Paper Summary:

The paper looks at two of the main forms of mainstream feminism; essentialism and constructionalism. The paper discusses their roots and how they developed from the earlier works of the 1960s and 1970s. The paper also discusses how feminists approached Freud's theories of psychoanalysis.

From the Paper:

"Feminism as a critical approach has developed over time from its early beginnings as a liberation movement with the Suffragettes to the modern criticism of literature and society, which we see today. It seems that now more than ever though that "feminist criticism has lost the celebratory solidarity of its early days" (Rivkin/Ryan pg527). A more recent question posed by the mass of literature which has built up in the last forty years or so is "why is there not a feminist criticism" (Rivkin/Ryan pg527) - i.e. there is far more than a singular agenda or approach to such criticism. Considering the previous amount of "silenced voices" (i.e. those lacking in a voice or disallowed to speak) we now have many voices, but we no longer have a completely cohesive argument."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Rivkin/Ryan, Introduction to Feminist Paradigms, from Literary Theory: An Anthology (pgs 527-532) Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan, Literary Theory: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell), 1998
• Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Section on post structuralism feminism (pgs 129-130)/ Section on psychoanalysis and feminism (pgs140-141)Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell), 1983

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