Intro to Feminism

The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman is, without qualification or limitation, my favorite short story. The Awakening is the most perfectly written short story I have ever read. Austen is my literary BFF, an author that makes me take out a figurative chardonnay and regularly reply “You preach it gurl!” to her ghost, which I assume is hovering over my shoulder. The Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mina Loy, and so many more belong to this belovéd part of literature called “Women’s Literature.”

Yet, what is the exigence that caused this to even be a ‘thing’? Why does “Women’s literature” have to even be a ‘thing’? As literary scholars, we know that for hundreds of years, women’s voices have been repressed. The primary mode for delineating philosophy, narratives, experience, thought, science, and more was literature until cameras became available in the late 19th century. After photography, film became a powerhouse of creative expression, slowly rising into the dominant form of creative expression throughout the 20th century. Throughout all of these mediums and more, suppression of women’s voices was a common element.

Historical Context

‘Feminist Theory’ or the ‘Feminist Lens’ rose in reaction to this suppression of voice. Women were actively prevented from participating in these means of expression and laws often restricted women in their own “spheres of influence.” In the United States, the ‘Spheres of Influence’ combined with the Cult of Domesticity created ideologies that pushed women within the confines of the home and delegated the public, competitive, and economic sphere to men. Women undertook “expanded roles” during the American revolution, creating ideas of ‘republican motherhood’ where women were seen as the primary educators of the home, in a “unique position to ensure that their children would be raised with [democratic and republican] virtue instilled in them, thus becoming solid citizens” (Hierl). This was, at the time, considered advancement as women had little influence anywhere in colonia America; gaining rights in the home was something compared to nothing. Incredible female activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanty pushed for increased representation and equity at the Seneca Fall Convention in 1848, with limited immediate effect.

In the United Kingdom, the Regency Period saw a leak in the foundational structures of family, a leak that turned into a flood of advancement throughout the 19th century that ultimately culminated in massive amounts of women’s voices expressing themselves in various degrees and perspectives throughout the Victorian period. Figures like Frances Wright pushed for women having “control of their own property,” access to higher education, freedom of sexual relation, and pushed for women to be “freed from endless pregnancies” (Perkins 208-9). Wollstonecraft addressed the predatorial, male-dominated society that undermined women’s attempts at education, pushing that men were “most dangerous of tyrants” (54), where women are “degraded by being made subservient to love or lust” (Wollstonecraft 59). Literary historians, generally speaking, focused on male writers and pushed female authors out of the literary ‘canon’ despite their popularity (Tyson 80).

For this limited exploration of the topic, I will stop here.

The Feminist Lens

Thus, the ‘Feminist Lens’ was born. This ideology focused on many premises, ranging from: (1) women were oppressed by society economically, (2) women were oppressed by society spiritually and intellectually, (3) women were oppressed by expected roles of motherhood and childbirth, (4) women had limited options apart from the expected roles, (5) there was extensive criticism of women if they left those roles, etc. These claims also had foundational assumptions which, when stated explicitly, offer far more contention: the home is oppressive, motherhood is oppressive, women want economic power, women want creative expression, men suppress women, and many more assumption that create a dichotomy between men and women, often limiting options for exceptions. These claims also further assumptions of gender unity, asserting that women and men are unified in a fundamental purpose and drive, whether it be explicit or not.

More modern applications of this lens could be expressed through Tyson’s assertion: “patriarchy continually exerts forces that undermine women’s self-confidence and assertiveness, then points to the absence of [strong and competitive] qualities as proof that women are naturally, and therefore correctly, self-effacing and submissive” (82). Having less blatant legal and economic bounds to overcome, modern feminism has turned to address undertones, assumptions, and less confrontational means of undermining women’s voice in modern society. Modern feminist criticism also seeks to address “traditional gender roles” where men are cast as “rational, strong, protective and decisive,” and women as “weak, nurturing, and submissive” (81). A “patriarchal woman,” then, is a byproduct of these expectations and society, a woman deluded into believing herself to be in service to herself but actually serving her own ‘masters’: male society. Control of women’s sexuality and interest in sexual activity all play key roles in this view, too, but are often in conflict with woman’s idealization (placed on a pedestal) and women’s own expression of sexuality and those social repercussions (labels of ‘slut,’ ‘whore,’ etc.) (86). 

Gatsby

In Gatsby, female figures are portrayed in a submissive or reckless manner. Jordan Baker, despite being the ‘flapping’ independent female, is focused on trivial matters of cordiality (Fitzgerald 163) and assuages her own guilt with delusion: “You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I?” (186). Instead of taking accountability for her own actions, she pushes accountability onto other figures and continues stereotypes associated with women lacking strength, resolution, and moral behavior, especially unmarried and sexually open women like Jordan. Daisy, so “Sophisticated” (22), has little thought for herself and is tossed around in chapter 7 like a plaything, indecisive, looking for reassurance from her friends “as though she realized at last what she was doing” (139) be abandoning Tom in front of Gatsby. 

Yet, these female characters are depicted through Nick’s lens, a male lens, thus suggesting that all female fragility and emotional biases are actually expressions of Nick’s biases toward women. Nick is a product of New Haven, a society associated with Tom Buchanon’s “aggressively forward” existence characterized by power and cruelty (11). He is endlessly “restless,” living on the “ragged edge of the universe” (7) when not inhabiting the competitive sphere of masculinity. In essence. Thus, it is possible that the fame characters of the novel are skewed into caricatures of their existence, molded with fragility, submissiveness, and innocence by Nick’s assumptions of their behavior because of their gender.

Works Cited

F  Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Edited by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Simon & Schuster Publishers, 1995.

Hierl, Warren. “Cult of Domesticity for APUSH.” Apprend, 29 Mar. 2017, apprend.io/apush/period-4/cult-of-domesticity/.

Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, Taylor & Francis Group, 1988. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/detail.action?docID=166539.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792. The Unabridged Classic Edition ed., Las Vegas, NV, Independently Published, 2021.

Written by Pavel Tretyak

Updated 3/26/2024

Originally Written 11/2/2021