; and
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) which studies
the major female writers of the 19th century. All these notable books have
paved the path for further and more detailed studies of gender and sexism in
literature.

The
major critical studies of women writers from the viewpoint of the female
tradition constitute the first serious feminist criticism. Elaine Showalter's A
Literature of Their Own is a typical example. In her analysis of the historical
development, Showalter presents three important stages of women's writing.
First, the imitation of the mainstream literary tradition: second, the protest
against the standards of this dominant tradition concerning social values and
rights: and third, self-discovery which aims at a search for identity.
Showalter identifies these stages as Feminine, Feminist and Female. The
Feminine period covers the years between 1840-1889; the Feminist period
1890-1920, and the Female period starts in 1920 and comes to the 1960s. It
continues with its renewal of perspectives with the advent of the women's movement
after the 1960s. Showalter's contribution to the feminist criticism centres on
her re-discovery of the forgotten women writers falling into these stages. Nine
years later, Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel: 100 good writers before Jane
Austen (1986) appeared. This book lays bare an impressive amount of lost women
novelists. In her "Introduction" Spender writes: "For the more
women novelists I found, and the more women's novels I read, the more I was
convinced of the desirability, and the necessity of reclaiming this lost
tradition, and of challenging the received wisdom of the literary establishment
- that for women novelists it all started with Jane Austen" (2). Thus,
Spender undertakes the difficult task of re-presenting the "great heritage
of women novelists" (2). She takes these women novelists as the
"bearers of women's traditions "(5), and calls them "the mothers
of the novel".
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic is another
brilliantly written massive book on the major female writers of the 19th
century. It presents the nature of the "distinctively female tradition"
(xi) of the 19h century. Gilbert and Gubar's main argument is that artistic
creativity, which is perceived within the dominant 19th century tradition
basically as a male quality, is in fact a patriarchal superimposition upon the
women writers who are imprisoned within it. They write that in the image of the
Divine Creator the male author fathers his text. Since women take the same
masculine cosmic author as their model too, they end up copying or identifying
with the dominant literary images of femininity which come out of the
phallocentric myth of creativity". Authored by a male God and by a godlike
male, killed into a "perfect" image of herself, the woman writers'
self-contemplation may be said to have begun with a searching glance into the
mirror of the male-inscribed literary text (15). Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar especially emphasise the metaphor of paternity" (7) in reference to
the notion of authority as the legitimised masculine concept in the owner-ship
of texts. Associating 'author' with the father image. Gilbert and Gubar argue
that, "if the author/father is owner of his text. and of his reader's
attention, he is also, of course, owner/possessor of the subject of his text,
that is to say of those figures, scenes, and events." (7). From the male
perspective, then, since the owner of the text is the author, he is entitled to
the control of all his images. Women, thus, had to conform to the male
standards of the images of femaleness in their own writing. According to Judith
Fetterley, "that is the consequence of the patriarchal prediction that to
be human is to be male" (ix). Literary women, then, are forced to identify
with men and male standards of writing, and yet they are, at the same time,
constantly reminded of being female writers. So, deprived of the power of
discourse that is given universal parameters in the hands of male writers, the
female writers fought against being the "other" and the
"outsider in the literary tradition: "When only one reality is
encouraged, legitimised, and transmitted, and when that limited vision
endlessly insists on its comprehensiveness, then we have the conditions
necessary for that confusion of consciousness in which impalpability
flourishes" (Fetterley xi).

**III. FEMINIST READINGS: A DECONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH**

Judith
Fetterley states that "to be excluded from a literature that claims to
define one's identity is to experience a peculiar form of powerlessness"
(xiii). According to her this powerlessness results from the "endless
division of self against self" as well as from "invocation to identity
as male while being reminded that to be male - to be universal - is to be not
female " (xiii). The assumption here, that there is something universal
and that is male, may hold true for the l9th century women writers who, as Anne
Bronte, tried to challenge and to change it. But, the case is no longer the
same in our day. Literary texts cannot insist on their universality let alone
define it in specifically male terms. Yet, universal archetypes were deeply
imprinted on the literary unconscious for a long time until they were
deconstructed. Jonathan Culler gives "The legend of Sleepy Hollow" as
an example to the creation of a universal archetype in literature that is male
based. Quoting from Leslie Fiedler, Culler states that the figure of Rip van
Winkle has created an archetype for the American novelists. In this archetype
"the protagonist struggles against constricting, civilising, oppressive
forces embodied by women. The typical protagonist... seen as embodying the
universal American dream, has been a man on the run..." (51-52). According
to Culler, reading such texts the woman reader is forced to "identify with
a hero who makes woman the enemy" (52). Thus the woman reader, as
Fetterley has also pointed out, is asked to identify against herself. That is
why Fetterley calls this identification process "an endless division of
self against self" (xiii). The only way to repudiate the universality of
these structures in the texts is to read against their own logic of
foundations, and to become a resistant reader to the deliberately created
illusions and imposed meanings. In other words, once the structure of the text
is deconstructed, its universality inevitably disappears, and its centres lose
their pull; because, in such a reading the dominating presence of any central meaning
fades into absence. Jonathan Culler explains it most clearly:

**In literary criticism, a powerful**
strategy is to produce readings that identify and situate male misreadings.
Though it is difficult to work out in positive, independent terms what it might
mean to read as a woman, one may confidently propose a purely differential
definition: to read as a woman is to avoid reading as a man, to identify the
specific defences and distortions of male readings and provide correctives
(54).

Reading
as a woman provides a totally different point of departure from reading as a
man. But that does not mean that the female reader reads outside the
theoretical discourses, but that the female reader, by working within those
discourses, resists and undoes the falsely situated perspectives of the male
reader. What happens when a female reader attempts to adjust the already
accepted reading process (that is male) is to reverse it in such a way that the
perspective of the male reader loses its universality and is neutralised. By
working from within the literary tradition, the female reader challenges its
logocentricism. Thus, she uses the theoretical discourses and their methods in
order to subvert the centres of male domination in those discourses. By
focusing on the overlooked and suppressed elements of the text, the female
reader shows that the male commentary of the text does not actually provide a
comprehensive vision, but a limited interpretation. This kind of reading
displaces the dominant male perception, and shows its critical vision to be
deceptive. "The task at this level is not to establish a woman's reading
that would parallel a male reading" writes Culler, "but rather,
through argument and an attempt to account for textual evidence, to produce a
comprehensive perspective, a compelling reading"(58). He continues:

**The conclusions reached in feminist**
criticism of this sort are not specific to women in the sense that one can
sympathise, comprehend, and agree only if one has had certain experiences which
are women's. On the contrary, these readings demonstrate the limitations of
male critical interpretations in terms that male critics would purport to
accept, and they seek, like all ambitious acts of criticism, to attain a
generally convincing understanding - an understanding that is feminist because
it is a critique of male chauvinism. (58)

This
kind of reading is both rewarding and refreshing because it retrieves and
recuperates the marginal and the undermined elements in a text, and gives a
broader perspective to the reader. A feminist explication of Joseph Conrad's
text Heart of Darkness is a good example of such a reading. The critical
evaluations of the book provide a clear indication of the kind of limited
interpretations male readers have introduced. The text itself allows for a
biased male vision of women as well. "It's queer how out of touch with
truth women are," says the narrator to his male audience sitting on a
boat, "they live in a world of their own, and there had never been
anything like it, and never can be" (27). Marlow, the narrator, goes on to
say that "it is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it
would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have
been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and
knock the whole thing over" (27), Women are nearly absent from this story,
but Marlow's pointing out this fact makes them quite noticeable. This is a
remarkable paradox in the text.

Conrad's
text is framed by a story about Marlow's bizarre experiences in the heart of
Africa - especially his ambiguous relationship with Kurtz who is also absent
from the action, but whose presence through the others' discourse, dominates
the entire story. Marlow is not only the narrator of the story, but also a
character within the story itself. His comments about women, and his response
to the "dead negro" - show him as a typical Englishman capable of
insensitive jokes. Further, most readers tend to concentrate on him as the
storyteller. If, however, the attention is directed to language, and to the
ways in which meaning is produced, a decidedly male realm is encountered. The
values that language is loaded with are masculine dominated, because the
language used in the text gives us a binary logic that associates light,
activity and thought with masculinity, and dark passivity and emotion with
femininity. Feminist criticism of the text uncovers this overlooked element and
challenges this already accepted symbolism. First of all, this is a story about
manly adventure, narrated by a man. Secondly, he uses an overt male language.
When Marlow states, "We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of
darkness" (59), his use of the sexual metaphor of penetration already
associates darkness with women. Here is how he uses language to reflect
masculinity:

**The mind of man is capable of anything**
- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was
there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage - who can tell? -
but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder
- the man knows, and can look on without a wink. He must meet that truth with
his own stuff - with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do.
Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags -rags that would fly off at the first good
shake. No: you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row -
is there? Very well: I hear: I admit; but I have a voice too, and for good or
evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. (51)

Here,
Marlow is not only universalising a relative concept like truth, but also
making it an all-male meta-narrative which only men can comprehend because of
their vast intellectual capacity: and thus, he is excluding women from the
realm of wisdom without a second thought. But his assertion that male speech
"cannot be silenced," al-ready implies the ironic displacement within
itself. Is there, then, a possibility of silencing it? It seems so, since the
male voice feels threatened by this possibility, and resists this displacement.
This masculine language connects itself with the masculine value system, in
other words, with the culture and ideology of Western societies which place it
in a complex interrelationship to the patriarchal and imperialist ideologies. This
union of patriarchal and imperialist visions informs the masculine perceptions
of the basic assumptions that organise our thinking. We are conditioned by the
basic assumptions, because they form an internalised ideology. Does Conrad's
text, then, aim to colonise and pacify the savage darkness and women? Just like
the savages, women are silenced and kept out: "They - the women I mean -
are out of it - should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that
beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse" (63). Here, it is
evident that the narrator tries to impose a certain ideological view on the
status of women (that they are not considered as natural parts of the masculine
world, which is, of course (!) the whole world itself), but the very language he
uses shows an inherent contradiction in this view. In other words, ironically
this assertion reverses itself because the women's world keeps the male world
from deteriorating. The women and the savages, in this text, are marginalised
in the sense that they are speechless. We never hear their voice. Thus, the
commonly accepted interpretive analyses of the text would leave them out, and
this would seem natural since the centre is always the male voice in the
narrative. The native laundress, the savage woman, the Company women are all
silenced. Only Marlow's aunt and the Intended are allowed to utter a few lines.
Yet, all of them stand for darkness for Marlow and the reader unwittingly
accepts this imposition. In this respect, the language of the text is permeated
with an internalised ideology that is the unconscious basis of individual experience.
Language reveals the kind of ideology that imposes a unified meaning on the
whole text. It seems to hide the differences. But, the de-construction of the
text reveals the opposite of what it so strongly asserts. For example, we are
asked to take for granted that the savages "are simple people" (68)
and that they are savages, without considering their customary social systems
and their cultural practices. We are led to consider these practices as
deviances and as disparate experiences, and not as different value systems.
Here, it is important to note that difference plays a crucial part in the
critical search for the 'other' possible meanings that this text embodies. The
deconstructive concept of "difference" is useful in understanding the
cultural and psychoanalytical ac-count of the self:

**Difference, in this context; is not**
simply de-fined by reference to a norm - The masculine norm - whose negative
side it would be while remaining inscribed within the realm of identity. Rather
difference is to be thought of as other, not bounded by any system or any
structure. Difference becomes the negation of phallogo-centricism, but in the
name of its own inner diversity.
**(Feral 91)**

Since
deconstruction operates by questioning everything, it is a process of
"undoing" the signification process within the text. As Barbara
Johnson reminds us, deconstructive reading depends on "the careful teasing
out of warring forces of signification within the text" (5). These forces
can never be subjected to a single interpretation. Johnson goes on to say that
"a deconstructive reading, is a reading that analyses the specificity of a
text's critical difference from itself which it 'knows' but cannot say"
(5). To show the differences within, the critic gets engaged in freeplay with
the signifiers in the text. Since language is a signing process, it is commonly
used in discriminating women. This is the case in Heart of Darkness.

Although
what we call natural is imposed upon language, the very nature of language
shows a gap between the text and its imposed meanings. In this sense language
reveals the contradictions, and shows what seems to be the unnatural as
difference, not as 'unnatural.' The savage woman, for example, stands for
darkness, something to be avoided or conquered. Marlow transforms her into a
symbol in order to control the dark wilderness. He describes her as "a
wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman"(76). Marlow's descriptive
adjectives, however, do not really convey her, but the impression she makes on
him:

**She was savage and superb, wild-eyed**
and magnificent: there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate
progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful
land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious
life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image
of its own tenebrous and passionate soul... Her face had a tragic and fierce
aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some
struggling, half--shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and
like the wilderness itself. (76-77)

The
savage woman represents, for Marlow, the very core of wilderness. -By endowing
her with symbolic attributes, Marlow hides the true customs and culture of the
natives, their difference, and imposes his own controlling power on them, so
that he is able to remove the potentially dangerous forces these cultures may
possess. This danger be-comes explicit when the savage woman starts to move,
and opens her arms to the sky. She is no longer the controlled symbol, but a
real threat now. Assigning the woman with his own symbolic meanings Marlow is
able to impose his own reading on what is different, and he makes her an object
of his vision. But, as Patricia Waugh argues, "the object must be
perceived in relation to itself, rather than in relation to the experiences/feelings/thoughts
of the perceiving mind" (19). Thus, the savage woman is not an inhabitant
of the jungle as Marlow's patriarchal perceptions would designate her. This
stylized image of the woman, "who tread(s) the earth proudly" and who
is of the "fecund" earth itself (56), shows the image making and
identity making power of the masculine discourse. This kind of imposition of
meanings does not indicate the male wish for victimisation, on the contrary, it
shows the woman's power. If we reverse Marlow's focus on this woman and
consider the woman's warlike ornaments, Marlow's indication of her grief loses
its ground. She is a female warrior whose silence indicates a defying of
outside forces, a resistance to the process of mystification Marlow imposes on
her in order to "meet that truth with his own true stuff" as he
states. Her difference indicates that she is the other, not dependent on any
other system. Her difference negates Marlow's authorial aim of her mystification,
and shows a departure from the masculine power which has natural links with the
imperialist ideologies. The deliberate defence of belief in masculine truth and
power is subverted by the very language the masculine subject chooses to use.
In this overt way, the text deconstructs its own meanings, and all of Marlow's
grand narratives are dis-placed and subverted. In short, this kind of
alternative reading of the text opens the reader's consciousness to broader and
more comprehensive perspectives. It is rewarding because it shows how to
restore the deliberately marginalised and undermined elements of texts. It also
questions how the masculine representations came to be created and validated.
For many readers accepting such representations is a fairly unconscious
process. It seems quite natural to subscribe to the ideology inherent in them.
Feminist readings show them to be deceptive, and they attempt to refine these
basic assumptions: furthermore, feminist readings direct our attention to the
infinite variations of the same text in its interpretations, and point to the
text's difference from its own basic assumptions as we have seen in the case of
Heart of Darkness. Feminist criticism of this text challenges the sufficiency
of its received critical opinion.

The
"primarily male structures of power" in Kolodny's words, are so
strongly imprinted in the general consciousness of the reading public that they
have become internal to the writing process itself. Only a systematic approach
to representational practices in literature would dismantle those binary
structures of power. As Rosalind Coward emphasises, "As feminists we have
to be constantly alerted to what reality is being constructed and how representations
are achieving this construction" ("Are Women's Novels Feminist
Novels?" 227). A feminist reading should aim to contest what seems to be a
natural inscription as an agreed definition of power structures. The result may
show that such inscriptions are in fact inherently phallocentric . In other words,
male domination in texts usually blends social and ideological systems which
not only validate, but also advance a patriarchal power. Contest-ing
phallocentric patterns of thought, feminist criticism challenges the masculine
perceptions and representations as the only natural sources of authority.
Dismantling logocentricism also leads to the deconstruction of patriarchal
"systems 9f thought which legitimise themselves by reference to some
PRESENCE or point of authority prior to and outside of themselves"
(Hawthorn 130). This point of authority is the accepted and agreed-upon
definition of the author as a male presence. This male-centred writing has
created the conventions by which all our literary thinking has been
conditioned. But, it is powerfully challenged and re-adjusted by feminist
literary criticism.

The
most brilliant challenge comes from postmodernism, or to put it more sharply,
from the postmodern awareness of feminist literary criticism, to this process
of contesting male authority. Due to its essential nature of interrogation of
all established premises in literature. postmodernism can be considered as a
natural ally of feminist literary criticism. The major break with tradition is
provided by this postmodern challenge of norms, concepts and literary
conventions. The most important characteristic of postmodernism, which the feminist
critics can easily adopt to their literary practice, is its de-canonisation
process. Arguing that "Feminism is an essential part of
postmodern-ism," Dina Sherzer notes, "all master codes, all
conventions, institutions, authorities" come under the critical scrutiny
of postmodern challenge (156). Ihab Hassan, in his article, "Making Sense:
The Trials of Postmodernism." has put it very strongly: We deconstruct,
displace, demystify the logocentric, ethnocentric, phallocentric order of
things" (445)

Postmodern
texts displace the centre of authority and origin in texts, and they question
the very premises these origins are based on. They question and demystify the
meta-narratives by breaking them into their multiple discourses. Similarly,
feminist literary criticism directs our attention to the important task of
displacing the patriarchal order of things, as well as disrupting the nature
and origin of masculine representations in texts.

Jeanette
Winterson's Sexing the Cherry (1989) provides such a vision. Celebrating the
power of imagination this novel brilliantly presents a play on meta-narratives
like History and Reality. It deconstructs the binary oppositions of
History/fiction and male/female, not by reversing the hierarchy, but by
blending them in such a way as to show their relational and differential
process. In this way we are able to follow the "powerful effects of
differences" between male/female and History/fiction. The novel takes
place in 17th century London, where the fabulous Dog Woman makes a living by
organising fights and races for her hounds. But, the date of the text is not
fixed in the sense of closure, because Winterson challenges fixed ideas of
history by creating an aura of ambiguity and uncertainty in her reference to
the historical events. The Dog Woman's foster son, Jordan, narrates half the
novel, his sections alternating with the mother's. In between is the fabliau
narrative of the twelve dancing princesses. Jordan presents a
"real-life" narrative, but its fictionality and the stylistic emphasis
on the elements of fantasy reverse the opposition of reality/ fiction. Take,
for example, Jordan's claim: "The words resist erasure. The oldest and
most stubborn form a thick crust of chattering rage" (17), and The Dog
Woman's emphasis: "In the city of words that I have told you about the
smell of wild strawberries was the smell characteristic of the house."
(20). This kind of self-consciousness abounds throughout the novel, and reality
turns into fiction. This is exemplified in the metaphorical displacement of
gender in one of Jordan's adventures. In search of his beautiful dancer,
Fortunata, who is one of the dancing princesses, Jordan wanders from theatre to
opera, from cafes to casinos, and finally to a pen of prostitutes. He enters in
female dis-guise. Then, beneath the prostitutes' lodgings, he discovers the
Nuns of the Convent of the Holy Mother. Amidst these totally different types of
women, Jordan realises that male and female identities can easily switch
places:

**I have met a number of people who,**
anxious to be free of the burden of their gender, have dressed themselves men
as women and women as men. After my experience in the pen of prostitutes I
decided to continue as a woman for a time and took a job on a fish stall. I
noticed that women have a private language. A language not dependent on the
constructions of men but structured by signs and expressions, and that uses
ordinary words as code-words meaning something other. (31)

The
"code-words of the women meaning something other" in contrast to the
male constructions point to the indefinability of meaning; meaning cannot be
traced down to any original point in the language system. Although Jordan
states that he has long been interested in the contradictions," concerning
the paradox of the order in religion between the command, "Thou shalt not
kill" and its opposite, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth." he hopes to get "a full rendering of their meaning".
But, instead he ironically points to "contradictory certainties" in
certain meta-narratives like Religion, Truth and History. Because of this
inherent paradox in their very nature, these meta-narratives de-construct
themselves, and that is the irony Jordan notices. Similarly, meanings in
Language cannot be traced down to any certainty. In this respect,
"Language always betrays us." says Jordan, "tells the truth when
we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be
precise" (90). In this text realistic concerns are placed in an ironic tension
to the fantastic due to this nature of language. Therefore, Jordan remarks:
"And so what we have told you is true, although it is not" (95). The
text subverts the dominant male vision as the only viable vision of reality,
and displaces male perception as the only perception with universal parameters.
It also shatters one of the most deeply seated and powerful of meta-narratives,
history, into its multiple discourses as produced by the alternating historical
accounts of the characters. So, the result is there is no History as a
universal dis-course or document, but different visions of it provided by
different narratives. In short, Winterson's text deconstructs the male
discourses of History, by working from within those discourses; and shows that
all concepts should be dealt with, not in terms of closed realities, but in
terms of continuous process. Thus, it emerges as a challenging post-modernist
text.
As can be observed from the ironic handling of the conventions of history,
fiction and reality in Sexing the Cherry, it is now quite impossible for any
writer to impose any fixed and static notions of reality. Postmodernism
contests all fixed notions and opens new horizons in fiction writing. Feminist
readings provide a similar opening up of the text's possibilities. Thus, the
"male generative power" as the only creative power in literature is
thoroughly subverted by the feminist readings of texts. Whereas, in terms of
literary expression, many women writers, who are included among the
postmodernists, depart from the practice of "formal abstraction, aesthetic
distance, autonomy, and 'objectivity' which has dominated modernist aesthetics
and much twentieth-century literary theory" (Waugh 76). Instead of
displaying an intricate linguistic virtuosity and metafictional play of words,
women writing in the postmodern line, have explored "human subjectivity
and history in terms of non-systematized particulars" (Waugh 77).
According to Patricia Waugh, it is important for women to experience and to
explore them-selves as human 'subjects' in their fiction, and not to follow the
metafictional practice of the fragmentation of the self, in order to
deconstruct subject positions they are situated in by the male ideologies:
"Once women have experienced themselves as 'subjects' then they can begin
to problematize and to deconstruct the socially constructed subject positions
available to them, and to recognize that an inversion of the valuation of
'maleness' and 'femaleness' will not in itself undermine the social
construction of masculinity and femininity" (25). This is only part of
what feminist readings investigate in many postmodemist or traditional texts.
The alternative feminist reading resists all ideological and linguistic
impositions. Therefore, now, the notion of an all-powerful author is totally
demystified. This is the most important contribution of feminist literary
criticism to the literary studies that ties it so closely with postmodern
awareness. In this respect, feminist literary criticism has not only achieved a
revision of the literary canon, but also emerged as one of the most challenging
critical theories in the rethinking of all literary conventions. Thus, feminist
literary criticism has been a revisionist theoretical movement within literary
studies.