UNIT 2 Study Guide 2024-2025 PDF

Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa (CTLLI), 2015-2016. Unit 1 Study Guide COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS GRADO LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA UNIT 2 GUIDE | ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS 2024-2025...

Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa (CTLLI), 2015-2016. Unit 1 Study Guide COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS GRADO LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA UNIT 2 GUIDE | ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS 2024-2025 GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES: LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CULTURA Adriana Kiczkowski (co-ordinator) Isabel Castelao Inés Ordiz 1/10  Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa STUDY GUIDE-UNIT 2 Analyzing Narrative Texts Introduction 1. What is Prose Fiction? 1.1. Elements of Fiction 2. Textual analysis: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (novel). 2.1. Cultural and literary contextualization 2.1.1. Biographical information 2.1.2. Historical and cultural context. 2.2. Analysis of narrative structure, style and language  Self-Study activities/answers. 2.3. Main themes in The Awakening. 2.4. 3. Literary Criticism: 3.1. “Feminism Criticism Literary Criticism”  Self-Study activities (not compulsory). 3.2. Critical authors. 3.2.1. Fragment by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “Infection in the sentence: The woman writer and the anxiety of authorship” in The madwoman in the attic. The woman writer and the 19th century literary imagination.  Self-Study activities/answers. 4. Quiz (Curso Virtual). 5. References 6. Further resources 2 INTRODUCTION This unit is dedicated to the analysis of narrative texts. As an introduction to the subject, we are going to read different definitions of the genre as well as the most important structural elements to take into account when analyzing fiction. Then, we will read The Awakening, the novel written by the American writer Kate Chopin at the end of the 19th century. We will analyze the novel from the perspective of contemporary women's studies criticism. To do so, we will first the main tenets and concepts of Feminist Literary Criticism. As in the previous section, you have a series of questions to guide you in reading and understanding the text. We will also study the concept of “anxiety of authorship” proposed by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their renowned book The Madwoman in the Attic. In this unit you will find some audiovisual resources that will help you in your study. Don't forget to answer the Quiz when you finish the Study Guide in the virtual course, it will allow you to see to what extent you have understood some of the key questions in this unit. 1. WHAT IS PROSE FICTION? Stories are a part of daily life in every culture. Stories are what we tell when we return from vacation or survive an accident or illness. They help us make sense of growing up or growing old, of a hurricane or a war, of the country and world we live in. In conversations, a story may be invited by the listener (“What did you do last night?”) or initiated by the teller (“Guess what I saw when I was driving home!”). We assume such stories are true, or at least that they are meant to describe an experience honestly. Of course, many of the stories we encounter daily, from jokes to online games to television sitcoms to novels and films, are intended to be fiction— that is, stories or narratives about imaginary persons and events. Every story, however, whether a news story, sworn testimony, idle gossip, or a fairy tale, is always a version of events told from a particular perspective (or several), and it may be incomplete, biased, or just plain made up. As we listen to others’ stories, we keep alert to the details, which make the stories rich and entertaining. But we also need to spend considerable time and energy making sure that we accurately interpret what we hear: We ask ourselves who is telling the story, why the story is being told, and whether we have all the information we need to understand it fully. Even newspaper articles, which are supposed to tell true stories— the facts of what actually happened— may be open to such interpretation. […] Our everyday interpretation of the stories we hear from various sources—including other people, television, newspapers, and advertisements— has much in common with the interpretation of short stories […]. In fact, you’ll probably discover that the processes of reading, responding to, and writing about stories are already somewhat familiar to you. Most readers already know, for instance, that they should pay close attention to seemingly trivial details; they should ask questions and find out more about any matters of fact that seem mysterious, odd, or unclear. Most readers are well aware that words can have several meanings and that there are alternative ways to tell a story. How would someone else have told the story? What are the storyteller’s perspective and motives? What is the context of the tale— for instance, when is it supposed to have taken place and what was the occasion of telling it? These and other questions from our experience of everyday storytelling are equally 3 relevant in reading fiction. Similarly, we can usually tell in reading a story or hearing it whether it is supposed to make us laugh, shock us, or provoke some other response (Mays, 12-13). The most studied form of prose fiction is the novel. Below, you’ll find excerpts from The Thing Called Literature: reading, thinking, writing by Andrew Bennet and Nicholas Royle which introduce this concept: The novel in its modern form is a strange creature, a peculiar cross-breed or chimera. It emerged more than three hundred years ago out of various forms of storytelling and reportage – journalism, the epistolary (letter-writing), accounts of remarkable lives, chronicles, travellers’ tales, romances, ballads, news-sheets, and so on. Partly for this reason, the novel is almost infinitely malleable: it is highly diverse in its form, in its subject-matter and in its style. Constantly evolving, the novel adheres to no consistent set of rules or procedures. One might say that the rule of the novel is to break the rules. In fact, the novel is always – how can we put it? – novel. The word ‘novel’ comes from the French nouvelle, which originates in the Latin novellae, meaning ‘news’. So one way of thinking of the novel might be as a narrative that tells us something ‘new’ – it reads you the news, so to speak. Certainly, novels that work well are those that give you a sense that you are experiencing something new. They tell you a story, present you with people, places, situations, events, ideas and feelings in a way that seems new, fresh, even unprecedented. That, in a word, is what a novel is, or should be: it records, explores and prompts you to think of something new, in a new way. […] The word ‘fiction’ also includes the short story and novella, of course, but is in any case taken to designate the kind of writing that departs from the real, from what we like to think of as real life. Fiction is, after all, thought of as precisely not ‘real’ life, not true. In fact the novel is shot through, from its beginnings in the late seventeenth century right up to today, with this question of its fictional/real status. In a sense, that is what every novel entails: an experience of undecidability, uncertainty about the real. (Bennet and Royle, 39). The development of the novel indeed is characterized by a concern with the relationship between historical authenticity and invention or fiction. So while contemporary novelists may not explicitly claim that their narratives are historical accounts or concern actual events, they tend nevertheless to work hard to produce effects of credibility, of ‘reality’. Contemporary fiction is often portrayed as preoccupied, even obsessed with the relationship between its own fictionality, its inventedness, and the real that it purports to represent. In fact, however, this has been the condition of novel-writing from the beginning. (Bennet and Royle, 42). “Novels are the great art form of mind-reading. Indeed, we would suggest, they reflect on other minds in richer and more nuanced ways than any other discourse, including psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis. Novels allow us to know, or perhaps more accurately to imagine or believe that we know, precisely what goes on in the minds of others, to understand other minds. So in reading, discussing, studying and writing about a novel, it is important to consider how it presents other minds, how it creates and plays with this illusion. (Bennet and Royle, 45). 1.1. Elements of Fiction. Kelly J. Mays proposes a series of questions that will help us to organize our reading and subsequent reflection on a narrative text, taking into account the different elements that make it up and that we must keep in mind in our analysis. Questions about the Elements of Fiction Expectations: What do you expect? ° from the title? from the first sentence or paragraph? 4  ° after the first events or interactions of characters? ° as the conflict is resolved? What happens in the story? ° Do the characters or the situation change from the beginning to the end? ° Can you summarize the plot? Is it a recognizable kind or genre of story? How is the story narrated? ° Is the narrator identified as a character? ° Is it narrated in the past or present tense? ° Is it narrated in the first, second, or third person? ° Do you know what every character is thinking, or only some characters, or none? Who are the characters? ° Who is the protagonist(s) (hero, heroine)? ° Who is the antagonist(s) (villain, opponent, obstacle)? ° Who are the other characters? What is their role in the story? ° Do your expectations change with those of the characters, or do you know more or less than each of the characters? What is the setting of the story? ° When does the story take place? ° Where does it take place? ° Does the story move from one setting to another? Does it move in one direction only or back and forth in time and place? What do you notice about how the story is written? ° What is the style of the prose? Are the sentences and the vocabulary simple or complex? ° Are there any images, figures of speech or symbols? ° What is the tone or mood? Does the reader feel sad, amused, worried, curious? What does the story mean? Can you express its theme or themes? ° Answers to these big questions may be found in many instances in your answers to the previous questions. The story’s meaning or theme depends on all its features (Mays 15). For the study of the elements of fiction, we have prepared the following VIDEOCLASS:  Elements of Fiction by Dr. Dídac Llorens Cubedo 5 2. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS. The Awakening by Kate Chopin. 2.1 Cultural and literary contextualization 2.1.1. Biographical information Kate Chopin (née Katherine O’Flaherty) was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1850. Her mother was a Creole, her father, a prosperous Irish immigrant. Creoles (also known as Acadian or Cajuns), were the French immigrants and their descendants from the Northern Canadian French colony into the South of the United States. The O’Flaherty was a wealthy and socially well-placed family due to the father business and lived in a colonial mansion. French, patua and English were spoken in the house. Thanks to her mother and grandmother, important female figures for Chopin, she received a good education based on European and French culture. She went to a Catholic board school, where the nuns also encouraged European intellectual reading and critical thinking. When her father died, the family became strongly matrilineal and the women in the house organized the business and house, surviving the cruel times of the American Civil War (1860-1865). 6  Kate Chopin married a Creole from Louisiana when she was twenty years old. They spoke French as first language and lived in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans for many years, where Chopin had several children and dedicated herself to raising them, reading and playing music, since she was a talented pianist. Her husband supported her independent and intellectual spirit and both of them enjoyed raising and educating their big family. They moved to a small town, to start a cotton plantation when her husband’s business in New Orleans broke. Chopin was soon known as an eccentric, solitary but amiable woman in the community. She used to horse-ride, smoke cigars in the porch and take long walks on her own, acts of subversive autonomy that were criticized by a conservative Southern society that rigidly established feminine stereotyped behaviors for women. A professional writing career When her husband died of tropical fever, she decided to move to Saint Louis with her mother to have family support. Unfortunately, her mother died just a year later. Widowed and alone Chopin devoted herself completely to writing and became a professional writer at age 35. These years in Saint Louis were extremely prolific: she composed music, wrote her first novel, At Fault (1890), and two collections of short stories: Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897. She founded the first literary society of Saint Louis and was in touch with the intellectuals of the city. Reception of The Awakening Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening (1899) in two years and thought of it her most complex and mature work since in its writing she condensed her rich intellectual baggage and her eclectic literary influences. But after the publication of this book, expected to be a success due to the previous literary reception of her “regional” or “local color” stories and novel (i.e. depicting Southern colonial life in a realistic way and following the precepts of female sentimental novels), her life changed radically. The Awakening was banned from libraries and considered a scandal, being defined as “sex fiction” and morally inadequate. Some of the literary reviewers defined the book as “an essentially vulgar story”, or, “it is sad and mad and bad”; one of them implied “To think of Kate Chopin, who once contented herself with mild yarns about genteel Creole life…blowing us a hot blast like that!” (Gilbert and Gubar 991). Even Willa Cather, the influential American female writer, strongly criticized the book and coined it the “Creole Bovary”. Chopin justified herself in the following terms: Having a group of people at my disposal, I thought it might be entertaining (to myself) to throw them together and see what would happen. I never dreamed of Mrs. Pontellier making such a mess of things and working out her own damnation as she did. If I had had the slightest 7  intimation of such a thing I would have excluded her from the company. (Gilbert and Gubar 9) But despite this light-hearted retreat as self-defence did not prevent her career as a writer from suffering a terrible blow. Not only was her social life affected, but she also gave up intention of further publication, as was the case for her last story “A Storm”. The publishing house that was going to publish her last collection of short stories A Vocation and a Voice, withdrew its acceptance. Her health also deteriorated quickly until her death few years later in 1904. The book quickly disappeared from print and was totally forgotten in the American canon, only to be recovered as a literary gem of the fin-de-siècle American literature more than half a century later. An inexhaustible corpus of criticism emerged on the author and The Awakening, principally by the hand of the flourishing feminist literary criticism of the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, it is the fifth most read book in first year University courses in the United States; the book has become a classic in American literary history. 2.1.2. Historical and cultural context Turn-of-the-century or fin-de-siècle radical changes In order to understand the cultural contextualization of the novel we have to take into account the socio-historical and literary phenomena taking place at the end of the 19th century in the United States. The “turn-of-the-century”, as it is called, or fin-de-siècle, is located in the last decades of the Victorian period (1880-1900) and marked drastic changes in Anglo-American and European societies, opening the field to new orders in Western society, culture and thought into modernity and the Twentieth century. In the United States, the industrial and economic revolution was making of the country a world-leader of capitalism and materialist success, with the consequent growth of urban cities, rich middle-class and bourgeois values and the decline of rural America and its way of life. The disillusionment of intellectuals towards this new materialist society, together with a reaction to mid-nineteenth century American romanticism, and the influence of European realism in fiction, made writers focus their interest on a sociological and realistic portray of society and culture. Realism wanted to emphasize the role and impact of social changes into the new modern individual, but also the importance of the subjective perspective of reality within the individual and his/her agency and interaction with the environment (examples are, among others, Henry James’s psychological realism and Edith Wharton’s social novels). On the other hand, scientific development and philosophical thought advanced shocking views on the human being. These were very different to the ones established during the nineteenth century, which were based on religion and fixed 8 social structures. Darwin’s theory and Nietzsche’s philosophy helped to proclaim the “death of God” and placed the emphasis on incipient social and cultural reorganizing paradigms on scientific enquiry and individual-centered ethics. In Europe, apart from French realism, other avant-garde aesthetic revolutions, such as symbolism (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Swinburn) or British turn-of- the-century Decadentism (Oscar Wilde) were being developed. These movements conceived art and creative impulse in radical different ways to the Victorian utilitarian perspective of writing as a didactic tool to teach decorum and maintain the social order. The aesthetic value, instead of the functional value of art, condensed in the Decadents’ axiom of “art for art’s sake”, came forefront, with two important consequences that would settle throughout the beginning of twentieth-century Modernism: art and writing will separate from the masses and mainstream readers, becoming “high art”; and artistic medium (e.g. language in literature) would cease to be transparent in order to represent a certain reality to become signifying or meaningful in its own form. The New Woman and the “ideology of true womanhood” It could be argued that one of the most important cultural revolution of the turn-of-the-century Anglo-American historical period was the questioning of gender roles in society by the activism of the first-wave feminist movement and the phenomenon of the New Woman. If there were two clear women’s movements during these decades, they would be 1) a suffrage movement that searched the vote for women appealing to the conservative feminine models of mothers and educators, and 2) a more radical feminist movement that advocated for sexual liberation for women and professional equality accessing the public space like men did. The figure of the New Woman had more in common with this second political feminist vision. She represented the cultural and social phenomenon of the liberated woman who pursued professional careers, rebelled against the institution of marriage, and had creative curiosity and ambition as well as intellectual autonomy. Elaine Showalter states the term was coined in a journal in 1894 and the main feature was “social nonconformity” contesting to all the previous nineteenth-century impositions on women and femininity as marriage, motherhood and domesticity. The New Women rejected conventional female roles, redefined female sexuality, and asserted their rights to higher education and the professions. [New Womanhood was a] product of new women’s colleges, drawn to urban centers and in rebellion against their mothers and marriage. […] In American cities, especially New York, bohemian New Women, including art students, editors, actresses, and journalists, ‘could be seen on the street, walking alone, or on the omnibuses […] marked by a graceful, athletic bearing and the lack of a wedding ring’. […] They no longer saw themselves as ‘friendless, forlorn, and sexually vulnerable,’ like the Hagar figures in nineteenth-century women’s fiction, but rather as daring modern heroines in search of feminine self-realization. (Showalter 9  244). This new feminist phenomenon would revolutionize womanhood in the twentieth-century and would change forever the ways women would see themselves in Western societies, particularly in relation to their feminine identity and their relationships to the public (as opposed to the private). This change would break what is known as the Victorian “cult or ideology of true womanhood”, deeply established in nineteenth century’s culture and society. The Southern states of the United States took the cult of true womanhood to the extreme in their own version of the “Southern lady”, and younger version “Southern belle”. The “Southern lady” was demanded to construct her feminine identity onto the virtues of submission, religiousness, rectitude, morality and domesticity; she had to be delicate, charming, seductive, without being overtly sensual, and intelligent to organize the plantation household. In short, the femininity of the Southern lady was a socio-political tool to maintain the Southern lifestyle and slavery system. No wonder the turn-of-the-century New Woman was seen as a danger to the South and took a longer and more marginal path to be heard in its society. The passivity (towards the masculinist power to design his own place and ways of living) and the self-sacrifice (since a woman renounced to build her own life) required by this cult of true womanhood was clearly exposed in the famous poem by Coventry Patmore “The Angel in the House” (1885). But as Gilbert and Gubar suggest, at the turn-of-the-century Anglo-American socio-historical context, “while moralists, educators, and physicians continued to explain to women why they should lead decorous, selfless private lives as wives and mothers, a number of artists responded angrily and triumphantly to the fact that many women no longer did so” (1985: 956); and, definitely, Kate Chopin proved this in The Awakening (1899). 2.2. Analysis of narrative structure, style and language Before you read this analysis of the text, we recommend you finish the novel. While you’re reading the analysis, try to think of examples that prove each of the points made. For example: the analysis says that “The narrative stance oscillates between showing intense descriptive language that reflects approval towards the thoughts of Edna’s independence and a more judicial voice that presents Edna sometimes as impulsive”. Can you think of a specific example in the novel where this can be clearly seen? Doing this will help you approach the text as a whole and it will make it easier for you to work on the more specific self-study questions proposed below. The author divided the book in 39 Chapters that show short scenes and brief events. She did not choose to title the chapters but to number them with a clear division of content between the first sixteen chapters that are set in the summer resort of Grand Isle, and the following chapters that are set in the city of New Orleans with 10 a final return to Grand Isle marking a circular narrative structure. The spatial setting of the novel is between the seacoast and natural scenery and the cosmopolitan background of the big Southern city. The temporal frame is short, comprising no more than two years in the life of the main character. Regarding the narrative voice, there is an omniscient third person narrator in the story, who is not detached, as we could expect by the influence of French realism, but who, contrarily takes a fluid and sometimes contradictory narrative stance towards the description of Edna, her thoughts and actions. Most of the information about the psychic life and inner development of Edna is done through the narrative voice. Probably the most important fact about the book that caused the harsh reception it received was the fact that the narrative voice does not show moral condemnation but, as Sullivan and Smith cleverly evidence, the narrator also lacks a constant and steady effusive sympathy towards the character. The narrative stance oscillates between showing intense descriptive language that reflects approval towards the thoughts of Edna’s independence and a more judicial voice that presents Edna sometimes as impulsive, hedonistic and lacking reflection on consequences: “the partisan narrative stance speaks for a romantic vision of life’s possibilities; the alternate stance for a realistic understanding and acceptance of human limits […] To some readers, the sympathetic view speaks so movingly that they do not hear the sober realism also richly represented in the novel” (Sullivan and Smith 156-157). The narrative style used by Chopin is close to a musical structure of repetitions and poetic language. It mixes realistic descriptions with repetition of key motives, symbols, images (e.g. sea, nature, night, solitude, food, sentences, swimming, music). There are scenes of lyricism, fantasy, and mythical atmosphere together with more traditional, even satirical portrays of social realism. We find magical, mythical moments of “epiphanies” in relation to Edna’s awakening through an impressionistic narrative style that uses repetitions and narrative rhythm as music. There is a poetic unity and organic essence in the narration that moves the plot towards Edna’s rebirth. As Joyce Dyer argues, the use of symbols and images in the narrative structure is not only an aesthetic or ornamental matter, but it complements the thematic and content of the novel and Edna’s story. Without this imagery, the novel would lose much of its brightness and density, and Edna Pontellier might lose her chance of being understood. […] It is an essential artistic component. The book depends on symbolism to define Edna’s psychological dilemma and romantic sensibility; to explain the limitations and dangers of her new vision; and finally, to help readers understand why Edna walks into the sea. […] Chopin’s symbols elaborately and meticulously connect to tell the complete and complex story of Edna Pontellier. (Dyer 126). Form and content join in Chopin’s narrative mastery, since through the symbolic images and repetitions, the author describes the psychological development of the character: the quest for self-awareness and realization, the search for freedom through art and self-reflection and the foreseen difficulties of such quest. Chopin, as Dyer, defines her, was a “psychological symbolist” (126). 11  Chopin’s style is “distinctively poetic, visual, and sensuous” (idem.), as if the language in the novel was opening itself to the reader at the same time as Edna’s inner self and sensual body opens to her own awakening. The warm colors, the heat, and the sea atmosphere of the Gulf coast become a propitious nest for this blooming of Edna and the reader’s literary senses and sensitivity. The sea, as a main symbol in the book, represents completeness, sensuality, eroticism and spiritual awakening, and it includes the double meaning of rebirth and the immensity of existential death. The sea appears at the beginning and end of the story for a reason. The sun and the moon symbolize a bright understanding of a new self and the magical and mythical atmosphere of Grand Isle, where ancestral spirituality also inhabits and touches Edna to change her forever-- with the help of Robert. The symbolism of spaces is important in the novel. The meadow at Kentucky represents also the freedom of movement and being the sea provides Edna with, joining the image of sea and earth. The city of New Orleans gives her the opportunity to walk and stroll as a New Woman flaneuse. But it is equally important to be able to understand, as readers the duality or oppositions concealed by the symbols. The patriarchal house is a space of confinement for her soul, but the “bird cage” little house is at the same time a liberation and the beginning of her end. The bird is a symbol that appears as representing freedom from constriction and achievement of the aim at independence. However, her back, as Mrs. Reisz suggests, could not be strong enough to grow wings and it is present in the last scene to remind Edna of this and at the same time of her eagerness to fly. Flowers, smells, trees, food, awake in the reader throughout the novel the predominance of the senses and Edna’s body. Music becomes a main path of self- discovery, introspection and connection with her artistic soul. Stylistic analysis reveals Chopin’s careful and masterful use of language (lexis, grammatical structures, speech acts, narrative stance and figures of speech). 2.3. Main Themes in The Awakening Solitude: The subtitle of the novel was “A Solitary Soul”. We could interpret the story, more than as a romantic story, as a metaphysical quest, more a philosophical than a romantic story. Awakening: The book is full of images of “vision” and “space”, pay attention to all the descriptions of eyes, gaze, look, etc. The sea is a symbol of freedom and awakening too. Basically, we could say that three elements help Edna’s process of inner awakening: the sea and nature at Grand Isle, Robert and romantic love, and Adele and Ms Reisz. Adele represents the homosocial (homosociality means same- sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, or others) support for Edna at Grand Isle, representing motherhood, 12 female understanding, the domestic woman and the equation of “love without art” or love through the family but not individual and artistic searching. On the other hand, Ms Reisz represents a different female model, the independent single artist, the equation “art without love”: artistic and individual freedom with the punishment for the woman artist of not being able to fit in a family. The first and second part of the book oscillates between these two figures and equations but Edna finally decides to refuse both models choosing death, which could be interpreted as a celebratory vindication of her independent soul, saying: if these are the only two models of femininity society can offer, neither of them is complete and fulfilling. Romantic love: This is an ideal of romantic fusion that was in Edna’s set of beliefs when younger and that is awakened at Grand Isle by the hope that Roberts represents. It is an important element in her awakening, but it is an ideal that belongs to fantasy. Edna seems to stay in this part of the fantasy and idealism, while Robert, mainly in the second part of the book, becomes a more realistic character. Although he is the engine for her self-awakening to romance, he is the one posing a break to idealism, by his decision of running to Mexico or by leaving her for being a married woman at the end. Also, it is significant that it is when they are both confessing their love for each other when the news of Adele’s childbirth breaks them apart, it is another element of realism that brings back the idea of motherhood and Edna’s role as wife and mother. Romantic love is an interesting element also because some readers may find this is in fact the key aspect of the novel, but is romantic love the sole reason for Edna’s awakening or just an engine of inner changes that makes her realize much more about herself? An excuse for finding herself, first critiques only suggested about adultery, selfish look for self-satisfaction and the result, they do not see solitude and search as the other part of the story. Death and suicide: This is the most controversial moment in the book. Let’s analyze what leads Edna to her death. First, the fantasy of romantic fusion is broken by realist Robert’s goodbye. Second, the fantasy of independence is broken by Adele’s childbirth, which reminds her of women’s bodily and social function, reminding her of her own kids and responsibility as a mother. There is no way out for Edna, neither for romance nor for independence, but she is giving up neither her independence nor her idea of romance. The suicidal swim at the end of the book is ambiguous. We never see her dead, she is active all the time. It is somehow a positive death since it represents her will against society, it is also a celebration of femininity since it represents the female body fusing with the sea. The last visions from childhood could be interpreted as liberatory (the “meadow of freedom”) or oppressive (gender codes of authority and their seductiveness represented by the cavalier and bees). Transformation/Metamorphosis/Künstlerroman: A Künstlerroman is the story of the process of formation of the artistic soul, Portrait of a Young Artist by James Joyce is an example of it. It is a story of initiation and discovery of intellectual and artistic sensitivity by the main character that grows from adolescence into maturity and decides to become an artist. The Awakening is this story of initiation or awakening on a woman that discovers her artistic and spiritual soul. The issue of transformation and metamorphosis is interesting because it is one of the first novels centered on female transformation and development of the artistic inner soul. 13  Sexuality/Eroticism/Spirituality: Edna’s spiritual search is channeled through eroticism. LISTEN TO the following video to appreciate the acoustic dimension of the text. The Awakening (fragment) by Isabel Castelao and Amparo Prior 2.4. Self-Study activities Here are some questions or exercises to guide you through the reading and understanding of the novel. In no case should they substitute the complete reading of the novel. They do not intend to represent the only approach or interpretation of the work. First, you are encouraged to follow a critical reading of the book on your own, try to answer the Self-Study activities suggested and find pieces of evidence in the text to support your answers. References to pages are from Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories. Penguin Classics with an Introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert, 1986. This is a very good edition and introduction; however, the novel is available as e-text at Project Gutenberg. PART I: Chapters 1-16 1. What do you think the “parrot” symbolizes? (Ch.1) 2. Localize geographically the Lebrun cottages by the description you find at the beginning of the chapter. (Ch.1) 3. Analyze the language used and the characteristics of the description of Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes at the beginning of the chapter. What does it tell us about the character? (Ch.2) 4. What do we know about Edna’s relationship to Robert Lebrun and her husband by the end of chapter 3? 5. Why does Edna cry? Analyze the paragraph that starts “An indescribable oppression…” (Ch.3) 6. What does the narrator mean by “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother- woman”? How is compared Edna and Adele’s approach to maternity in this chapter? (Ch.4) 7. Describe how the society of Creoles are characterized in chapter 4 (Ch.4) and what consequences these characteristics have for our understanding of Robert’s intimacy to Edna (Ch.5) 14 8. Analyze the symbolic language used and the relevant event being narrated in this chapter (Ch.6) 9. How is nature described, and the difference between their physical characteristics, in Edna and Adele’s “walk to the beach”? (Ch.7) 10. Why do you think the author emphasizes Edna and Adele’s female bond in chapter 7? (Ch.7) 11. Analyze Edna’s assertion “sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided”. What is the paralleled symbolic meaning between the meadow and the sea? What is she running away from as a child through the meadow? Where is this childhood memory located? (Ch.7) 12. What is the importance of Adele and Robert’s conversation held in chapter 8? (Ch.8) 13. How does the narrator portray the first encounter between Mrs. Reisz and Edna? 14. Analyze the symbolism, use of language and relevance within the plot of this important excerpt in chapter 10: Edna has attempted all summer to learn to swim. […] A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there was a hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her. But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over- confidence. She could have shouted for joy […]. A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. (p. 73) 15. How do you understand that this experience infused also in Edna “a quick vision of death”? (Ch.10) 16. What kind of bond is created between Edna and Robert in the conversation they have after the swim? (Ch.10) 17. How does Edna rebel against her husband and how does it make her feel? (Ch.11) 18. Analyze the symbolism of Edna’s rest at Madame Antoine’s cot at Cheniere Caminada. The sensual perception of the body, the bath, the food, the room, how does the narrator portray this scene? How is this related to Edna’s process of awakening? (Ch.13) 19. What events wind down the plot from chapters 14-16, framing the end of the summer and Edna’s stay at Grand Isle? 15  PART II: Chapters 17-34 1. What is Edna’s first act of rebellion against her husband and domestic life once the Pontelliers come back to New Orleans? (Ch.17) 2. Compare the description of place in chapter 1 and 17. What are the changes, differences, and similarities? What does the narrator make the reader expect throughout this part of the plot? 3. Highlight paragraphs that show Edna’s depression at this part of the plot. (Ch.18 and 19) 4. How does the relation between Edna and Adele change in chapter 18. Why does Edna feel sorry for her friend? Analyze the last paragraph in this chapter. (Ch.18) 5. Why do you think Edna leans on Ms. Reisz’s friendship in this section of the book? How important is Edna’s decision to become an artist now? What’s Ms. Reisz’s advice? (Ch.21) 6. Why does Edna’s husband visit the doctor? How is patriarchal authority represented in this chapter? (Ch.22) 7. How does the doctor describe Edna’s change of attitude in chapter 23? 8. Analyze the figure of Alce Arobin. Why is he introduced in the plot? How important is it to understand Edna’s change in relation to her sexuality and sensuality? (Ch.24,25) 9. Analyze the conversation between Ms. Reisz and Edna when she tells her of her decision to move and live alone. (Ch.26) 10. Analyze the image of the bird in chapter 27. 11. Why is Edna giving a dinner party? This chapter is full of descriptive and symbolic language; analyze the richness of detail and the ritual implied in the ceremony of the table, food, ornaments. (Ch.30) 12. Analyze the following paragraph, how is Edna described? What is the importance of this event in relation to the whole story? The golden shimmer of Edna’s satin gown spread in rich folds on either side of her. There was a soft fall of lace encircling her shoulders. It was the color of her skin, without the glow, the myriad living tints that one may sometimes discover in vibrant flesh. There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone. 13. Describe the events happening in chapter 32. Highlight a paragraph that expresses how Edna feels since she moved away. 14. What is Adele’s opinion about Edna’s decision? (Ch.33) What is the surprising 16  even happening in this chapter? 15. Analyze the declaration of love and the conversation between Edna and Robert. What does Edna tell him that he is not quite able to understand? Do you think Robert is ready to assimilate and support Edna’s new independent self and self- reliance? (Ch.36) 16. Analyze the importance of Adele’s childbirth at this point in the plot. Why do you think the author chooses to introduce this event when Edna and Robert are together? What does Adele tell Edna at the end of the chapter? (Ch.37) 17. What are Edna’s thoughts in chapter 38? 18. Why does the narrator return us to the geographical location and atmosphere of Grand Isle? Think about the circular narrative structure in the book. (Ch.39) 19. What are her last thoughts and conclusions about her husband and children before undressing at the beach? (Ch.39) 20. What is the symbolism of becoming naked in front of the sea? What is the symbolism of the falling bird into the water? (Ch.39) 21. “The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude” This is an exact repetition of words found in chapter 6. Why do you think the author uses this technique of repetition? What other elements are repeated at the end of this chapter that have appeared at some point in other parts of the plot? 22. Analyze the very end of the novel. What happens at the end? What are your feelings towards Edna as reader? Do you think this is an ambiguous ending? Why does the book end with a faraway childhood memory?  Guidance for answering the questions PART I: Chapters 1-16 This part of the book is set at Grand Isle, the summer resort at the coast of New Orleans. Throughout these chapters we see the process of “awakening” to self- consciousness, sensuality and sexuality of Edna Pontellier, the heroine of the novel: a process of inner vision through existential solitude and communion with nature and love that will give way to the rest of the events in the second part of the story. Here are some important passages in different chapters in this first section of the book. CH.1: Pay attention to the introduction to the description of the social atmosphere and exoticism of Grand Isle. 17   Our first encounter is with the “parrot” talking in French. What is the symbolism of this first image? It is maybe a way to introduce us to the Creole community, the fact of presenting the reader with a bilingual situation could represent cultural exile or alienation. Could the parrot represent Edna herself, anticipating her inner alienation as if her understanding of her awakening paralleled learning a new language no one understood? It may just represent the bicultural atmosphere of Creoles (French-American).  Next description is of Mr. Pontellier: pay attention to the emphasis on his vision and glasses, the power of male gaze, and how important the way masculine vision (symbolizing patriarchal society’s vision) will define and exclude parts of Edna’s identity.  Pay attention to the way Edna and Robert are introduced in the book. They are coming walking from the beach under a big white sunshade. There is an exuberant description of nature and the presence of the sea for the first time, our gaze as readers also spreads beyond towards the sea horizon and the gulf. CH.2: This chapter is devoted to the description of Edna. Pay particular attention to the description of her eyes (in contrast to the description of her husband’s gaze in chapter 1). So much emphasis on eyes involves the importance of gaze, vision, the way to perceive the world and the inner self for Edna throughout the book. It is through her power of “seeing” as a metaphor for “awakening” that she reaches a new level of consciousness and self. In this chapter we also learn Edna comes from Mississippi, not belonging to the Creole community. CH.3: There is a quarrel between Edna and her husband that lets the reader know about his attitude towards her role as wife and mother. Edna’s cry is an important event, it is the first sign of her soul’s discontent with her situation as a woman. Her cry in the middle of the night, inspired by the sea and nature (take into account the presence of the sea as another character in the narrative) is described as a release from a kind of “oppression”, maybe the first sign of her restlessness towards awakening. CH.6: At this point, the reader has been introduced to Edna’s close relations with Adele Ratignolle and Robert Lebrun, the former based on female bonding (although both women are very different) the latter based on sensual, spiritual and romantic bonding. We have also known about Edna’s painting and her feeling out of place with certain Creole cultural behaviors, above all in relation to intimacy and the way they express affection.  This chapter presents the first sign of awakening in Edna by following her instincts and going swimming with Robert, letting her will free. It is a brief chapter with a dense symbolic description of nature and the sea. The harmony Edna is acquiring in relation with her natural surroundings and the sea is represented in the narrative voice that for the first time becomes poetic, musical, organic; as a lullaby that places the reader in an emphatic 18  position in relation to Edna. Here are some relevant fragments: In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight. […] But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. (p. 57) CH.7: This is a very significant chapter due to the female bonding between Edna and Adele at the beach. Pay attention to the sensuous description of their clothes, the position sitting together, the touch of their hands, the complicity and intimacy represented by the narrator, and how they are sitting facing the sea, that space of liberty that provides freedom of thought.  Edna describes in length a vision and memory from her childhood, how she was walking through the tall grass meadow feeling free and escaping from mass—this is a vision that will be repeated at the end of the book. Think about the parallelism between the symbols of the meadow of her childhood and the sea at Grand Isle; about the relation between the walking child opening her way through the tall grass and Edna learning to swim in the sea, and how meadow and sea represent a self- assertive environment against the constriction of a patriarchal society (as a child symbolized by mass and family, at present represented by the cottages where she becomes wife and mother).  She also mentions her belief in romantic love and romance as an ideal that has shaped and held her soul and personality until finding her husband, who was her guide towards a more realistic way of living. Romance is a part of Edna’s belief system that will be awakened this summer, as recovering a part that was hidden or repressed in her. CH.10: This is the chapter of the collective night swim. Edna felt deeply moved by Mademoiselle Reisz’s music as a spiritual exercise that brought her alert and in contact with her inner self and nature. Edna has been trying to learn to swim the whole summer.  As the last stage of her “awakening” process, Edna finds herself able to swim alone at the sea that night. The description of that night by the narrator is symbolic and full of magic. It is interesting that it is a collective swim (they are all there, as representing society) but Edna’s “transformation” or “metamorphosis”, which occurs at the moment she is able to swim without Robert or her husband’s help, is revelatory: it is a solitary act that represents the strength of her female soul finding her freedom against societal restrictions and expectations. She turns around and faces the horizon, moving ahead and away from them; however, as a child who has just discovered how to walk alone, she feels afraid of the possibilities of freedom and goes back to her husband.  The night walk towards the cottages with Robert reveals not only their complicity, 19  but also how they both understand the almost magical moment of what is happening to both of them, and how he understands the importance of Edna’s awakening. Somehow, Edna is not alone. The narrator impregnates the event with an atmosphere of spirituality, magical and symbolic nature that is shared by both characters. CH. 12-13: These are the chapters when Edna and Robert go by boat to a mass at Cheniere Caminada, an adjacent island. It is the first action and decision Edna takes after “awakening” to her true self, the inner self-consciousness that she felt as a metamorphosis the night before at the sea.  Pay attention to how Edna is in connection with her wishes and desires. We are presented with an independent and autonomous woman who decides before everyone gets up that she is going to call Robert to go together to Cheniere Caminada. She seems to be in control of her life and decisions.  Once there, pay attention to the symbolic weight of all the events: her headache at mass could symbolize her spiritual rejection of male authority through church; her sleep at Madame Antoine’s cot has a fairy-tale sensual atmosphere: the white bedroom, her loosened clothes and hair in bed—they are like rituals towards a rebirth, symbolized by the bath after she wakes up, as a baptism welcoming her new soul and self. She is in total contact now with her sensual and spiritual self, she eats what and when she wishes, she leaves with Robert when she wishes, she is freed from children and family. CH.16: This chapter marks the end of the summer and the first section of the book. We have known that Robert is leaving, and we start seeing signs of depression in Edna. There is a relevant conversation between Adele and Edna that gives us light to understand what will happen later. By now you should be conscious that Adele represents the dutiful mother and wife, the kind of conventional woman who is happy with the role society has imposed on her. Edna, as represented by the narrative voice, is treated as a contrasting model of femininity to that of Adele’s, above all in relation to maternity. In this chapter there is a recollection of a conversation between the two in which Edna outlines her attitude toward motherhood within her new understanding of herself. Keep in mind this paragraph to understand better the events at the end of the book. Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for anyone. Then had followed a rather heated argument the two women did not appear to understand each other or to be talking the same language. Edna tried to appease her friend, to explain: “I would give up the unessential I would give my money, I would give my life for my children but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. PART II: Chapters 17-39 This part of the book is set at New Orleans, in Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier’s residence. It describes how Edna’s life starts changing due to her understanding of her new self and her new awakened soul and how it crashes with society’s expectations. This new consciousness of her independence leads her to take vital decisions, among which is the decision to live alone. These chapters describe the development of her new life until her 20 final decision in the last chapter. CH.17: This chapter opens with the description of the family house at Esplanade Street in New Orleans. It starts paralleling the beginning of the previous section, with a description of Mr. Pontellier at the house, instead of at the cottages, emphasizing his possessions and controlling role within the family home.  Edna dares to change her daily routine by going out of the house and not attending the visitors. When her surprised husband asks her, she says she did it because she felt like going out. We see a trace of liberty in this action.  There is a symbolic crashing of the wedding ring in her room when she is alone and looks for solace looking through the window at night. This can be interpreted as a wish for liberation and escape from marriage. CH. 18: In this chapter, Edna visits Adele’s family. At the end of the chapter, we find a paragraph (last paragraph that starts “Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them”) that is revealing of the power of her ability to see things differently. She feels pity for Adele’s “domestic harmony” and her inability to feel “life’s delirium”. She starts realizing that family life does not suit her soul. CH. 19: In this chapter Edna’s husband starts worrying about her mental health, this restlessness is somehow transmitted to the reader through different channels. Her husband is more than anything angry at his wife’s decision to neglect her wifely duties. We, as readers, are told by the narrator about Edna’s mood swings. In this chapter she also decides to devote herself to painting as her own personal medium for self- expression, as a way of taking care of her soul’s needs and growing as an individual. CH.21: Edna visits Mademoiselle Reisz in the city. Her relationship with the pianist will become central in the development of the new Edna in this part of the book. Pay attention in what ways and how differently Edna was attached to Adele at Grand Isle and now she is to older Ms. Reisz: they represent different female models, but both provide Edna with female bonding and friendship.  Ms. Reisz tells her she had received a letter from Robert from Mexico. So, Robert enters the plot and Edna’s life again.  Edna tells her she has decided to become an artist, Ms. Reisz tells her she needs “a courageous soul. The soul that dares and defies”. CH.22-23: Edna’s husband goes to visit Doctor Mandelet to talk about his wife. It is interesting how Mr. Pontellier’s point of view represents or symbolizes society’s discomfort and rejection in relation to a change of roles of women as dutiful wives and mothers. Society’s rejection at Edna’s awakening is represented in the book through the eyes of her husband. His decision to visit the doctor also represents how the society of that time considered women’s attempts to stand out of their assigned roles as signs of madness. However, it is interesting to see how Chopin decides to portray the doctor as a sensitive man who is able to see beyond the surface, understanding Edna’s awakening in relation to sexual and spiritual freedom—an opposite perception to her husband’s. In this paragraph, specifically in page 23, pay attention to the emphasis on gaze and speech: “waking up in the sun” involves the act of opening one’s eyes to the light. 21 CH.26-27: In these two chapters Edna matures her important decision of moving to live alone at a small house (pigeon house) she has seen for rent. She has an income from an inheritance, so she will be economically independent. Think about the reaction this decision would have caused at the end of the nineteenth-century conservative society of New Orleans.  First of all, she tells Ms. Reisz of this decision. Think about the reasons why the narrator chooses to let us know about this important event in the plot through the conversation that Edna and the pianist have in this chapter.  Ms. Reisz makes Edna confess her love for Robert. Then, Ms. Reisz understands this is a big step outside society’s approval and compares Edna to a bird. Comparisons with birds are recurrent as a symbol of freedom and idealism in the book. She says: “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth”. Remember this sentence to relate it to another bird symbol in the last chapter. CH. 30: This is an important chapter since it represents Edna’s “Ritual dinner” of emancipation. Also, it is her 29th birthday, a symbolic age for literary heroines in search of independence. Pay attention to the gathering at the table, the symbols of royalty and ceremony we find in the luxurious ornaments. It is a special moment in the book that can be compared with others such as the baptism and ritual sleep at Cheniere Caminada, or the night swim in chapter 10. The author seems to mark Edna’s awakening process and steps through symbolic rituals full of sensual elements. This is the ritual of her maturity as an independent woman. CH.31-33: During these chapters Edna seems to grow in independence, inner strength and self-assertion, which the narrator describes as follows: “She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life” (p.151). The stronger she feels inside, the more rejection she finds from society, through the figures of her husband and Adele who considers her irresponsible and childish.  In chapter 32 she visits her children and this is an important event; Edna seems to get in touch with her maternal side again but the weight of the taste of her freedom is heavier.  In chapter 33 Robert appears and they meet at Ms. Reisz’s. They get together at Edna’s new place and they declare their love to each other. CH.36: This chapter is the climax of Edna and Robert’s love story. They get together and Robert tells her about the reason for his leaving at Grand Isle: he was in love with her but she was a married woman and she belonged to her husband. Edna expresses her new self to him by asserting that she does not belong to her husband anymore. This is an important and revolutionary assertion from a woman at that time: “I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose.” This idea is in fact too ahead of her time even for Robert (it also includes sexual freedom) who does not seem to understand and be able to assimilate Edna’s new idea of independence. This climax is broken by the news of Adele’s difficult childbirth and Edna leaves Robert to go to assist her friend. 22 CH.37: Pay attention to the reason why the author precisely chooses this event (Adele’s childbirth) as a breaking point for Edna and Robert’s story. This is, in fact, the event that separates them. Edna parts from him to see her friend, but when she is back, he is not there and will never return. This event is a kind of regression in the plot towards the reality of women at the time (family roles and maternity). Even Adele tells Edna at the end of the chapter to “think of the children”, to hang on her responsibility as mother and wife. Adele’s childbirth breaks the atmosphere of the romance and idealization lived through the previous chapter. CH. 39: This is the final chapter and it is set again at Grand Isle. Edna returns to the place where she started her process of awakening. The narrative voice lets us know her thoughts and how she reaches the conclusion that she does not want to live for her children, but that she now expects something else from life (remember her conversation with Adele about “never giving up herself for her children”).  Through a poetic language, the narrative voice describes the sensuality that springs from the sea, the sea that represented freedom and that stood as an important symbol of awakening in the first part of the book (in fact, the exact words are repeated from chapter 6: “the voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring …”).  We find the symbol of a bird with a broken wing: remember what Ms. Reisz tells her in chapter 27, using the image of the bird to fight prejudice. This falling bird also represents Edna’s failing at facing society’s disapproval (and Robert’s disapproval).  She gets naked in front of the sea: this is a symbolic image of true self and body sensuality, a female self-rid of society’s pressures and expectations, standing in communion with the immensity and freedom of the sea: “she felt like some new- born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.”  Edna’s fear of the water is balanced through the image she recollects of her childhood’s meadow at Mississippi, an image of freedom and rebellion against society’s norms (remember the conversation with Adele in chapter 7).  The thinks of her husband and children: “they were part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul”, a goodbye to her love, Robert and a recollection of her family and her belief in romance (symbolized by the bees and the cavalry officer) are the last elements we know of Edna naked at the sea. Pay attention to the symbolism of the whole passage, the use of circular images that takes us back to different important moments in the story, and the ambiguity of the end: is she committing suicide? Is this a tragic or a happy and liberatory death? Does she actually die? Do we see her drowning? What’s the authorial intention by portraying this end in which we do not see Edna dying? 23 3. Literary Criticism Once we have made a close reading of the novel, we will look for some interpretative tools to continue our analysis. In this case, we are going to study Feminist literary criticism, which will help us to uncover some of the main themes of the novel and approach the novel from the perspective of gender and feminist theory. 3.1. Introduction to Feminist Literary Criticism In order to be able to read and interpret a text from a feminist literary critical perspective, one needs to understand the ideological and theoretical premises of the feminist political and cultural movement, what it tries to analyse and change in society. Most feminist objectives are transferred into the way we interpret texts, that is, what we want to find in a text when we read it. Feminist literary criticism can be applied to literary texts written by male or female authors, although there is a specific branch of feminist criticism that is focused just on literature written by women, as we will see. According to Pam Morris, feminism is a political perception based on two premises: 1) that gender difference creates a structural inequality between men and women where women suffer a systematized social injustice; 2) that inequality between the sexes is not a result of biological needs but it is produced by a cultural construction of gender differences. Its agenda involves two objectives: 1) to understand the social and psychological mechanisms that build up and perpetuate gender inequality 2) to change these mechanisms. What is literature for feminism? Literature, as you may know by now, is a body of texts with aesthetic and social value, an institution found in the education and publishing system, and a cultural practice that includes reading, writing, evaluating and teaching the literary canon. Writing as a creative form can offer a singular vision and understanding of human experience, deepening in our perception of social reality. Literary texts, therefore, can provide with a precise picture of how society works against women’s advantages. The emotional impact of literary texts can generate indignation towards this social inequality, raising consciousness about this issue. Positive images of women’s qualities and experiences can influence women’s self-perception suggesting new models and generating authority and empowerment (Morris). And above all, literature, as all cultural practices, helps create a human imaginary corpus (the symbolic structure that underlies in Western society and culture) that could build authority and an equal position of power for women. De Beauvoir has already studied how the mythical and imaginary Western apparatus is a patriarchal invention, she wrote this in 1949. Therefore it could be revised, rewritten and modified (a feminist literary practice regarding this is “revisionist myth-making”, for example, rewrite the story of the Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view): A myth always implies a subject who projects his hopes and his fears toward a sky of transcendence. Women do not set themselves up as Subject and hence have erected no virile myth in which their projects are reflected; they have no religion or poetry of their own: they still dream through the dreams of men. Gods made by  males are the gods they worship. […] Thus, as against the dispersed, contingent, and multiple existences of actual women, mythical thought opposes the Eternal Feminine, unique and changeless. If the definition provided for this concept is contradicted by the behavior of flesh-and-blood women, it is the latter who are wrong: we are told not that Femininity is a false entity, but that the women concerned are not feminine. (de Beauvoir 143, 253) Literature is the only artistic practice that uses language as medium. Language constructs gender identity through the formation of subjectivity and cultural discourses. Therefore, this is a powerful and vital tool for feminist activism and objectives. If women take control of language from a cultural and imaginative position new meanings, values, discourses, ideologies and identities can emerge. As Waugh says “the objective of feminism must be to break or destabilize gender divisions and cultural binaries (woman/man, femininity/masculinity, body/mind, nature/culture, emotion/reason, private/public). It must find a political language that can articulate a radically different vision about gender and society”(144). Literary texts are important cultural and creative practices to achieve this. Feminist literary criticism believes that there is no art without relation with society, that literature is eminently political, and that this interpretative tool helps reveal this in texts not only as theory, but as an action and practice that generates an influence in society. As Felski suggests: Literature does not merely constitute a self-referential and metalinguistic system […] but it is also a medium which can profoundly affect and influence individual and cultural self-understanding in the sphere of the everyday, identifying concerns in social groups through symbolic fictions and thus giving significance and meaning to experience. (en Robbins) Here is a text that can give you a general scope of the basis and variations within feminist criticism. Remember the focus of formalists, New Criticism and close text analysis that believed the text must be approached isolated from society, history, and ideology. The criticism we are studying in this unit is a complete break from this understanding of literature, as other kinds of critical theory during the second half of the 20th century until our time. The text below will also provide you with definitions, common points and differences between Women’s and Gender studies, theories and criticism. HISTORICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM The formalist tendency to isolate the work of art from social and historical context met resistance in the last decades of the twentieth century. The new historical approaches that developed out of that resistance replace the reflectivist model with a constructivist model, whereby literature and other cultural discourses are seen to help construct social relations and roles rather than merely reflect them. A society’s ideology, its system of representations (ideas, myths, images), is inscribed in literature and other cultural forms, which in turn help shape identities and social practices. […] Historical approaches have been influenced to a degree by Marxist critics and cultural theorists, working within the realm of ideology, textual production, and interpretation, using some of the methods and concerns of traditional literary history. Still others emerge from the civil rights movement and the struggles for recognition of women and racial, ethnic, and sexual constituencies. Feminist studies, African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, and studies of the cultures of different immigrant and ethnic populations within and beyond the United States have each developed along similar theoretical lines. These schools adopt a constructivist position: Literature, they argue, is not simply a reflection of prejudices and norms; it also helps define social norms and identities, such as what it means to be an African American woman. Each of these schools has moved through stages of first claiming equality with the literature dominated by white Anglo American men, then affirming the difference or distinctiveness of their own separate culture, and then theoretically questioning the terms and standards of such comparisons. At a certain point in its development, each group rejects essentialism, the notion of innate or biological bases for differentiating sexes, races, or other groups. This rejection of essentialism is usually called the constructivist position. Constructivism maintains that identity is socially formed rather than biologically determined. Differences of anatomical sex, skin color, first language, […] have great impact on how one is classified, brought up, and treated socially, and on one’s subjectivity or sense of identity. Constructivists maintain that these differences, however, are constructed more by ideology and the resulting behaviors than by any natural programming. Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism derives from a critique of a history of oppression, in this case the history of women’s inequality. Feminist criticism has no single founder like Freud or Marx; it has been practiced to some extent since the 1790s, when praise of women’s cultural achievements went hand in hand with arguments that women were rational beings deserving equal rights and education.** Modern feminist criticism emerged from a “second wave” of feminist activism, in the 1960s and 1970s, associated with the civil rights and antiwar movements. One of the first disciplines in which women’s activism took root was literary criticism, but feminist theory and women’s studies quickly became recognized methods across the disciplines. Feminist literary studies began by denouncing the misrepresentation of women in literature and affirming the importance of women’s writings, before quickly adopting the insights of poststructuralist theory; yet the early strategies continue to have their use. At first, feminist criticism in the 1970s regarded literature as a reflection of patriarchal society’s sexist base; the demeaning images of women in literature were symptoms of a system that had to be overthrown. Feminist literary studies soon began, however, to claim the equal but distinctive qualities of writings by women. Critics such as Elaine Showalter (b. 1941), Sandra M. Gilbert (b. 1936), and Susan Gubar (b. 1944) explored canonical works by women, relying on close reading with some aid from historical and psychoanalytic methods. By the 1980s it was widely recognized that a New Critical method would leave most of the male- dominated canon intact and most women writers still in obscurity, because many women had written in different genres and styles, on different themes, and for different audiences than had male writers. To affirm the difference or distinctiveness of female literary traditions, some feminist studies championed what they hailed as women’s innate or universal affinity for fluidity and cycle rather than solidity and linear progress. Others concentrated on the role of the mother in human psychological development. According to this argument, girls, not having to adopt a gender role different from that of their first object of desire, the mother, grow up with less rigid boundaries of self and a relational rather than judgmental ethic. The dangers of such essentialist generalizations soon became apparent. If women’s differences from men were biologically determined or due to universal archetypes, there was no solution to women’s oppression, which many cultures had justified in terms of biological reproduction or archetypes of nature. At this point in the debate, feminist literary studies intersected with poststructuralist linguistic theory in questioning the terms and standards of comparison. French feminist theory, articulated most prominently by Hélène Cixous (b. 1937) and Luce Irigaray (b. 1932), deconstructed the supposed archetypes of gender written into the founding discourses of Western culture. Deconstruction [we will see this in next unit] helps expose the power imbalance in every dualism. Thus man is to woman as culture is to nature or mind is to body, and in each case the second term is held to be inferior or Other. The language and hence the worldview and social formations of our culture, not nature or eternal archetypes, constructed woman as Other. This insight was helpful in challenging essentialism or biological determinism.  Having reached a theoretical criticism of the terms on which women might claim equality or difference from men in the field of literature, feminist studies also confronted other issues in the 1980s. Deconstructionist readings of gender difference in texts by men as well as women could lose sight of the real world, in which women are paid less and are more likely to be victims of sexual violence. With this in mind, some feminist critics [started focusing on] gender roles, class and race, interdependent systems for registering the material consequences of people’s differences. It no longer seemed so easy to say what the term “women” referred to, when the interests of different kinds of women had been opposed to each other. African American women asked if feminism was really their cause, when white women had so long enjoyed power over both men and women of their race and when the early women’s movement [First Wave] largely ignored the experience and concerns of women of color. In a classic Marxist view, women allied with men of their class rather than with women of other classes. It became more difficult to make universal claims about women’s literature, as the horizon of the college-educated North American feminists expanded to recognize the range of conditions of women and of literature worldwide. Intersectional feminist criticism concerns itself with race, class, and nationality, as well as gender, and the way these differences shape each other and intersect in the experience and representation of particular individuals and groups. Gender Studies and Queer Theory From the 1970s, feminists sought recognition for lesbian writers and lesbian culture, which they felt had been even less visible than male homosexual writers and gay culture. Concurrently, feminist studies abandoned the simple dualism of male/ female, part of the very binary logic of patriarchy that seemed to cause the oppression of women. Thus feminists recognized a zone of inquiry, the study of gender, as distinct from historical studies of women, and increasingly they included masculinity as a subject of investigation. As gender studies turned to interpretation of the text in ideological context regardless of the sex or intention of the author, it incorporated the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1976). Foucault (1926–84) helped show that there was nothing natural, universal, or timeless in the constructions of sexual difference or sexual practices. Foucault also historicized the concept of homosexuality, which only in the later nineteenth century came to be defined as a disease associated with a distinctive personality type. Literary scholars began to study the history of sexuality as a key to the shifts in modern culture that had also shaped literature. By the 1980s gender had come to be widely regarded as a discourse that imposed binary social norms on human diversity. Theorists such as Donna Haraway (b. 1944) and Judith Butler (b. 1956) insisted further that sex and sexuality have no natural basis; even the anatomical differences are representations from the moment the newborn is put in a pink or blue blanket. Moreover, these theorists claimed that gender and sexuality are performative and malleable positions, enacted in many more than two varieties. […] Perhaps biographical and feminist studies face new challenges when identity seems subject to radical change and it is less easy to determine the sex of an author. (Mays A14- A16) (** From the 18th c. on this feminist theory was influenced by Enlightenment and liberal humanism. A foundational text here is Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindications of the Rights of Women. Even before, Christine de Pizan, for example, in The Book of the City of Ladies in the XV c. already presented this argument. The fight for women’s rights and equality in the public domain will continue in what is known as the First Wave of feminism or Feminism of Equality until mid-twentieth century.) By now you will have already realized that feminist criticism is not a monolithic theory but very versatile and evolving, self-critical and diverse. However, all “feminist theories” including the modifications and evolutions of feminist literary criticism (as we will shortly see) have a common basis of thought and ideological premises. Here is a summary:  COMMON POINTS IN FEMINIST THEORIES: 1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are oppressed. 2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values. 3. All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world. 4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (scales of masculine and feminine). 5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality. 6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not. (Purdue Writing Lab OWL- term “Feminist Criticism”) In order to understand the intersections and differences between “Feminist and Gender literary criticism”, pay attention to what one and the other look for in a literary text:  What feminist literary critics do: 1. Challenge and re-write the canon, seeking to rediscover women-authored texts. 2. Re-assess women’s lives. 3. Look at how women are represented by male and female authors. 4. Question constructions of women as “Other”.  5. Look for patriarchal hierarchies and binaries in writing and real life, seeking to dismantle them, (= uncover, make manifest, undermine, subvert). 6. Acknowledge that language ‘constructs’ social reality, making it seem natural or innate. 7. Ask whether men and women are essentially (because biologically) different, or whether difference is one more social construct. 8. Raise the possibility of écriture féminine (a feminine practice of writing) and of whether men can practice écriture féminine too. 9. Go back to psychoanalysis to continue exploring male and female identity. 10. Propose that experiential subjectivity (about all women’s) (i.e. sexuality, ethnicity) should be foregrounded as material, social, cultural and historical realities. (Points up to 10 modified from Barry’s book, p,135.)  Issues feminist critics study in a literary text: 1. How is the relationship between men and women portrayed? 2. What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)? 3. How are male and female roles defined? 4. What constitutes masculinity and femininity? 5. How do characters embody these traits? 6. Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them? 7. What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? 8. What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy? 9. What does the work say about women's creativity? 10. What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy? 11. What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition? 12. What are the feminist poetics (literary devices and strategies), the elements found in the text that the author exposes through her/his writing? (Lois Tyson - Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 2nd ed., 2006, in Purdue Writing Lab OWL) 25   What gender and queer literary critics study in a text: 1. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these traditional roles? 2. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens in the plot to those elements/characters? 3. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)? 4. How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative? 5. How are those gay and lesbian politics (ideological agendas) revealed in the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters? 6. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history? 7. What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) homophobic? 8. How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity," the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual? (modified from Purdue Writing Lab OWL, term “Gender studies and Queer theory—from the 70s on”)  WOMEN AS READERS, WOMEN AS WRITERS, AND WOMEN’S WRITING Many of the previous notions found in Feminist Literary Criticism can be applied to literature written by male or female authors. However, there are 3 specific objectives that are related to literature written by women. WOMEN AS READER According to Elaine Showalter this aspect marks the first phase of Anglo-American feminist literary criticism: The first type is concerned with... women as the consumer of male-produced 26  literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening us to the significance of its textual codes... Its subject includes images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions of and misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissures in male-constructed literary history. (in Bertens 75) Within the position of “women as readers” feminist literary criticism works on developing these following aspects. How do we apply feminist literary criticism when we read literature? 1. QUESTIONING THE CANON AND PATRIARCHAL LITERARY HISTORY: Where are women in literary history? One of the most important aspects and objective of feminist literary criticism is to analyze how the literary canon is created and who prescribes the value and authority of literary works. This is crucial because the works included in the literary canon of a specific culture will later become models and representations for future writers and they will also be emblematic representations of a historical and cultural moment. Why have women authors and their works been generally invisibilized, silenced and excluded from the literary canon? These are objectives that are achieved by a deep practice of feminist critical reading. The first step of contemporary Anglo-American feminist criticism in the early 70s mainly contemplated women are “readers”. It also studied the history of Reception of works: how women’s works were valued, received, and interpreted in the period they were written. Also how they were later revised and revalued by women’s criticism. Regarding this aspect The Awakening is a good example. Part of this feminist criticism of women as readers studied masculine aesthetic values and how creativity is understood at a specific moment in literary history. These values have generally excluded women from creativity because the artistic act has been related to masculinity throughout history and women have been seen as object or muses for male writers and artists. The question then is, how did women’s works undermine and subvert this patriarchal understanding of creativity? How did they manage to become creative subjects and debunking their role of muses? And finally, a specific worry of this first stage was to identify archetypes, stereotypes and images of women and femininity represented in literature written by men. Virginia Woolf, for example, tells us in A Room of One’s Own (chapter 2) that, in order to answer this question the narrator goes to research to the British Museum. She asks herself how women have been represented in literature, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and literature throughout history. What has been written about them? Reflecting on the results she finds she suggests that women are not seen as individuals that can create anything valuable. Battersby studies in Gender and Genius how the myths of creativity before feminism, and the understanding of artistic and literary creativity, were related to masculinity and to men in different cultural periods since the Greeks. Up to very recently, the understanding of literary genius was based on the attributes of the Romantic hero, a myth of creativity that exalted a tormented self, the disorder of emotions, and isolation from society. This myth excluded women even if part of the characteristics could be 27 considered “feminine”, because those attributes in women were related to insanity and not to a creative spirit. A first stage of Anglo-American feminist criticism, called “Images of Women” criticism, focused on androcentric texts (literary works written by men). Kate Millet in Sexual Politics studied how literature written by male authors such as Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, or D.H. Lawrence, objectify and portray women from a degrading position. It shows how they perceive and represent women in literature. For her, patriarchal culture is a political institution. The sexual politics of patriarchal domination is also found in literature. She reveals how most canonical writers portray a male perspective that she considers “misogynist” and that most people and women have been taught to ignore. Miller, therefore, train women to “read” critically the represented images of women in main narratives. WOMEN AS WRITERS According to Elaine Showalter this second step in the evolution of feminist literary criticism focuses on: Women as producer of textual meaning, with the history, genres and structures of literatures by women. Its subjects include the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective literary career; literary history; and of course, studies of particular writers and works. (in Bertens 75) This later stage proposed two main approaches to the literature written by women. One was related to the socio-cultural and historic framework, with a particular interest in the mechanisms of literary tradition. The other issue was related to aesthetics and poetics, the way women wrote, if there were specific differences or not. The latter was particularly researched by French feminist literary criticism. 2. LITERATURE BY WOMEN, RECOVERING THEIR OWN TRADITION. What are the characteristics of the literature written by women? Is there a female literary tradition? Those questions above describe the main objectives of a second phase of Anglo- American feminist literary criticism called “Gynocriticism” (explained in detail later) that formed in the late 70s and early 80s. Feminist critics were interested in finding out common traits in the literature written by women, in the same historical and cultural period or in general. They wanted to study how their literature reflected women’s real lives and their social situation in the period it is being represented in the work. Another important objective of this second critical development is to visibilize and recover forgotten or silenced women authors and their work. With this, these critics want to show that there were more women than it was first thought that were good writers, deserving to belong in the literary tradition. Also, this also probed that the patriarchal construction of the institution of literature (the canon) had excluded them. Adrienne Rich does not only share the need for this recovering of forgotten female authors through a method of feminist archeology, but she also suggests to “look back” and revise the literary history and works women have learned from in order to 28 create a new writing. This act of “re-vision” leading to re-writing (not reading) will provide women with tools to stop feeling unable to become authors and unable to write, because this practice will help them find new sources of empowerment. She suggests women writers should learn from past writing (male and female) and stop falling prey of victimization. Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. (In Rich “When we Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”, 35) Gynocriticism intended to show the existence of a literary tradition by women, identifying the way they write or what they write about and marking their position in literary history. It was made possible by foregrounding women authors’ contributions and characteristics to strengthen female authorship and literary authority. To achieve this, the institutionalization of the authorship of women writers and their work was needed, so they could then become new models for future women writers, building a continuum of a female literary tradition. Thus, women writers will have literary mothers to look back at. As Rooney suggests, this feminist criticism not only tries to create the possibility of a new literary tradition or a kind of contra-canon to the one institutionalized as normative, but also contributes to disrupt the very idea of canon, because it questions its origin and structure. Are there any common elements in the way women write or in what they write about? These critics start with this hypothesis analyzing how women, in general, show a greater interest in writing about experiences mainly lived by women up to contemporary times (maternity, marriage, conflict with creativity, subjugation to patriarchal domination, love, relation to nature, consciousness of the body, etc.) Up to the 60s or 70s (the upheaval of the feminist movement) this was a way to undermine and subvert the obstacles to their creativity installed by a patriarchal model of authorship and literary value, which considere