Feminist Theory - The First Wave

     What unities the various kinds of feminist literary theory is not much a specific technique of criticism but a common goal: to raise awareness of women's roles in all aspects of literary production (as writers, as characters in literature, as readers etc.) and to reveal the extent of male dominance in all of these aspects. Women's attempts to resist the dominance of a patriarchal society have a long history but the actual term 'FEMINISM' seems not to have come into English usage until the 1890s.  In general, feminist criticism has also attempted to show that literary criticism and theory themselves have been dominated by male concerns.  In fact, some feminists have reacted against all theory as an essentially male-dominated sphere.  Theory, for them, is associated with the traditional male/female binary opposition: theory being essentially in the male domain and embracing all that is impersonal and would-be objective.  Against this, they have placed the female world of subjectivity and primal experience.  There is general agreement among most authors that, apart from recent developments, feminist theory can be divided into two major stages:  The First Wave and The Second Wave.


                                                                   THE FIRST WAVE
       
     The earlier phase of modern feminist theory was very much influenced by the social and economic reforms brought about buy the Women's Rights and Suffrage movements.  Two writers in particular standout in this period for first raising many of the issues which would continue to preoccupy later feminists: Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir.

                                                    1.  VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1942)


      Apart from her novels, Virginia Woolf also wrote two works which contributed to feminist theory: A  Room with a view(1927), and Three Guineas (1938). In the former, Woolf considered especially the social  situation of women as writers and, in the latter, she explored the dominance of the major professions by men.  In the first work she argued that women's writing should explore female experience and not just draw comparisons with the situation in society of men.  Woolf was also one of the earliest writers to stress that gender is not predetermined but it is  a social construct and, as such, can be changed.  However, she did not want to encourage a direct confrontation between female and male concerns and preferred to try to  find some kind  of balance of power between the two.  If women were to develop their artistic abilities to the full, she felt it was necessary to establish social  and economic equality with men.

                                     2.  SIMONE  DE BEAUVOIR (1980-1986)                         

     Simone de Beauvoir is famous not only as a feminist but as the life-long partner                 philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. She was a very active fighter for women's rights and a supporter of abortion.  Her most influential book is, without doubt, THE SECOND SEX  (1949).  In this work, she outlined the differences between the interests of men and women and attacked various forms of male dominance over women.  Already in the Bible and throughout history Woman was always regarded as the 'Other'.  Man dominated in all influential cultural fields, including law, religion, philosophy, science, literature and the others arts.  She also clearly distinguished between 'sex' and 'gender', and wrote (famously) 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'.  She demanded freedom for women from being distinguished in the basis of biology and rejected the whole notion of femininity, which she regarded as a male projection.

                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   BALA SIVANETHRI.G