Feminist Literary Crticism:The Second Sex

Feminist Literary Crticism
Also known as: Feminist Criticism

Feminist literary criticism is literary analysis that arises from the viewpoint of feminism, feminist theory and/or feminist politics. Basic methods of feminist literary criticism include:

·         Identifying with female characters: This is a way to challenge the male-centered outlook of authors. Feminist literary criticism suggests that women in literature were historically presented as objects seen from a male perspective.

·         Reevaluating literature and the world in which literature is read: This involves questioning whether society has predominantly valued male authors and their literary works because it has valued males more than females.

A feminist literary critic resists traditional assumptions while reading. In addition to challenging assumptions which were thought to be universal, feminist literary criticism actively supports including women's knowledge in literature and valuing women's experiences.

Women through the ages have written feminist theory and various forms of feminist critique. During the period of second-wave feminism, the loftiest academic circles increasingly challenged the male literary canon. Feminist literary critcism has since intertwined with postmodernism and increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles.


following is the detailed summary for better understanding 

The Second Sex Simone De Beauvoir

Synopsis

Volume One, Facts and Myths

Destiny

Part One "Destiny" has three chapters. The first, "Biological Data", describes the relationship of ovum to sperm in various creatures (fish, insects, mammals), leading up to the human being. She describes women's subordination to the species in terms of reproduction, compares the physiology of men and women, and ultimately declares that values cannot be based on physiology and that the facts of biology must be viewed in light of the ontological, economic, social, and physiological context.[6] In chapter 2 "The Psychoanalytical Point of View", Beauvoir first expounds the theories of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. She then rejects them both, for example, finding that a study of eroticism in the context of perception goes beyond the capabilities of the psychoanalytic framework.[7] In chapter 3 "The Point of View of Historical Materialism", Beauvoir relates The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Friedrich Engels but ultimately finds it lacking any basis or reasons for its claims to assign "the great historical defeat of the female sex" to the invention of bronze and the emergence of private property. She quotes Engels, "for now we know nothing about it" and rejects him because he "dodges" the answers.[8]

History

Part Two "History" has five chapters which are unnamed in the unabridged, second translation. According to Beauvoir, two factors explain the evolution of women's condition: participation in production and freedom from reproductive slavery.[9] In chapter 1, Beauvoir states the problem that motherhood left woman "riveted to her body" like an animal and made it possible for men to dominate her and Nature.[10] In chapter 2, she describes man's gradual domination of women, starting with the statue of a female Great Goddess found in Susa, and eventually the opinion of ancient Greeks like Pythagoras who wrote, "There is a good principle that created order, light and man and a bad principle that created chaos, darkness and woman." Men succeed in the world by transcendence, but immanence is the lot of women.[11] In chapter 3, explaining inheritance historically, Beauvoir says men oppress women when they seek to perpetuate the family and keep patrimony intact. A comparison follows of women's situation in ancient Greece with Rome. In Greece, with exceptions like Sparta where there were no restraints on women's freedom, women are treated almost like slaves. Menander writes, "Woman is a pain that never goes away." In Rome because men were still the masters, women enjoyed more rights but, still discriminated against on the basis of their gender, had only empty freedom.[12]

In chapter 4, Beauvoir says that with the exception of German tradition, Christianity and its clergy served to subordinate women, quoting Paul the Apostle, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom (who wrote, "Of all the wild animals, none can be found as harmful as women.")[13] She also describes prostitution and the changes in dynamics brought about by courtly love that occurred about the twelfth century.[14] Beauvoir then describes from the early fifteenth century "great Italian ladies and courtesans" and singles out the Spaniard Teresa of Ávila as successfully raising "herself as high as a man."[15] Through the nineteenth century women's legal status remained unchanged but individuals (like Marguerite de Navarre) excelled by writing and acting. Some men like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Molière, the Marquis de Condorcet, and François Poullain de la Barre helped women's status through their works.[16] In chapter 5, Beauvoir finds fault with the Napoleonic Code and criticizes Auguste Comte and Honoré de Balzac.[17] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is described as an antifeminist who valued a woman at 8/27th the value of a man.[18] The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century gave women an escape from their homes but they were paid little for their work.[19] Beauvoir then traces the growth of trade unions and participation by women. She then examines the spread of birth control methods from ancient Egypt to the twentieth century, and then touches on the history of abortion.[20] She then relates the history of women's suffrage in France, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany and the U.S.S.R.[21] Beauvoir writes that women who have finally begun to feel at home on the earth like Rosa Luxemburg and Marie Curie "brilliantly demonstrate that it is not women's inferiority that has determined their historical insignificance: it is their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority".[22]

Myths

Part Three "Myths" has three chapters. Chapter 1 is a long, wide-ranging presentation about the "everlasting disappointment" of women[23] for the most part from a male heterosexual's point of view. It covers female menstruation, virginity, and female sexuality including copulation, marriage, motherhood, and prostitution. To illustrate man's experience of the "horror of feminine fertility", Beauvoir quotes the British Medical Journal of 1878 in which a member of the British Medical Association writes, "It is an indisputable fact that meat goes bad when touched by menstruating women."[24] She quotes poetry by André Breton, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Michel Leiris, Paul Verlaine, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Valéry, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and William Shakespeare (Hamlet) along with other novels, philosophers, and films (Citizen Kane).[25] Beauvoir writes on the last page of the chapter that sexual division is maintained in homosexuality, presumably to indicate that she thinks her work applies to all humans.[23]

Chapter 2 examines the bodies of work of five example writers, in six sections, Montherlant or the Bread of Disgust, D. H. Lawrence or Phallic Pride, Claudel or the Handmaiden of the Lord, Breton or Poetry, Stendhal or Romancing the Real, and an unnamed summary. Beauvoir writes that these "examples show that the great collective myths are reflected in each singular writer".[26] "Feminine devotion is demanded as a duty by Montherlant and Lawrence; less arrogant, Claudel, Breton, and Stendhal admire it as a generous choice...."[27] She finds that woman is "the privileged Other", that Other is defined in the "way the One chooses to posit himself",[28] and:

"But the only earthly destiny reserved to the woman equal, child-woman, soul sister, woman-sex, and female animal is always man."[29]

The chapter closes with the thought, "The absence or insignificance of the female element in a body of work is symptomatic... it loses importance in a period like ours in which each individual's particular problems are of secondary import."[30]

In Chapter 3, Beauvoir says that "mystery" is prominent among men's myths about women.[31] She also says mystery is not confined by sex to women but instead by situation, and that it pertains to any slave.[32] She thinks it disappeared, for example, during the eighteenth century when men however briefly considered women to be peers.[33] To close Part One, she quotes Arthur Rimbaud who writes that hopefully one day, women can become fully human beings when man gives her her freedom.[34]

Volume Two, Lived Experience

Formative Years

Part One has four chapters. In chapter 1 "Childhood", sometimes quoting Colette Audry, Helene Deutsch, Thyde Monnier, and Dr. W. Liepmann,[35] Beauvoir presents a child's life beginning with birth and attachment to maternal flesh.[36] She contrasts a girl's upbringing with a boy's, who at age 3 or 4 is told he is a "little man".[37] She describes and rejects Freud's "female castration complex" and says that girls do learn to envy aspects of boys' urination.[38] Girls are given a doll as an alter ego and in compensation.[39] A girl is taught to be a woman and her "feminine" destiny is imposed on her by her teachers and society.[40] She has, for example, no innate "maternal instinct".[41] Because housework can be done by a young child, sometimes her mother asks her to do it.[42] A girl comes to believe in and to worship a male god and to create imaginary adult lovers.[43] The discovery of sex is a "phenomenon as painful as weaning" and she views it with disgust.[44] When she discovers that men, not women, are the masters of the world the revelation "imperiously modifies her consciousness of herself".[45] Beauvoir concludes this chapter with a description of puberty and starting menstruation as well as the way girls imagine sex with a man.[46]

In chapter 2 "The Girl", Beauvoir describes ways that girls in their late teens accept their "femininity". Girls might do this by running away from home, through fascination with the disgusting, by following nature, or by stealing.[47] Chapter 3 "Sexual Initiation" is a description of sexual relations with men. Along with numbers of psychiatrists, Beauvoir believed that the repercussions of the first of these experiences informs a woman's whole life.[48] Chapter 4 "The Lesbian" is a description of sexual relations with women, which Beauvoir believed that society thought was a "forbidden path".[49] She wrote that "homosexuality is no more a deliberate perversion than a fatal curse".[50]

Situation

Part Two "Situation" has six chapters. In chapter 5 "The Married Woman" Beauvoir demonstrates her negative thoughts about marriage saying that "to ask two spouses bound by practical, social and moral ties to satisfy each other sexually for their whole lives is pure absurdity".[51] She then describes the work of married women, beginning with several pages about housecleaning which she says is "holding away death but also refusing life".[52] She thinks, "what makes the lot of the wife-servant ungratifying is the division of labor that dooms her wholly to the general and inessential".[53] Beauvoir says a woman finds her dignity only in accepting her vassalage which is bed "service" and housework "service".[54] A woman is weaned away from her family and finds only "disappointment" on the day after her wedding.[55] Beauvoir points out various inequalities between a wife and husband (in, for example, age) and finds they pass the time not in love but in "conjugal love".[56] She thinks that marriage "almost always destroys woman".[57] She quotes Sophia Tolstoy who wrote in her diary: "you are stuck there forever and there you must sit".[57] Beauvoir thinks marriage is a perverted institution oppressing both men and women.[58]

Chapter 6 "The Mother" is two-thirds not about children. The first nine pages or so are an exposition on abortion arguing that abortions performed legally by doctors would have little risk to the mother and highlighting the plight of families and children born to unsuitable homes.[59] She argues that the Catholic Church cannot make the claim that the souls of the unborn would not end up in heaven because of their lack of baptism because that would be contradictory to other Church teachings. For example, the Church taught that the souls of men who were fatally injured without baptism would still be with God.[60] She states that the issue of abortion is not an issue of morality but of “masculine sadism” toward woman.[60] The following fourteen pages describe pregnancy.[61] Pregnancy is viewed as both a gift and a curse to woman. In this new creation of a new life the woman loses her Self, seeing herself as "no longer anything...[but] a passive instrument".[62] When she arrives at children, Beauvoir continues in negative mode with, "maternal sadomasochism creates guilt feelings for the daughter that will express themselves in sadomasochistic behavior toward her own children, without end".[63] She finishes with an appeal for socialist child rearing practices, "in a properly organized society where the child would in great part be taken charge of by the group".[64]

In chapter 7 "Social Life", Beauvoir describes a woman's clothes, her girlfriends and her relationships with priests, doctors, famous performers, and lovers,[65] concluding that "adultery, friendships, and social life are but diversions within married life".[66] She also thinks, "marriage, by frustrating women's erotic satisfaction, denies them the freedom and individuality of their feelings, drives them to adultery".[67] In chapter 8 "Prostitutes and Hetaeras", Beauvoir describes prostitutes and their relationships with pimps and with other women,[68] as well as hetaeras. In contrast to prostitutes, hetaeras can gain recognition as an individual and if successful can aim higher and be publicly distinguished.[69] This can be observed in movie stars like Rita Hayworth.[70] Chapter 9 "From Maturity to Old Age" is women's path to menopause which might arouse woman's homosexual feelings (which Beauvoir thinks are latent in most women). When she agrees to grow old she becomes elderly with half of her adult life left to live.[71] Woman might choose to live through her children (often her son) or her grandchildren but she faces "solitude, regret, and ennui".[72] To pass her time she might engage in useless "women's handiwork" (which can't be a diversion because the "mind is vacant"), watercolors, music or reading, or she might join charitable organizations.[73] While a few rare women are committed to a cause and have an end in mind, Beauvoir concludes that "the highest form of freedom a woman-parasite can have is stoic defiance or skeptical irony".[74]

In chapter 10 "Woman's Situation and Character", Beauvoir says a woman knows how to be as active, effective and silent as a man.[75] She says Stendhal said that woman handles masculine logic "as skillfully as man if she has to".[76] But her situation keeps her being useful, preparing food, clothes, and lodging.[75] She worries because she does not do anything, she complains, she cries, and she may threaten suicide. She protests but doesn't escape her lot.[77] She may achieve happiness in "Harmony" and the "Good" as illustrated by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.[78] She is the target of religion.[79] Beauvoir thinks it is pointless to try to decide whether woman is superior or inferior, and that it is obvious that the man's situation is "infinitely preferable".[80] She writes, "for woman there is no other way out than to work for her liberation".[80]

Justifications

Part Three "Justifications" is brief and has three chapters. Chapter 11 "The Narcissist" describes narcissistic women who might find themselves in a mirror and in the theater.[81] Chapter 12 "The Woman in Love" describes women in and outside marriage: "The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not a mortal danger."[82] Chapter 13 "The Mystic" talks about the lives of among others, Mme. Guyon, Mme. Krüdener, Saint Catherine of Siena, Angela of Foligno, Marie Alacoque, Catherine Emmerich, and Therese Neumann, some of whom developed stigmata.[83] Beauvoir says these women may develop a relation "with an unreal"— with their double or a god, or they create an "unreal relation with a real being".[84]

Toward Liberation

Part Four "Toward Liberation" has one chapter and a conclusion. In chapter 14 "The Independent Woman", de Beauvoir describes the difference for a male, who might, for example, move to a hotel in a new city, and a female who would feel the need to set up a household.[85] She also mentions women with careers who are able to escape sadism and masochism.[86] A few women have successfully reached a state of equality, and Beauvoir, in a footnote, singles out the example of Clara and Robert Schumann.[87] Beauvoir says that the goals of wives can be overwhelming: as a wife tries to be elegant, a good housekeeper and a good mother.[88] Singled out are "actresses, dancers and singers" who may achieve independence.[89] Among writers, Beauvoir chooses only Emily Brontë, Woolf and ("sometimes") Mary Webb (and she mentions Colette and Mansfield) as among those who have tried to approach nature "in its inhuman freedom". De Beauvoir then says that women don't "challenge the human condition" and that in comparison to the few "greats", woman comes out as "mediocre" and will continue at that level for quite some time.[90] A woman could not have been Vincent van Gogh or Franz Kafka. Beauvoir thinks that perhaps, of all women, only Saint Teresa lived her life for herself.[91] She says it is "high time" woman "be left to take her own chances".[92]

In her conclusion, Beauvoir traces a future when women and men are equals, something the "Soviet revolution promised" but did not ever deliver:[93]

women raised and educated exactly like men would work under the same conditions and for the same salaries; erotic freedom would be accepted by custom, but the sexual act would no longer be considered a remunerable "service"; women would be obliged to provide another livelihood for themselves; marriage would be based on a free engagement that the spouses could break when they wanted to; motherhood would be freely chosen—that is, birth control and abortion would be allowed—and in return all mothers and their children would be given the same rights; maternity leave would be paid for by the society that would have responsibility for the children, which does not mean that they would be taken from their parents but that they would not be abandoned to them.[93]

Beauvoir explains "a basic law of political economy" to stop "endless debate" about "the ambiguity of the words 'give' and 'take'". She says that a woman needs to understand that "an exchange...is negotiated according to the value the proposed merchandise has for the buyer and not for the seller: she was duped by being persuaded she was priceless...."[94] Beauvoir takes time to answer skeptics and her critics but quickly reaches the end:[95]

to carry off this supreme victory, men and women must, among other things and beyond their natural differentiations, unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.[95]

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All the stuffiest terms,

Bluestocking

This term refers to an educated and intellectual woman (like me), but its original reference was to a group of 18th-century women led by Elizabeth Montagu. The bummer is that men usually use it as a derogatory term—you know, that whole "boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses" thing.

Bad Faith

This one's a biggie for us existentialists—especially for my main man Sartre. Here's the gist: we're all free, but that freedom comes with a disturbing heap o' responsibility. (I'm a human, which is great, but now I have to deal with social pressure and the repercussions of my choices, so I'm not really free, but at least I can make the choices in the first place, so being free is good.) Some people can't cope with that responsibility so they decide to act like a thing rather than a person who makes decisions—you know, a grown-up.

That's all JP's idea, but I've applied it to women who get comfortable being objects rather than subjects who have to do the hard work of making choices that have real-life results. I've identified three types of woman acting in "bad faith": narcissists, who chuck freedom out the window by acting like bimbos; mystics, who give up freedom to an absolute (i.e., God); and the woman in love, who only lives for her man. You know—the friend who never calls you back after she gets her guy?

Existentialism

This philosophy can trace its lineage all the way back to heavy hitters like Heidegger, but Sartre, Camus, and I picked up on it and gave it our own spin.

Here's what you need to know about existentialism: it is founded on an extreme brand of atheism that says "hey, life is really hard and being human means making all sorts of high-stakes choices. So with God (or any other higher power) absent from the world, you have to make decisions on your own, and that can be some rough stuff."

We're not talking about "Do I look fat in these jeans?" kinds of questions, but puzzles that entail moral knowledge of right and wrong in the grand scheme. And the only one who can take responsibility is you. On top of that, since there's no higher power, when you die you just die. Game over—no beautiful cupids or jet-puffed clouds with harp-carrying angels. Bummer, dude.

Historical Materialism

Do you know anyone who always talks about money? Well that's sort of what historical materialists did. To this fun gang, history and society can only be seen through the lens of dolla dolla bills, y'all. Social class and even history itself always comes down to economics. That's because whoever has the dough owns the means of making things (materials) that people need. You gotta produce and reproduce, consume, and exchange—and all of those actions dictate our social networks. The dynamic controls who's a have, and who's a have-not.

Immanence

Immanence = inwardness… basically. But I see a nasty little opposition here: men always reach outward, forcing control on the universe and everything and everyone in it. (Block off that river! Make me a meal! Go to bed! There's gold in them thar hills!) Woman's fate is to be inward, contained, and impotent.

Men do things. They develop, construct, kill, expand, demand, while women just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. In that sense, women are "immanent," while men are "transcendent." They get out of the trap of interiority and stake a claim beyond themselves.

Oedipus Complex

Well this phrase has been beaten to death, wouldn't you say? What does it even mean, and why is it so, well, complex? If you ask me, it's not, really.

Coined by Freud, the Oedipus complex suggests that all boys (whether they know it or not) want to murder Dad and marry Mom. So as not to be seen as psychopaths, most boys hold this feeling deep, deep inside (that's called repressing). The phrase comes from the Greek tragedy in which King Oedipus of Thebes unintentionally kills Dad and marries Mom, Jocasta. Oops!

Transcendence

This one sounds just like what it means. Transcendence is rising above or beyond the ordinariness of life. In The Second Sex, I apply this idea to men, who are always imposing themselves and dictating their own lives and everyone else's—for good or ill. Transcendence happens when one pulls it together and acts on their right to freedom.

The Other = Women

Basically. When I use the term "The Other," I'm referring to the oppositeness of oneself, which often comes with negative undertones. Look at it this way: by calling them "other," you aren't calling them by their name, which can be pretty dehumanizing. Your just saying, "You're not us," sort of like you did in preschool, but with fewer boogers.

Some of the toughest quotes,.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. [From The Second Sex]

Ladies and gents, I give you the thesis of my masterwork, The Second Sex.

Look, I know what Lady Gaga says, but women are not "born this way." People are born as blank slates and then, as they go along through life, before they know it they're victims of all these ideas society has about who they should be.

So women aren't born women (even though they may be of the female sex). Instead, society piles a brick ton of of expectations and demands on them, starting with the pink blankets and the dolls et voilà—you have made a woman a "woman," a man-made construction of all the ideas of what woman should be. She's an ideal.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth. [From The Second Sex]

Here's how I see it: men write the history books, so they get to decide upon the very terms of history. They also write the important books and make all the art that gets any attention. They have it all. On top of this mess, men confuse their representations as hard-and-fast truth. Their interpretations quickly become "truth" and "reality." Throw in some arrogance and oppression and you have life as we (women) know it.

What would Prince Charming have for occupation if he had not to awaken the Sleeping beauty? [From The Second Sex]

That's a good one, don't you think? One of western culture's most powerful ideas—the whole "princess-knight-in-shining-armor-happily-ever-after" myth—is such a crock. It's not like Prince Charming actually did that much, so what's the big deal? An alarm clock could have pulled off the same job and not have become a Disney-fied dreamy ideal. It doesn't take that much effort to be Prince Charming, and yet he claims all manner of credit for being a cultural hero. Blech.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death. [From The Ethics of Ambiguity]
A few years before I wrote The Second Sex, I penned this little book that explained the ethics of existentialism (try saying that three times fast). In this dense and complex work, I fire away at our cultural obsession not to die by asking one simple question: at what cost?

When all you think about is staying alive, you forget the daily experience of living life in the here and now. Only life itself—"human existence"—is "conceivable." Obsessing about the future—whether it means death or who knows what else—means we're left to dwell in the "indistinctness of nothingness and being," which is like having the flu and watching an endless loop of Gilligan's Island reruns. You must live free and live now.

She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal. [From The Mandarins]

Swoony, right? This incredibly romantic quotation may be a surprise coming from me, but I actually have a very dreamy side if I may say so. This story is a roman-á-clef (French for "novel with a key," basically a novel about real people and events) about my fiery affair with Nelson Algren. As "Anne," I describe a love so unfathomable that I can't envision it ever not being. It's far easier to picture space and time disappearing. This kind of passion make those Twilight lovers look like Ken and Barbie.

·         https://www.shmoop.com/de-beauvoir/table-of-contents.html