Oh, you're a Feminist critic? Umm.... What exactly do you do again?

Yet again we come to the problem of applying a political movement to our study of literature. However, this time it's a movement that in a way was built and grew upon literature, and thus easier to justify to it (maybe). So what does Feminism have to do with literature?
In the gynocritical theory of literature (I just wanted to say it) the main purpose is to offer an alternate analysis based on the nuances of the female experience that phallocentricity overlooks. Feminist critics also seek to separate themselves from the "cultural bondage, a legacy of pain and submission (149)," establishing that isolated Amazons celebrating female culture are better off than women trapped in male society.
The literary analysis aspect of Feminist criticism is probably one of the most enlightening. Characters, motives, and outlooks that have been traditionally overlooked by male critics are being reexamined under the auspices of Feminist criticism. Elaine Showalter gives the example of The Mayor of Casterbridge, with the opening scene of Michael Henchard selling his wife and daughter at a county fair. Male critics attribute this act as an indulgence in the male fantasy "to shake loose from one's wife; to discard the drooping rag of of a woman, with her mute complaints and maddening passivity (147)." However, a Feminist critic would (and does) point out that this interpretation is baseless as there was no prior evidence of that kind of relationship between Henchard and his wife. From the Feminist point of view, Henchard's story is a journey in which he fully emerges himself into the loveless, legalistic male world by giving up his wife and daughter, his only feminine influences. He realizes, however, that he needs the feminine love he so publicly disregarded.
I think Showalter phrases it best when she says that women "turned instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature." If you think of it this way, Feminist literature is just a more facet of the movement's strides toward independence.