Feminist Criticism

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Feminist Criticism

• EH 4301
• Spring 2008

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Feminism

• The theory of the political, economic, and social
  equality of the sexes.

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Feminist Criticism

• Examines ways in which literature reinforces or
  undermines the oppression of women.
• Economically
• Socially
• Politically
• Psychologically

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Traditional Gender Roles

• Patriarchy
• Any culture that privileges men by promoting
  traditional gender roles.

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Traditional Gender Roles

• Men
• Rational
• Strong
• Protective
• Decisive

• Women
• Emotional (irrational)
• Weak
• Nurturing
• Submissive

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• Traditional gender roles have been used
  successfully to justify inequities such as
  excluding women from equal access to leadership
  and decision-making positions and paying men
  higher wages than women for doing the same job.

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• Patriarchy is by definition sexist
• It promotes the belief that women are innately
  inferior to men
• head of the tribe or family

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• Biological Essentialism
• Belief of inborn inferiority
• based on biological differences between the
  sexes that are part of our unchanging essence as
  men and women
• Example hysteria

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• Feminists dont deny biological differences
• dont agree that differences in physical size,
  shape, and body chemistry make men naturally
  superior to women
• more intelligent
• more logical
• better leaders

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• SEX biological constitution as female or male
• GENDER our cultural programming as feminine or
  masculine

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• The inferior position long occupied by women in a
  patriarchal society has been culturally, not
  biologically, produced.

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• Patriarchy continually exerts forces that
  undermine womens self-confidence and
  assertiveness, then points to the absence of
  these qualities as proof that women are naturally
  self-effacing and submissive.
• Example girls and math

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• Patriarchal gender roles are destructive for men
  as well as women.
• Traditional gender roles dictate that men are
  supposed to be strong
• Physically powerful
• Emotionally stoic
• Men are not supposed to cry (considered a sign of
  weakness)
• Unmanly to show fear or pain
• Shouldnt express sympathy for other men

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• In a patriarchy, everything that concerns men
  usually implies something (usually negative)
  about women.
• All behaviors forbidden to men are considered
  womanish (inferior, beneath dignity of manhood)
• Men/boys who cry labeled as sissies (cowardly,
  feminine)

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• One of the most devastating verbal attacks for a
  man to be subjected to is to be compared to a
  woman.
• REAL MAN requires that one hold feminine
  qualities in contempt
• Homosexuality is included in list of feminine
  behaviors
• American stereotype of typical male homosexual is
  effeminate (extremely feminine characteristics)

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• Whenever a patriarchy wants to undermine a
  behavior, it portrays that behavior as feminine.

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Arguments Against Feminist Premises

• Western society has actually been structured to
  protect women from the brutalities of war and
  commerce, allowing them to be nurturers, mothers,
  and homemakers.
• Rather than exploiting or suppressing women, it
  actually celebrates and cherishes them.

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Counter Argument by Feminists

• Assumes suppression and exclusion.
• If a woman is put on a pedestal, she cant do
  much of anything up there.
• Assumes women are weaker sex, needing protection.
• Assumes women are unable to compete with men.
• Disallows for the fact that some women are
  physically and mentally stronger than some men.

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Roots of Feminism

• Men have oppressed women.
• allowing them little or no voice in the
  political, social, or economic issues of their
  society

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Roots of Feminism

• By not giving voice and value to womens
  opinions, responses, and writings, men have
  therefore suppressed the female, defined what it
  means to be feminine, and thereby de-voiced,
  devalued, and trivialized what it means to be a
  woman and

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Roots of Feminism

• Men have made women the nonsignificant Other.

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Goal of Feminism

• Therefore, feminisms goal is to change these
  degrading views of women so that all women will
  realize they are not a nonsignificant Other and
  will realize that each woman is a valuable person
  possessing the same privileges and rights as
  every man.

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Roots of Feminism

• Women must define themselves and assert their own
  voices in the arenas of politics, society,
  education, and the arts.
• By personally committing themselves to fostering
  such change, feminists hope to create a society
  in which not only the male but also the female
  voice is equally valued.

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Historical Roots of Feminism

• According to feminist criticism, the roots of
  prejudice against women have long been embedded
  in Western culture.
• Some say it originated with biblical narrative
  where the fall of man is blamed on Eve, not Adam.

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Historical Roots of Feminism

• According to feminist criticism, the roots of
  prejudice against women have long been embedded
  in Western culture.
• Ancient Greeks (Aristotle) The man is by nature
  superior, and the female inferior and the one
  rules and the other is ruled.

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Roots of Feminism

• According to feminist criticism, the roots of
  prejudice against women have long been embedded
  in Western culture.
• Religious leaders Thomas Aquinas and St.
  Augustine
• women were merely imperfect men
• Spiritually weak creatures
• Possessed a sensual nature that lures men away
  from spiritual truths, thereby preventing males
  from attaining their spiritual potential.

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Roots of Feminism

• According to feminist criticism, the roots of
  prejudice against women have long been embedded
  in Western culture.
• Darwin (The Descent of Man 1871)
• women are of a characteristic of a past and
  lower state of civilization.
• Are inferior to men, who are physically,
  intellectually, and artistically superior

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Roots of Feminism

• Opposition to patriarchal opinions against women
  was not heard of until the late 1700s.
• Mary Wollstonecraft
• A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
• Women must stand up for their rights and not
  allow their male-dominated society to define what
  it means to be a woman.
• Women must take the lead and articulate who they
  are and what role they will play in society.
• Women must reject patriarchal assumption that
  women are inferior to men.

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Roots of Feminism

• Not until the early 1900s (Progressive Era) that
  the major roots of feminist criticism began to
  grow.
• Women gained the right to vote
• Women became prominent activists in the social
  issues of the day
• Health care
• Education
• Politics
• literature

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones Own (1919)
• Declares men have and continue to treat women as
  inferiors.
• The male defines what is means to be female and
  controls the political, economic, social and
  literary structures.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones Own (1919)
• Hypothesizes the existence of Shakespeares
  sister, equally as gifted a writer has he.
• Gender prevents her from having a room of her
  own
• She cannot obtain an education or find profitable
  employment because she is a woman.
• Her innate artistic talents will therefore never
  flourish, for she cannot afford a room of her own.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones Own (1919)
• This kind of loss of artistic talent and personal
  worthiness is the direct result of societys
  opinion of women they are intellectually
  inferior to men.
• Women must reject this social construct and
  establish their own identity.
• Women must challenge the prevailing, false
  cultural notions about their gender identity and
  develop a female discourse that will accurately
  portray their relationship to the world of
  reality and not to the world of men.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Virginia Woolf
• A Room of Ones Own (1919)
• Woolf believed that if women accepted this
  challenge, Shakespeares sister can be
  resurrected in and through women living today,
  even those who may be washing up the dishes and
  putting the children to bed.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Simone de Beauvior
• The Second Sex (1949)
• foundational work of 20th century feminism
• Declares that French society (and Western
  societies in general) are PATRIARCHAL, controlled
  by males.
• Like Woolf, believed that the male defines what
  it means to be human, including, therefore, what
  it means to be female.
• Since the female is not the male, she becomes the
  Other, finding herself a nonexistent player in
  the major social institutions of her culture
• Church
• Government
• Educational systems

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Simone de Beauvior
• The Second Sex (1949)
• Woman must break the bonds of her patriarchal
  society and define herself if she wishes to
  become a significant human being in her own right
  and defy male classification as the Other.
• Must ask herself, What is a woman?
• Answer must not be mankind (generic label
  allows men to define women as relative to him,
  not as herself.)

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Kate Millet
• Sexual Politics (1970)
• challenges the social ideological characteristics
  of both the male and the female.
• A female is born but a woman is created.
• Ones sex is determined at birth (male or female)
• Ones gender is a social construct created by
  cultural ideals and norms (masculine or feminine)

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Kate Millet
• Sexual Politics (1970)
• challenges the social ideological characteristics
  of both the male and the female.
• Women and men (consciously and unconsciously)
  conform to the cultural ideas established for
  them by society.
• Cultural norms and expectations are transmitted
  through media television, movies, songs, and
  literature.
• Boys must be aggressive, self-assertive,
  domineering
• Girls must be passive, meek, humble

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Kate Millet
• Sexual Politics (1970)
• Women must revolt against the power center of
  their culture male dominance.
• Women must establish female social conventions
  for themselves by establishing and articulating
  female discourse, literary studies, and feminist
  theory.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
  literary canon
• Discovered examples that supported assertions of
  Beauvoir and Millet
• that males considered the female the Other
• male dominance and prejudice

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
  literary canon
• Stereotypes of women
• Sex maniacs
• Goddesses of beauty
• Mindless entities
• Old spinsters

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
  literary canon
• found male authors in established literary canon
  Dickens, Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Twain,
  etc.
• Found few females achieved such status
• Roles of female, fictionalized characters were
  limited to secondary positions
• More frequently than not as minor parts within
  story or as stereotypical images
• Female scholars such as Woolf and Beauvior were
  ignored
• Works seldom referred to by male critics of
  literary canon

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
  literary canon
• Asserted that the males who created and gained
  prominence in canon assumed all readers were
  male.
• Most university professors were males
• Women reading such works were trained to read as
  if they were males.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Feminist critics began to examine the traditional
  literary canon
• Brought about existence of a female reader who
  was affronted by the male prejudices abounding in
  the canon.
• Brought about questions concerning the male and
  female qualities of literary form, style, voice,
  and theme.
• By 1970s, books that defined womens writings in
  feminine terms flourished.

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Feminism in 1960s and 1970s
• Having highlighted the importance of gender
• Feminist critics began to rediscover literary
  works authored by females that had been dismissed
  or deemed inferior by their male counterparts,
  unworthy to be a part of the canon.
• Kate Chopins The Awakening (1899)
• Doris Lessings The Golden Notebook (1962)

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Criticism of the 1980s
• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own (1977)
• Chronicles three historical or evolutionary
  phases of female writing
• Feminine phase (1840-1880)
• Feminist phase (1880-1920)
• Female phase (1970-present)

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own (1977)
• Feminine phase (1840-1880)
• Writers accepted their role as female writers
• Wrote under pseudonyms
• Charlotte Bronte
• George Eliot
• George Sand

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own (1977)
• Feminist phase (1880-1920)
• Female authors dramatized the plight of the
  slighted woman
• Depicted the harsh or cruel treatment of female
  characters

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History of Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own (1977)
• Female phase (1970-present)
• Feminist critics now concern themselves with
  developing a particularly female understanding of
  the female experiences in arts, including a
  feminine analysis of literary forms and
  techniques.
• Uncovering of misogyny in male texts

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own British Women
  Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977)
• Asserts that most criticism of novels by women
  focuses only on a few novelists recognized as
  major figures
• Jane Austen
• The Brontës
• George Eliot
• Virginia Woolf

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• A Literature of Their Own British Women
  Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977)
• Asserts female authors were consciously and
  deliberately excluded from the literary canon by
  the male professors who established the canon
  itself.
• Example Olive Schreiner
• To fully understand the development of womens
  literature, we must recognize the Schreiners as
  well as the Austins.

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Urges that the exclusion of the female voice must
  stop.
• what is needed is a feminist criticism that is
  genuinely women centered.

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Coined term gynocritics or gynocriticism process
  of constructing a female framework for analysis
  of womens literature to develop new models based
  on the study of female experience, rather than to
  adapt to male models and theories.
• Gynocriticism
• Label given to the study of women as writers
• Subjects it deals with the history, style,
  themes, genres, and structures of writings by
  women

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Gynocriticism
• Has provided critics with four models that
  address the nature of womens writing
• The biological
• The linguistic
• The psychoanalytic
• The cultural

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Four models that address the nature of womens
  writing
• The biological model
• Emphasizes how the female body marks itself upon
  a text by providing a host of literary images and
  a personal, intimate tone.

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Four models that address the nature of womens
  writing
• The linguistic model
• Concerns itself with the need for a female
  discourse.
• Investigates the differences between how women
  and men use language.
• Asserts that women can and do create a language
  peculiar to their gender and addresses the way in
  which this language can be utilized in their
  writings.

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Linguistics

• Gilbert Gubar
• The War of Words (1988)
• a major campaign in the battle of the sexes is
  the conflict over language and, specifically,
  over competing male and female claims to
  linguistic primacy (228).
• Its not enough to challenge the way women have
  been portrayed in literature must recognize that
  language itself has been shaped by men in ways
  that denigrate and alienate women.

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Feminist Criticism

• Elaine Showalter
• Four models that address the nature of womens
  writing
• The psychoanalytic model
• Based on an analysis of the female psyche and how
  such an analysis affects the writing process.
• Emphasizes the flux and fluidity of female
  writings as opposed to male rigidity and
  structure.

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• Elaine Showalter
• Four models that address the nature of womens
  writing
• The cultural model
• Investigates how the society in which female
  authors work and functions shapes womens goals,
  responses, and points of view.

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• By drawing attention to lesser known writers,
  Showalter led the way for other feminist critics
  to contribute to the reshaping of the literary
  canon.
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Kate Chopin
• Susan Glaspell

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• In order to appreciate the merits of womens
  writings, must reexamine our ideas about what
  makes a literary work excellent or important.
• Must not only reconsider individual works but
  also entire genres of writing long dismissed s
  inherently minor, popular, transient, and
  feminine (DuBois, Feminist Scholarship)
• 19th century sentimental fiction

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Stereotypical Criticism

• (Sandra) Gilbert (Susan) Gubar
• Madwoman in the Attic the Woman Writer and the
  Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979)
• Analyze literature in relationship to the myths
  created by men and challenge such myths.
• those mythic masks male artists have fastened
  over womans human face.
• Passive, submissive angel
• Destructive, sinister monster

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• Judith Fetterly
• The Resisting Reader (1978)
• Women should resist the meanings that male
  authors or female authors who have inherited
  patriarchal values embed in their books.
• A woman must read as a woman exorcising the male
  mind that has been implanted in women.

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Stereotypical Criticism

• Judith Fryers The Faces of Eve Women in the
  19th Century American Novel (1976)
• Faces of Eve
• The Temptress
• The American princess
• The Great Mother
• The New Woman

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Stereotypical Criticism

• Not all stereotypical criticism is negative with
  the attack on works by male authors.
• Annis Pratt examines healthier representations
  (New Feminist Criticism)
• Miriam Lerenbaum (Moll Flanders A Woman on Her
  Own Account)
• Defends Defoe as shedding a positive light on the
  female character Moll.

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• Feminist critics also criticize critics they
  consider to be sexist.
• Phallic Criticism (Annis Pratt)
• Critics that look at and distort chauvinistic
  interpretations of works either by men or women.
• Nina Bayms Melodramas of Beset Manhood How
  Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women
  Authors
• Scarlet Letter
• Critics who ignore literature by women.
• Carol Ohmanns Emily Bronte in the Hands of Male
  Critics
• Wuthering Heights

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• Some feminist critics have attempted to use
  literature and criticism to promote social
  change.
• Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Reinventing Womanhood -1979)
• Makes literary criticism a part of her effort to
  promote the struggle for female selfhood.
• Toril Moi (Sexual/Textual Politics Feminist
  Literary Theory 1985)
• Feminist criticism can and should contribute to
  social change
• the principal objective of feminist
  criticismhas always been political it seeks to
  expose, not to perpetuate, patriarchal practices.

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Feminist Criticism

• No one critical theory of writing dominates
  feminist criticism few theorists agree upon a
  unifying feminist approach to textual analysis.
• American textual, stressing repression
• British Marxist, stressing oppression
• French psychoanalytic, stressing repression

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Feminist Criticism

• Asserts that most of our literature presents a
  masculine-patriarchal view in which the role of
  women is negated or at best minimized.

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Feminist View

• Attempts to show that writers of traditional
  literature have ignored women and have
  transmitted misguided and prejudiced views of
  them
• Attempts to stimulate the creation of a critical
  environment that reflects a balanced view of the
  nature and value of women

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Feminist View

• Attempts to recover the works of women writers of
  past times and to encourage the publication of
  present women writers so that the literary canon
  may be expanded to recognize women as thinkers
  and artists and
• Urges transformations in the language to
  eliminate inequities and inequalities that result
  from linguistic distortions.

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Questions for Analysis

• Is the author male or female?
• Is the text narrated by a male or female?
• What types of roles do women have in the text?
• Are the female characters the protagonists or
  secondary and minor characters?
• Do any stereotypical characterizations of women
  appear?
• What are the attitudes toward women held by the
  male characters?
• What is the authors attitude toward women in
  society?
• How does the authors culture influence his or
  her attitude?
• Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the
  significance of such imagery?
• Do the female characters speak differently than
  do the male characters? In your investigation,
  compare the frequency of speech for the male
  characters to the frequency of speech for the
  female characters.