About Elaine Showalters Theory of Gynocriticism

The present essay is an attempt to explore Showalters feminist critical philosophy and the corresponding practice of such an innovative approach in literary feminism. It tries to reflect upon her critical theorization and practice, and recognize the credibility and aftereffect of both among contemporary authors, critics and readers. It investigates whether Showalters critical approach is a feminist social critique, i.e. an analysis of women writing in a patriarchal culture, or a development of a feminist aesthetics, i.e. an explanation of how writing by women discloses a distinctively female discourse. It looks into what makes her feminist criticism best and most importantly characterized, and her literary framework for the analysis of womens literature.

Elaine Showalter, an American feminist, retired recently from faculty position in Princeton University in 2003. She developed the concept of "gynocritics" and practised it through her life career. She, being a specialized in Victorian literature, wrote on pre-victorian, Victorian, and modern female writers observing their social, cultural, religious and financial status in their own periods. The present essay is an attempt to explore Showalter's feminist critical philosophy and the corresponding practice of such an innovative approach in literary feminism. It tries to reflect upon her critical theorization and practice, and recognize the credibility and aftereffect of both among contemporary authors, critics and readers. It investigates whether Showalter's critical approach is a feminist social critique, i.e. an analysis of women writing in a patriarchal culture, or a development of a feminist aesthetics, i.e. an explanation of how writing by women discloses a distinctively female discourse. It looks into what makes her feminist criticism best and most importantly characterized, and her literary framework for the analysis of women's literature. Showalter's female research methodology was concerned with abnormal psychology which assisted her during reading reactions of a female sensibility on printed pages. After intensive study of female consciousness described in both female and male's writings, she came to a conclusion that women were/are misunderstood and misidentified because of raw attention and weak sensibility of other than woman herself. Woman cannot be understood by man nor her writing can be elaborated explicitly, therefore, woman is expected to read and write woman's sensibility illustrated in writing. For developing theory of reading and writing and thinking, about woman and critiquing for re-creating a space of identity as a writer, poet, critic, and a better advocate for her own favorite right, she wrote and edited so many books. Toward a Feminist Poetics (1979), The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture (18301980) (1985), Sexual Anarchy: Gender at Culture at the Fin de Sicle (1990), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997), and Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001). They, as whole, illustrate feminist tradition as writer and intellectual of their own type. She had deep respect and sympathy with Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf and regarded them towering & leading feminist personalities. Showalter's two notable essays in feminism, "Toward a Feminist Poetics" and "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness" are keys to her female perspectivism. Perhaps, they are the compact theses of what she called the task of "gynocritics." In Toward a Feminist Poetics Showalter has divided the history of women's literature into three phases: Feminine: In the Feminine phase (18401880), "women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its assumptions about female nature"
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Feminist: The Feminist phase (18801920) was a period of "the winning of vote, women are historical enabled to reject the accommodating postures of femininity and to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood... a generation of New Women redefined the women artists role in terms of responsibility to suffering sisters."
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It was characterized by woman's writing that protested against phallocentrism and advocated women's rights and values, and freedom. The female writers of that period were Elizabeth Gaskell, and Gilman etc.

Female: The Female phase (1920--) is one of self-discovery. Showalter says, "women reject both imitation and protest--two forms of dependency--and turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature"
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In This phase representatives of formal aesthetic ...began to think them discreet and self sufficient. Richardson and Woolf were leading among them. Thus, "Towards a feminist Poetics", demonstrates historical survey of feminist writers categorizing them genealogically