Breaking the Mold

A major problem that literary critics have while studying any creation, whether it be movies or literature, is that the interpretations widen the gap between men and women. Since the literary cannon has had been mostly the "white man" part of what female critics attempt to do is find fault in what men have seen. They try to gain identity and voice through their own interpretations. Part of having a voice and identity is being able to have your own views of a text as well as write yourself, expressing ideas that may have been previously suffocated.

In Elaine Showalter's essay, "Towards a Feminist Poetics", she separates literary recognition into three basic stages, "Feminine, feminist and female". Each of these stages show the journey that was taken to have some input into the literary cannon. They tried to equate their work with that of men as well as attempt to reject the works that they have written and finally, interject ideas of being a woman and parts of the female mind that men cannot understand. A big part of what Showalter tried to do was, "to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories." This idea however, only seems to stretch the gap between men and women. Women realized that they no longer had to take what male critics had said at face value.

Female critics basically use this title to help define what it means to be a woman and how this applies to their way of thought. As the article, "Reading As A Woman: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart And Feminist Criticism" suggests, reading a text has different results than a reading by a man. Since they cannot go through the same things as a woman can, they cannot understand a text and see the same things and depth as a man. "Women's experience, many feminist critics claims, will lead them to value works differently from their male counterparts, who may regard the problems women characteristically encounter as of limited interest." Widening the gap even more, because of the strain on the ideas each sex has, there seems to never be a compromise. Women have been silenced for long that having an opportunity to express their ideas and how they see the world will not again be quieted.

Women have added a great importance to the literary cannon. For so long, ideas were seen on one perspective which ignored the supposed weaker "sex". Women's views were not valued and so, like Showalter suggests, there needs to be a division of the literary misconceptions. Women are no longer seen as objects of lust as seen in "To his Coy Mistress". This particular poem suggests ideas of seduction and constant references to female genitalia. With the assertion of female criticisms, it allows them to be seen as people.