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Catcher In The Rye Feminist Analysis

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The feminist theory is based on finding and exposing negative attitudes toward women in literature. Their goal is to reveal the reality of how women get portrayed in literature due to the fact that most literature presents an inaccurate view of women and are most of the time minimized. In the Catcher in the Rye there is a few female characters such as Sunny, the girls at the club, and Sally who are put in situations that show nothing but stereotypes and puts them in a bad spot throughout the novel. J.D Salinger decides to put some of the female characters in situations that can cause those who read this novel to think bad or leave readers with a bad image of women. This bad image on women is due to the fact that he decided to portray some of …show more content…

They could go on an say that one of the female characters named Phoebe shows this unbiased novel because she is shown as an independent young girl who is seen as her brother Holdens supernatural aid. They can also show the nuns as another unbiased portrayal of women because of how kind hearted they are. Besides the faulty representation of the other women throughout the novel these two examples do go on and show a better portrayal of women. Even though the author decided to add these three characters it still does not make up for what he did with the other women characters and how he made them look. By him using these three “good” female characters readers might think that he is being equal with the men and women in the novel,but that is not the case. J.D Salinger might have thought that by adding just these characters readers would forget about the fact that he put other female characters in bad situations. The way he wrote this novel can also signify what he thinks of women.wrote good about only two female characters because he thinks there is more bad women than there is good. This goes back to the feminist theory that states “feminist critics believe that Western literature reflects a masculine bias, and, consequently, represents an inaccurate and potentially harmful image of women.” Basically male authors like J.D Salinger will always have a bias say on women and sometimes authors like him will create harmful stereotypes that will end up messing with the image of not just a character, but with the image of all

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