Elaine Showalter and The Literature of Their Own-Notes

 Elaine Showalter and The Literature of Their Own

Born in 1949, Elaine Showalter is a highly influential American feminist critic. She coined the term gynocriticism, a powerful tool in feminist studies today. Gynocriticism is a literary framework that empowers female authors by critiquing their work without using the terminologies developed by male critics and authors, which often disadvantage women writers. Showalter's work is a beacon of inspiration, showing us how to empower female authors and reshape the literary landscape.

Female Literary Canon

Through gynocriticism, Showalter aims to establish a female literary canon by studying and bringing to light various women writers who have been overlooked under the dominance of the Western canon, which primarily features male writers. Showalter believes that the female canon already exists, and it is our task to unearth these remarkable works by female writers to comprehend their value and contribution to literature. Showalter's extensive research on various female writers of the Victorian period is a testament to this. However, Showalter acknowledges that women's writing, like any other writing from an oppressed class, is more imitative in its initial phases, heavily drawing from the ideas and values of the dominant culture or group.

Phase of Imitation

Showalter refers to the imitation phase in female writing as the 'feminine' phase in her work 'A Literature of Their Own' (1977). This work, highly esteemed in feminist circles, solidifies her position as one of the most influential feminists of our times. The feminine phase loosely encompasses the works of writers like Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, and George Eliot, as well as all those Victorian writers who showcased their unique characteristics despite the constraints of a male-dominated field. Their resilience and determination to be heard is truly admirable.

Phase of Protest

The second phase is called the phase of protest or the feminist phase. As Showalter argues, this is where we see women writing more rebellious, trying to protest the male authority and all the values and standards associated with this mentality, a sort of fight for freedom and autonomy. This could be used to refer to after the Victorian age is over. The female writers who emerged in the modernist movement could suit this phase.

Phase of Self-realisation

The third phase is called the female phase, or the phase of self-realisation and self-discovery. In her own words, this stage is "turning inward, freed from some of the dependency of opposition, a search for identity." Showalter also refers to this age or phase as a "new stage of self-awareness." The feminist critics emerging in the post-modern era, like Showalter herself, fall under this last and the most crucial stage in this evolutionary phase of feminist criticism and literature. The female writers of this phase were neither imitating the eminent male writers and their style nor were just focused on opposing the male authority to gain political and individual freedom, but were trying to celebrate the very nature and essence of what constitutes the female self, their body and sexuality and in a way genuinely coming close to their life. Like Woolf, Showalter also emphasises the importance of having a female literary tradition by studying the works of female writers that have been neglected in the study of literary history. Showalter's idea of gynocriticism comes under heavy criticism from radical feminists like the feminists and others who argued that this entire notion of canon formation is a patriarchal concept where everything is characterised and put in hierarchies and structures. Feminists should reject this notion entirely as this is what patriarchy wants- to segregate the work of female authors and characterise it as inferior as it doesn't fit their male-oriented definition of sound instead of accepting and celebrating its differences.