Zeynepnur Bolulu

Introduction to Literary Theory

19/05/19

Pychoanalysis in Feminist Literary Criticism

Feminist literary theory was born as a result of feminist movements. After the
1960s, the studies that developed this theory have increased in the West. The first
reflections of feminism in literature have emerged with Virginia Wolf in the 1920s. Wolf
has been a pioneer in this field arguing that even language does sex discrimination. When
the literary texts compiled with feminist ideology emerged, a new field as feminist
literary criticism was raised to examine and to evaluate them. Additionally, the possibility
of interpreting these works from four different perspectives was born. These are: feminist
literary theory towards women as a reader, feminist literary theory towards women as a
writer, feminist literary criticism from a Marxist-socialist perspective, and feminist
literary criticism from the perspective of psychoanalysis. “Psychoanalytic criticism
adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts”
(Delahoyde). Psychoanalytic literary criticism argues that literary texts express the secret
unconscious desires and anxieties of the author. In terms of feminist literary criticism,
psychoanalysis tries to analyze women's identity in the literary texts with psychoanalysis
data, examining how the female image is reflected psychologically.

To begin with, feminist literary criticism has brought many different perspectives
including feminist historiography. It was started by Kate Millet. Millet, in her book,
‘Sexual Politics’, examined the constitution of gender by patriarchal structure, developed
the theory of sexual politics, and demonstrated the relationship between men and women.
Millet’s display of the sexist ideology of the novels of Henry Miller, Norman Mailer,
Jean Genet, and D. H. Lawrence was a bold first attempt at that time. Her critiques of
male writers and a sexist point of view, her views on the ending of the sexual revolution
and the patriarchal structure, set an example for many later writers.

The feminist literary criticism examines the positions of the sexes and how
women's sensibility is reflected in the style. One important point critics underline is that
women writers are unfairly misinterpreted by male critics who do not know the reality of
women and feminism. Feminist literary criticism, tries to expose the form of male-
dominated rhetoric while reflecting on the content form and linguistic structure in a text
and on the other hand, how women's emotions and experiences reflect on the texts.
Furthermore, together with efforts to examine and transform women, it comprehends the
political influence of analytical strategies and principles, such as feminist politics, by
showing how women are able to introduce or divide their patriarchal works and
conceptual frameworks. For this reason, the focus of a literary criticism is to examine the
gender factor on the texts formed by women and men, but at the same time the basic
paradigm of such a conflict that will be realized by using the technique of the feminist
literary critique.

Psychoanalysis is a theory that Sigmund Freud developed to explain human

behavior. This theory explains the instinct, unconscious motivation and self-defense that
people create to protect themselves against their irrational impulses. Although early
feminist literary criticism was not happy with psychoanalytic interpretations - take
Miller’s criticism of Freud (the inventor of the psychoanalysis theory) for instance- in the
last decade, psychoanalysis has gained prestige and influence resulting in evolution of a
phenomenon called psychoanalytic feminist criticism. Psychoanalysis can unsettle
feminism's tendency to accept a traditional, unified, rational, and a puritanical self-a self
supposedly free from the violence of desire. In return, feminism can shake up
psychoanalysis's tendency to think itself apolitical but in fact be conservative by
encouraging people to adapt to an unjust social structure (p. xii). “In order to exercise the
strength of flexibility they must encounter each other, for in mutual exclusion they are
liable to seek the strength of rigid defence” (Gallop).

In summary, even if they ignore one another, feminism, psychoanalysis and

literary criticism are collided in productive and startling ways. Each of these intellectual
and socially engaged activities is based on premises (about text, psyche and culture) that
undermine familiar or received wisdom. “What follows is an overview of a challenging
set of engagements – beginning with Freud's analyses of female hysterics in the 1890s,
continuing into the 1920s with the first wave of feminist encounter with Freud, jumping
to the early second-wave critique of Freud's oedipal phallocentrism, then moving to an
interrogation of the possibilities of pre-oedipal subversion into something that we might
describe as our current decentred, post-Freudian, post-postmodernist era” (Madelon 235).
 Works Cited

Sprengnether, Madelon. “Feminist Criticism and Psychoanalysis.” A History of Feminist

Literary Criticism, edited by Gill Plain and Susan Sellers, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 235–262.

Gallop, Jane. “Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter’s Seduction”. Cornell Univ.
Press, 1982, pp. xxii.

Delahoyde, Micheal. “Psychoanalytic Criticism”. Introduction to Literature, Washington

State University. https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/psycho.crit.html.