A feminine sentence: In the Times Literary Supplement (1923), Virginia Woolf decided that her contemporary Dorothy Richardson

had found a sentence that we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender. It was a womans sentence, but only in the sense that it is used to describe a womans mind by a writer who is neither proud nor afraid of anything that she may discover in the psychology of her sex. [Goodman] Androcentric: A view of theory that is male-centred. Focused or centred on men. [Beasley, Encarta] Anon: Anonymous. In a famous quotation, Virginia Woolf emphasizes that many women wrote in previous generations, but that social factors to do with gender kept many writers anonymous, hidden, silenced or otherwise excluded from the canon. [Goodman] An Obstacle: A poem by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that can be read as a piece about the obstacles of gender stereotypes and prejudices which blocked the progress of women writers for so long. The narrator and author of the poem has experienced a lack of cooperation and support from the social world, characterized by Prejudice. Gilman shows women striving to move ahead, patriarchal attitudes standing in the way. Prejudice faces all writers who do not conform to some norm of acceptability or importance. The author recognizes the joy of moving beyond an obstacle, whether personal or general. [Goodman] Bachelor: positive masculine category set against feminine equivalents like spinster. Buddy from brother is also a good thing in opposition to sissy derived from sister. [ Beasley] Domestic fiction: The term alludes to traditional representations of womens roles in the home, and then with reference to the feminist writing which challenged and continues to challenge such traditions. [Goodman] Female writing (criture feminine): A term coined by Hlne Cixous to refer to womens writing, which derives from womens unique experience. [Goodman] Feminism: A recognition of the historical and cultural subordination of women and a resolve to do something about it. The advocacy of womens rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. It is a critical theory that refuses what it describes as the masculine bias of mainstream Western thinking on the basis that this bias renders women invisible/marginal to understanding of humanity and distorts understandings of men. Feminism is a critical stance that decentres the assumptions of the mainstream in terms of centre (men)/periphery (women). For the Feminists the notion of woman is placed centre stage. The issue of rights for women first became prominent during the French and American revolutions in the late eighteenth century. [Goodman, Drabble, Beasley, Oxford]

Feminist literary criticism: An academic approach to the study of literature which applies feminist thought to the analysis of literary texts and the contexts of their production and reception. A modern tradition of literary commentary and controversy devoted to the defence of womens writing or of fictional female characters against the condescensions of a predominantly male literary establishment. The growth of feminist literary criticism has helped us to study gender as it is represented in literature and other art forms. The beginnings of this movement are to be found in the journalism of Rebecca West from about 1910. Early European feminist writings began with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, while Anglo-American writing is often associated with Virginia Woolf. Feminist criticism has become a varied field of debate rather than an agreed position. Its substantial achievements are seen in the readmission of temporarily forgotten women authors to the literary canon in modern reprints and newly commissioned studies by feminist publishing houses such as Virago (1977) and the Womens Press (1978), in anthologies and academic courses. [Goodman, Drabble] Feminist literature: The literary corpus written by contemporary women within the context of second wave or even third wave (that is, current) feminist awareness. Feminist authors have a political and ideological agenda in the writing of their work. Thus, some knowledge of the authors intentions is necessary. Literature may have a feminist impact even if its authors do not identify themselves as feminist. [Goodman] Feminist and Masculinity Studies: they tend to line up together and focus on the significance of gender (sexed identities). [Beasley] Firing the canon: The phrase means a revaluation of the standards by which authors and texts have been singled out and canonized, followed by an active search for other authors and texts for inclusion. [Goodman] First-wave feminism: The syntagm often refers to the Suffragists who believed in fighting for womens rights rallied around one central cause: womens right to vote. In Britain it was not until the emergence of the suffragette movement in the late nineteenth century that there was a significant political change. It was marked by its critique of dominant Western thinking of the time, that is, its critique of Liberalism. However, eighteenth and nineteenth-century Liberalism, though using the gender neutral language of humanity, individual, and reason, rested in practice upon a notional man and was indeed confined to men. Early Liberal feminists proposed womens inclusion in the Liberal universal conception of a human common nature as well as a common action political agenda. [Goodman, Encarta, Beasley] Gender: Social or cultural category based on the ways of seeing and representing people and situations influenced by sex difference. Typically refers to the social process of dividing up people and social practices along the lines of sexed identities. Frequently involves creating hierarchies between divisions. In modern Western societies, it usually refers to the categories of men and women and the social practices which associate men

with public life and women and domestic life. Some commentators see it more in terms of social interactions and institutions that from groups, thus, as a structuring process. Although it is commonly linked to notions of reproduction, some analysts reject its connection to social interpretation of reproductive biological distinctions. [Goodman, Beasley] Gender and creative work: In the nineteenth century, women and girls in fiction are occupied with certain kinds of creative work. Weaving, sewing and needlework represent those forms of work and a metaphor for female expression which operates on many levels simultaneously. However, some other women use writing as a way to express creative freedom. That is the case of Charlotte Perkins Gilman who, both in her story The Yellow Newspaper and in her own life, writes as a process of healing and emotional release. She values creative freedom and intellectual stimulation over the domestic. [Goodman] Gender and language: All writing is gendered so far as all authors use language. Language is created in so far as all authors use language, and language is created, spoken and written in culture, where each of us has a sex and a gender. A way of texting the gender-relevance of a text is deciding what relationships of power and authority are conveying through the language and characterization of a text. Feminist commentators note that in Western thought to speak of men is taken as speaking universally. [Goodman, Beasley] Gender/Sexual Difference thinking: Writers such as Nancy Chodorow, Mary Daly, Carol Gilligan, and Luce Irigaray speak for an alternative worldview which recognizes and highlights difference. Like the Emancipatory feminists, they argue that universal presumptions are in fact not neutral but derived from men or notions of the masculine and constitutes women as outsiders. The aim of Gender Difference feminists is to acknowledge difference positively by revaluing the marginal, by revaluing the feminine. Sexual Difference theorists do not assume that women have any particular qualities that can be contrasted with those of men, but revalue the Feminine as representing in cultural terms difference from the (masculine) norm. By revaluing the Feminine, they envisage plurality in society. Gender/Sexual Difference approaches share with Feminist Identity Politics the common theme of the incommensurability of the sexes and the importance of celebrating rather than suppressing difference in social life. [Beasley] Gender, language and Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865): Alice is ahead of its time because it is an example of childrens fiction with a female protagonist. Unlike the other childrens stories written in the previous generation, the central character is active, inquisitive, intelligent and engaging. Most of the fantastic creatures encountered by Alice are gendered male and they are male for a reason: they serve a function to do with language and power in a male-dominated world. The language of the piece and the gendering of the other characters in the story reveal that Alice is at odds in a maledominated, male-controlled world. Most of the creatures encountered by the fictional

Alice are male or endowed with masculine power and authority, often expressed through their mastery of, and experimentation with language. [Goodman] Gender, language and Pygmalion (1916): Professor Higgins undertakes his task in order to win a bet and to prove his own points about English speech and the class system: he teaches Eliza Doolittle to speak standard English and introduces her to a successfully social life. Eliza Doolittle is a woman constructed, imagistically and linguistically, by a man. The male playwright G. B. Shaw shows the brutality of the patriarchal system of language and power which entraps her. For Eliza Doolittle language is inextricably tied to gender and class issues. The knowledge she has acquired of language and social relations makes her enter a new culture, a new language. Her previous ways of using language, and of seeing herself, are no longer open to her. The political and social views of G. B. Shaw are expressed through the mouths of his characters. [Goodman, Drabble] Gender, language and The Lady of Shalott (1832): In this Victorian poem of Arthurian echoes, the Lady of the title is disempowered by language itself. She is not the subject of active verbs but a passive presence in contrast with an active man and an active landscape. The word bold is used in the poem in relation to Sir Lancelot. It is only used in relation to the Lady by way of analogy to a seer, gendered male. [Goodman] Gender, language and The Yellow Wallpaper (1892): male power determines meaning by assuming the right to designate correct uses of language and rules for female behaviour. The female narrator describes her feelings of frustration at being told not to write, and implicit in that frustration is a desire to be the one who writes her own story, who uses language to represent her own self. Gilman is critical of Doctor John, the female narrators husband, but her criticism is not expressed in any direct terms within the text but through our sympathy with the confined woman. The entire narrative becomes the expression of a stifled creative voice in the form of a secret journal. Gilman uses language to create a picture of reality: to show what is presented as reason by men. [Goodman] Gender on the agenda: The process of reading with a concern for gender issues that affects the writing or reading of texts. It means paying attention to factors such as womens relative lack of access to higher education, women lower economic status, womens domestic responsibilities, and the conflict between nurturing roles such as motherhood and domestic work. It involves the reader in an active process of imagination and interpretation. [Goodman, Drabble] Gender/Sexuality Theories: includes a full range of major subfields of gender/sexuality theorythat is, Feminist, Masculinity, and Sexuality Studies. These subfields tend to focus on only two sexes, but recently have begun to allow for more plural sexual identities. All the subfields are characterized by an inclination to challenge the notion of a proper, appropriate, natural norm in relation to gender and sexuality. Gender/Sexuality theories and all its subfields are committed to social reform, or at least social destabilisation. The subfields show a concern with some level of social change that resists the existing hierarchy of sex and power. Beasley outlines five main directions spreading across the Modernist-Postmodern continuum that focus on the Human Modernist

(Emancipatory/Liberationsit) feminisms, (Singular) Difference Identity Politics to Sexual Difference feminisms, (Multiple) Differences race, ethnicity, imperialism and feminism, Relational Social Power Feminist Social Constructionism, and Fluidity/Instability Postmodern feminism. Some critics have distinguished two major groupings or standards within the field of Feminist Studies, such as relational and individualist feminisms and equality and difference feminisms. [Beasley]

Gender Studies: A concern with the representation, rights and status of women and men. Academic courses in sociology, history, literature, and psychology which focus on the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society. Teaching programmes centrally focused on Masculinity under the rubric of gender studies also pay attention to sexuality, while Sexuality Studies programmes discuss writers who, at the very least, debate gender matters. [Goodman, Encarta, Beasley] Genre: Term used to distinguish between distinct types of writing, art or thought. The three major literary genres are poetry, prose fiction, and drama. [Goodman] Gestalt view of literature and gender: It analyses the patterns involved in reading and interpreting literature. [Goodman] Gynocentric: centred on or concerned exclusively with women; taking a female (or specifically a feminist) point of view. [Encarta] Hegemonic masculinity: refers to the most valuable and most rewarded form of masculinity, which provides a widely accepted model legitimizing masculine social dominance. [Beasley] Identity politics: reflects the idea that characteristics derived from gender, race or sexuality produce a shared experience and a related commonality. [Beasley] Literature: Body of writing that aims to be creative. It includes poetry, prose fiction, and drama. [Goodman] Literary canon: It is the body of writings generally recognized as great by some authority. A body of approved works, comprising either writings genuinely considered to be those of a given author, or writings considered to represent the best standards of a given literary tradition. [Goodman, Drabble] Madness in literature: From a gendered perspective, this topic often relates to the conflict between artistic and domestic sensibilities. In some occasions madness is a means of escape, of liberation for women. For Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar the frequency with which women have written about madness is to be seen as one of the most revealing symptoms of their own feelings of entrapment and oppression. [Goodman] Madness in Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront: Both Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Jane Eyre (1847) resists romanticizing mental breakdown, insisting on the degree to

which the literary fashion for ornamental female insanity debilitated and degraded women. The novels resist the depiction of madness as the product of a naturally unstable femininity. Bront manipulates Bertha Masons character and depicts her as different from the sentimental madwomen usually found in preceding novels. Jane Eyre is antithetical to Victorian ideals of femininity in a way which can be interpreted as feminist. [Goodman] Madness in Moods: In her novels, the American writer Louisa May Alcott wrote about depressions connected with the struggle to balance artistic creativity with domesticity. [Goodman] Madness in The Female Malady: In her influential study, Elaine Showalter notes that madness is the price women artists have to pay for the exercise of their creativity in a male-dominated culture. [Goodman] Madness in The Yellow Wallpaper: In this representative story what drives the narrator mad is the confinement of her creative imagination. Madness could be an escape from one kind of cage into another. [Goodman] Masculinity Studies: offers a critical stance on sex and power but, rather than focusing on the marginalized, attends to those that are traditionally central to Western thinkingthat is, men and masculinity. Indeed, while this subfield has become more attentive to diversity, it still primarily attends to white middle-class heterosexual men. [Beasley] Patriarchy: In Feminism, systemic and trans-historical male domination over women. A system or society of government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line. System or society of government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Along with compulsory heterosexuality, the term patriarchy indicate the negative nature of power, its quality of repression. [Oxford, Beasley] Postmodern feminism: offers the multiplication of difference that appears in the group difference(s) approaches. There is an expansion of difference towards differences, towards a plurality that resists any set identities. Post-modern feminists intent to destabilize the very conception of identity (human or group) and the binary identities (such as men and women). They assert that there is no truth behind identity. For them, gender is a masquerade and there is nothing behind or before this mask. Postmodern views are even more strongly but have had limited impact on Masculinity Studies. [Beasley] Pro-feminist: Still debated by feminist criticism, it is a term sometimes used for men sympathetic to feminist concerns. Such literary works as Jane Eyre and Pygmalion can be defined as pro-feminist. The story of Jane Eyre exhibits the bright independent heroine, a woman who struggles with learning, work and desire. Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion

escapes her creator and becomes a character with more integrity and humanity than Professor Higgins, her male counterpart. [Goodman] Queer theory: typically focused upon the question of individual identity, and upon cultural/symbolic and literary/textual issues, aims to destabilize identity through the construction of a supposedly inclusive, non-normative (almost invariably nonheterosexual) sexuality and a simultaneous dismantling of gender roles. [Beasley] Race/ethnicity/imperialism feminists: they wish to revalue and affirm group difference and identities. For them, categories of men and women cannot be seen as self-evident identities that are always the same and bear the same social consequences everywhere. Second-wave feminism: movement focused particularly on womens rights with an emphasis on unity and sisterhood. It began during the political upheaval in England, Europe and America in the 1960s and 1970s, and attempted to combat social and cultural inequalities. Seminal figures included Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Popular renderings of Feminism often presuppose the politics of Liberal feminism during this second wave. However, in feminist writings the second wave refers to at least four main directions: (reworked versions of) Liberal, Marxist, Socialist feminisms and additionally Radical feminism. Like first-wave feminism, it has an emancipatory orientation or Modernist approach which consists of assimilating women into society, a fact they would necessarily transform that society. Its aim is to throw off macro structures of power that oppress women and other subordinated groups as far as to propound a particular notion of the self less tied to a particular account of competitive masculinity. Women must be assimilated into an enhanced view of the social world, participating in social tasks as men do. During the second wave of feminism gender difference was increasingly promoted: the focus was more upon womens difference than from men, upon affirming women as a group and gynocentrism. [Oxford, Beasley] Sex: Biological category that distinguishes between male and female. Sex is ineluctably a matter of human organizationthat is, it is political, associated with social dominance and subordination, as well as capable of change. [Goodman, Beasley] Sexed regimes: identities and practices typically involving categories such as men and women. [Beasley] Sexual difference: coverall term for the field of study of sexed identities. [Beasley] Sexual embodiment: attends to critical analyses of gender and sexual relations. [Beasley] Sexuality Studies: focus upon the organization of desire (not on having or doing sex per se, but upon sexualities). Sexuality Studies is mostly (like Feminism) concerned with marginalized identities and practices (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) and/or Queer Studies. Nevertheless, more recently there has been a growing body of work in Sexuality Studies concerned with heterosexuality, with mainstream sexuality. [Beasley]

Sexuality: The realm of sexual experience and desire. Sometimes it refers to a persons sexual orientation as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. [Goodman] Social Constructionist Feminists: they argue that difference does not adhere in the self/identity, is not an inherent essence, but is created by relations of power. They describe truth and power in universal macro terms and power is largely perceived as negative domination. Social Constructionism, along with Postmodernism, offers a critique of both Emancipatory and Gender Difference approaches in that both of the latter accounts stress relatively fixed notions of identity. [Beasley]

The domestication of insanity: With this phrase, Elaine Showalter suggests how she connects domestic confinement and oppression with madness. [Goodman] The female malady: Elaine Showalter has used this phrase to refer to both the female experience of domestic confinement and to the identification of mental and emotional disturbances in women which could be called female disorders. [Goodman] The Lady of Shallot: A poem by Tennyson published in 1832, much revised for the 1842 Poems. The Lady was one of the several enchanted or imprisoned maidens to capture the Victorian imagination, and was the subject of many illustrations, including the notable ones by Waterhouse, Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt. The lovely victim of an evil curse, she is bound to stick to her enchanted weaving task night and day, without looking out of the window, a window that shows her the outside world to which she cannot access directly. When Sir Lancelot rides past on his way to Camelot, the mysterious ladys self-discipline snaps and she resigns herself to her doom. [Drabble] The New Woman: Goodman suggests that this phrase might have come into the minds of members of the first audience of A Dolls House by the end of the scene between Nora and Mrs Linde in Act I. It suggests a new, more independent kind of woman who can act with self-determining, progressive views and conduct. New signified good, the opening out of a new world order. The poster of the performance of Sydney Grundys play The New Woman, performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1894, shows a young woman in black in a cabinet with a large latchkey and a smouldering cigarette, which became the infamous tokens of her advanced nature. Both plays demonstrate an underlying hostility to the whole notion of the New Woman because of the fact that these women could work or deal with money, which was a way of transgression of the social boundaries that require middle-class women to be dependent on either father, husband of brother. Ibsen influenced G. B. Shaw in Pygmalion (1913) and Mrs. Warrens Profession (1931), the first contributions to the new age of New Women in the theatre. The

Norwegian playwrights work was instrumental in a developing trend for strong women on the stage, which later developed in the plays of the suffrage movement. [Goodman] The womans masculine language: Juliet Mitchell points out that there is not a female writing or a womans voice but the hysterics voice who speaks masculinely in a phallocentric world talking about feminine experience. [Goodman] The Yellow Wallpaper: A short story written by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman, and published in May 1892 in the New England Magazine. It is the first person narration of a young mother isolated in a country colonial mansion, under the supervision of a nurse. Supervised and compelled by the authority of her physician husband John, she is largely confined to a room with paper of a smouldering unclean yellow, in which she discerns sinister patterns and, eventually, the movements of imprisoned women. The story chronicles the female characters descend into madness, and may be read as a simple ghost story or as a feminist text. Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper after a severe nervous breakdown. A specialist in mental diseases advised her to have two hours intellectual life a day but she cast his advice to the winds and went to work again as she was so near the border line of utter mental ruin. Perkins Gilman stated that the little book saved one woman from a similar fate. She also added that it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked [Drabble, Norton] Third-wave feminism: It started approximately in 1980, and lasted up to the early 1990s. It included renewed campaigning for womens greater influence on politics. This movement suggests the idea that the goals of second wave feminism have been achieved and/or that his older form of feminism is now outmoded because it is overly focused on womens victimized status. It often positions itself in antagonism to more established feminist projects and displays doubts about the concept of women as a broad social grouping, arguing that this category is unhelpful. Sometimes it refers to recent feminist thinkers who are attuned to differences between women and are dubious about collective political action. [Drabble, Beasley] Trans politics: showing a similar path to Queer Theory, increasingly critiquing and rejecting notions of fixed identity, represents the specific avowal of gender and sexual ambiguity (the avowal of a positioning as, for example, neither a man nor woman). Queer theorists, in particular, dismiss any assertions that gender and sexuality are inevitably joined, and tend to ignore or reject gender. [Beasley] Windows, doors and mirrors: In womens fiction, they separate public and private spheres, real and imaginary spaces where they are allowed to enter and to exit. Cracked mirrors often represent fractured identities or horror of recognition. In The Lady of Shalott the mirror shows her the outside world to which she cant have access. In The Yellow Newspaper the narrator of the story sees herself reflected in a symbolic mirror because the figures she sees moving behind the wallpaper are all versions of herself, of other trapped women. [Goodman]

Writer/reader relationship: A relationship between author and reader can be established in the way that a text and its context bridge the gap between one person, an author, and other people, who come to the text at different times, in different cultural contexts and for different reasons. As an example, in Pygmalion the political and social views of G. B. Shaw are expressed through the mouths of his characters. Also, the female perspective of Jane Eyre brings readers inside Janes world and encourages them to see things from Janes point of view. She offers an insight into the class and gender divisions of the previous era and the continuing inequalities of society. [Goodman] Wolf, Naomi: the author of The Beauty Myth (1990) and Misconceptions (2001) devotes considerable attention to the social obstacles women face, urging social reform to these obstacles. Her political programme is about individuals and criticizes what she calls victim feminism for saddling women with an identity and powerlessness. She encourages women to form power groups to pool their resources in the way men do and seeks to incorporate women and Feminism into a North American style of capitalism. Wolf celebrates gun ownership among women as a sign of progress beyond victimhood. [Beasley] Womens Liberation: Also known as the Women's Movement, Women's Liberation, or Women's Lib, the term refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, voting rights, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. On the whole, it means the liberation of women from inequalities and subservient status in relation to men, and from attitudes causing these. Unlike Gay Liberation thinkers, these feminist perceived sexuality as intimately tied to normative power. [Encarta, Beasley] Womens Literature: Literature concerning women. Some womens literature conveys feminist ideas and affects readers in a consciousness raising style. Most contemporary authors have been influenced to some degree by the feminist literary critical revolution. [Goodman] Womens Studies: They show a concern with the representation, rights and status of women. A course of study examining the historical, economic, and cultural roles and achievements of women. Gender is sometimes associated with attempts to excise the radical critique of Womens Studies and with prescriptive demands that they must be accompanied by a matched emphasis on men. [Goodman, Encarta, Beasley] Womyn: non-standard spelling of women adopted by some feminists in order to avoid the word ending men. [Encarta]