Group 3 and 4- Presentations

Group Three: Feminist Theory

Hollywood Squares.

Famoust feminist critics: Mary Wollenstonecraft, Rosie The Rivetor, bell hooks, Pat (?)

Four phases of the Feminism Movement:

(Phase One) 1880's-1928 Women's suffrage in the UK and the US. 

(Phase Two) 1960's-1980's  issues of equality and ending discrimination. (After WWII) Tends to leave out the poor and minorities.

(Phase Three) 1990's Response to perceived failures of second wave feminism. (Sexual harassment issues). (After Anita Hill lost the court battle) (inclusion of all women in all countries with all different types of status)

(Phase Four) Is currently being constructed.

Hello and welcome to English 300 squares-  We have some special quest appearances for you this evening-  Critical as they may seem outside our studio I’d like you to help me inquire about their knowledge with Feminist Literary Criticism- ….I’ll come up with a few more introductory phrases before introductions begin- 

Pat-  I have on my card here the number four- so I’m going to use this quantity in a question- What are or have been the four phases of feminism?

Claire- Is the novel Don Quixote a work that is encompassed of fair gender roles?

Mary Wollstonecraft- In youth we learn how to respond to the world in a male or female way- Hence the certain way we live out daily lives is signified by these responses- One of the American Philosopher Judith Butler’s favorite words is re-signification- a term that challenges these daily rhetorical responses- The question is –what particular daily activity do you believe needs to be re-signified for gender equality? 

Rosie The Riveter- Are there any strong or “actual” women in Don Quixote?   No- sparks argument between-….

Pat- we don’t know where you came from or how you are developing in life- but I speak for most with this question-  Are you aware of any proper representative creation stories that promote feminist ideals?-

Bell Hooks- It seems Don Quixote is a great book for feminist ideals because it largely contributes to the idea of chivalry-  How can or can this not be considered a feminist mode?    

Bell- since you are basically a third wave feminist, could you still describe for us how to describe the emergent fourth wave?

“Feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure than women have equal rights with men.  It is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels--sex, race, and class, to name a few---and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” 

Pat- What are you- a boy or girl?  Sparks argument- (sex vs. gender)

What needs to change, if anything, for Don Quixote to be a gender fair novel?

Which 1963 author, and founder of NOW or National Organization for Women, wrote The Feminine Mystique, which was the first literary landmark for feminism?
-Betty Friedan 

Which 1970 radical feminist organization, influenced by Marxism, held the view that the male had to give up his supremacy instead of the woman changing herself, and also published the journal Feminist Revolution?
-The Redstockings 
Who was the first American feminist author and what was her work that was published in 1845?
-Margret Fuller and  Woman in the Nineteenth Century which was a novel expanded from an 1843 essay: The Great Lawsuit. Man Verses Man. Woman Verses Woman.

Group Three: Reader Response Theory 

Telephone.

Poem: The Flea (John Donne)

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, 
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Difference between New Critics and Deconstrucionists. 

1. NC: Stay inside the text. 
2. D: There is no outside the text. 
   
3. Reader Response (bigger umbrella)
4. Feminism and RR reactions to the exclusiveness of former criticism.