Okuzeka
Literature vocabulary · Criticism and Analysis

Feminist criticism

Meaning in literature, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In literature, feminist criticism means: An approach to literature that examines how texts represent women and gender, how power works between the sexes, and why women writers have been ignored.

In Turkish: feminist eleştiri, feminist edebiyat eleştirisi

How it is used

Important texts include Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929), Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Students offer a feminist reading of a novel or apply feminist criticism to a character.

Example sentences

  1. Feminist criticism has changed how we read the 'madwoman' in Jane Eyre.

  2. Apply feminist criticism to the two sisters in the novel: who has power, and why?

Common collocations

  • feminist reading
  • feminist literary criticism
  • a feminist approach
  • gender studies
  • literary theoryThe study of the ideas and methods used to read and interpret literature, such as structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and postcolonial theory.
  • literary criticismThe study, interpretation and evaluation of literary works, including discussion of their meaning, form, context and value.
  • canonThe group of works generally accepted as the most important and influential in a literature, which are widely taught, studied and reprinted.
  • interpretationAn explanation of what a text or a part of it means, supported by evidence from the text; also the act of explaining it.

More terms: Criticism and Analysis

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: