Project: Women and Femininity in Early British Lit

Preface


Over the last year, I've developed an interest in feminism and women's studies. The following are a collection of posts with feminist readings of selected poetry and prose for an early British literary history course I'm in this semester. At the outset, I have to say, I'm relatively new at reading this way and am not sure exactly what the "correct" methods are. My intent at this point is to read each work with an eye toward the way women are depicted and treated in them, consult the scholarship to see what I missed, and write up a paragraph or two summarizing my thoughts. I hope, by the end of this, to be more comfortable with reading literature through a femininist lens and to have an idea of the positions women and femininity have held (or been relegated to) in early British literature at various times and places, as well as an elementary grasp on how those ideas were constructed. 

What will I be looking for?


I guess it would be smart to set out some "methodology" so I'm consistent from post to post. I certainly won't limit myself to these things, but I'll be looking for women in each text, and the roles the serve in their own homes and communities. I'll pay attention to whatever details are given about their appearance, as well as which of their attributes seem to attract the most attention. I also think it might be interesting to consider how traits generally associated with femininity are regarded by male and female characters in the texts, whether these traits are possessed by men or women. As I read into these various aspects of the texts, I'll be asking questions about what women and femininity are seen as most valuable for, how much autonomy women are believed to deserve in choosing their own destiny, how their bodies are discussed, what their fates are, what basic assumptions about gender and male-female interaction are at work, and the amount of intelligence women are assumed to have. I'll pay particular attention to instances when traditional roles are reversed or poked fun at, or to moments when a characters' sensibilities about women, gender, or sexuality factors into some grand victory or tragic defeat. Ok, I think that's enough to begin with. I'm sure this list will develop as I go.