Female Subjectivity In English Literature Essay

Literature has always been a handy tool in exploring the gender relations and several differences. Humanist feminist criticism objects to the exclusion of women from these definitions because they tend towards an inaccurate account of the subjectivity of women rather than a historically reconstructed ideology. Today re-reading of literature assumes an important aspect of any critical project for it would help in the reconstitution of the idea of female subjectivity. Thus a more meaningful subject for literary writings focuses on the idea of psychic fragmentation of the weaker sex rather than on the theme of social oppression which assumes a secondary position. Psychotic rupture is perhaps the worst and most regressive aspect of female subjectivity. Feminist scholarship undertakes to deconstruct the social construction of gender and all the subsidiary cultural paradigms that support it. It is an effort to liberate women from the structures that have marginalized them and it is also an attempt to reinterpret their status in the world.

This sounds inexplicable suggesting a sort of “male social cohesion”. Feminist consciousness has certainly given an ardour and excitement to literary studies. A reasonably new perception of women in literature and the works by women writers have unveiled some of the prejudices at work in their traditional approaches to literature hitherto dominated by masculine perspective. A woman’s experiences of life as a member of a gender biased society formulate her psyche. Moreover, she is bound by certain other factors such as her individual circumstances, societies expectations related to age, creed, class, race, etc. Thus each women’s experience of life is different and