The Feminist Approach: Guerin’s Critical Approaches

Introduction

The Feminist Approach: Is Jane Eyre a romantic heroine or a victim of a patriarchal society? This question has intrigued readers and critics for generations, sparking countless interpretations. Feminist criticism invites us to look beyond the surface of love and passion to uncover the deeper power structures shaping women’s lives within literature.

The feminist approach is not about opposing men or dismissing traditional narratives—it is about analysing how gender, identity, and authority operate within texts. It questions who holds power, who is silenced, and how women’s voices are represented or suppressed.

As M. Guerin and other critics emphasise, feminism is both a political movement and a literary theory. It examines literature not only as art but also as a cultural product reflecting social hierarchies. When applied to works like Jane Eyre, feminist criticism reveals how the tension between individual freedom and societal control defines the female experience.

The Historical Context (The Three Waves)

The feminist approach evolved through three major waves, each responding to the changing realities of women’s lives. As M. Guerin explains, these movements reflect not only different historical moments but also shifting perspectives on gender, power, and identity.

The First Wave of feminism emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its primary concern was with legal rights—especially the fight for women’s suffrage and access to education. Writers like Virginia Woolf, in her groundbreaking essay A Room of One’s Own, argued that women needed financial independence and personal space to create art freely. This wave laid the foundation for women’s equality within law and literature.

The Second Wave began in the 1960s and expanded the struggle to include social and cultural inequality. Thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex, examined how women were socially constructed as “the Other.” This phase focused on workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, and the dismantling of traditional gender roles.

The Third Wave of feminism, emerging in the 1990s, introduced the concept of intersectionality—the interconnection of race, class, sexuality, and gender as overlapping systems of oppression. Figures like Judith Butler challenged fixed gender categories through post-structuralist thought, especially in Gender Trouble. This phase made feminism more inclusive and critically self-aware, extending its relevance to diverse cultural experiences.

“Every student of feminist literature must read the essay that started it all. Virginia Woolf’s arguments about money and privacy are still relevant today.

[Get A Room of One’s Own (Penguin Classics)].”

Key Concepts and Terminology 

Understanding the feminist approach requires a grasp of several key concepts that reveal how literature often reflects—and challenges—social hierarchies. These terms are essential tools for students analysing texts through a feminist lens.

Patriarchy: This term refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and dominate roles in leadership, moral authority, and control of property. Patriarchal societies often shape the values and behaviours represented in literature, limiting women to subordinate roles.

The “Other”: Simone de Beauvoir introduced this concept to explain how culture positions men as the “Subject,” representing the standard human experience, and defines women as “the Other” in relation to them. Critics use this idea to explore how authors construct female characters in opposition to male ideals.

Phallocentrism: Rooted in psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory, phallocentrism is the belief that the phallus (male symbol) represents the central source of power and meaning in culture. Feminist theorists challenge this belief by exposing how language, art, and literature privilege masculine perspectives.

The Male Gaze: Introduced by film theorist Laura Mulvey, this term describes the way women are often portrayed as objects to be looked at, rather than as active subjects with agency. In both film and literature, the male gaze reduces women to aesthetic or erotic symbols rather than complex individuals.

The Two Major Schools 

In his discussion of feminist literary theory, M. Guerin identifies two primary schools of thought: the Anglo-American and the French. Both schools aim to uncover how gender shapes literature. However, they differ in focus: one analyzes reality and representation, while the other explores language and expression.

1. The Anglo-American School (The Critics of Reality):

This school centres on the social and cultural realities of women’s lives. It emphasises how women writers and characters are represented within male-dominated traditions.

• Gynocriticism (Elaine Showalter): Showalter urged critics to move beyond studying how men depict women toward exploring women’s own literary history and culture. Gynocriticism reclaims the female literary tradition, analysing women’s themes, styles, and experiences as distinct and valuable.

• The Madwoman in the Attic (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar): In their influential work, Gilbert and Gubar argue that female characters in patriarchal literature are often reduced to two opposing stereotypes—the “Angel in the House” (pure, obedient, self-sacrificing) and the “Madwoman” (angry, rebellious, or nonconforming). This binary reflects how patriarchy suppresses authentic female identity and creativity.

2. The French School (The Critics of Language):

The French feminists, unlike their Anglo-American counterparts, focus on the role of language itself in constructing gender. They argue that traditional language and discourse are structurally male-centred and limit feminine expression.

• Écriture féminine (Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray): Literally meaning “women’s writing”, this concept urges women to write through their own bodily and emotional experiences rather than within male linguistic structures. It represents a radical call for liberation through creativity, fluidity, and difference in language.

Guerin’s distinction between these two schools highlights the evolution of feminist criticism—from analysing women’s realities to transforming the very language through which those realities are expressed.

How to Apply Feminist Criticism 

Applying the feminist approach to literary analysis involves rethinking how women are portrayed and how gender dynamics shape the story’s meaning. The following steps offer an easy framework for students to begin their analysis.

Step 1: Examine the Female Characters
Start by looking closely at the women in the text. Are they active agents who make decisions, drive the plot, and express their individuality? Or are they passive trophies, existing mainly to support or validate male characters? Consider how their roles, ambitions, and voices reflect or resist patriarchal expectations.

Step 2: Analyze the Relationships
Study the interactions between women and men within the story. Do the female characters have meaningful connections with each other, or do they exist only in relation to men? A fun modern tool to assess this is the Bechdel Test, which asks three simple questions:

1. Are there at least two named women in the story?

2. Do they talk to each other?

3. Do they talk about something other than a man?
   Passing this test isn’t the ultimate sign of feminism, but it offers a quick glimpse into the text’s gender dynamics.

Step 3: Examine the Ending
Finally, consider how the story resolves for its female characters. Does the story punish them with death, madness, or isolation for defying convention? Or does it reward them with marriage, domesticity, or social approval for conforming? The ending often reveals how the text positions women within its moral and cultural framework, exposing deeper ideological patterns.

“Feminists often criticize Freud for his ‘Phallocentric’ view of women (Penis Envy). Read our analysis of [Freudian Psychoanalytic Criticism] to understand what they are fighting against.”

Example Analysis

To understand how feminist criticism works in practice, let’s apply it to a well-known short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story remains popular because it vividly exposes both the psychological and social effects of patriarchy.

The unnamed narrator suffers from postpartum depression. However, her husband, John, confines her to a room instead of providing real emotional support. He represents the authority of science and patriarchy. As a physician, he dismisses her concerns and insists that isolation and rest will cure her. His control over her body and mind reflects a wider belief that men have the right to define women’s health, sanity, and behavior.

As the story unfolds, the narrator’s apparent madness turns into an act of rebellion. Her growing obsession with the wallpaper—its trapped figure and suffocating pattern—mirrors her own imprisonment within a patriarchal world. In the final scene, she declares her freedom and crawls over her fainted husband. This powerful image transforms her breakdown into both tragedy and triumph. It reveals her fight against male dominance and her assertion of identity, even at the price of social “sanity.”

Gilman’s narrative shows how feminist criticism uncovers layers of resistance beneath the surface. What appears to be insanity becomes a bold protest against oppression and enforced silence.

Conclusion

The feminist approach has permanently transformed the landscape of literary studies. Through feminist criticism, the literary canon has expanded beyond traditionally male-dominated voices to recognize the works of women writers such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison alongside canonical figures like Shakespeare. This shift has not only diversified what we read but also how we read.

Feminist criticism encourages readers to “read against the grain”—to question the assumptions embedded in language, character roles, and narrative structures. It invites us to uncover whose voices are missing, whose experiences are marginalized, and how gender dynamics shape meaning.

Ultimately, the feminist approach redefines the act of reading itself: it transforms literature from a reflection of patriarchal culture into a space for critical dialogue, empowerment, and equality.

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