艾米莉•狄金森诗歌中的女性意识(3)
The second phrase put focus on the feminine writers and their works,especially interseted in the plot structure of the works. During this time, many publications about women’s issues and feminist theoretical research sprang up. In 1968, Mary Ellmann published Thinking about Women. In 1970,Sexual Politics written by Kate Millett was released. And in 1949 The Second Sex written by Simone de Beauvoir was released. In The Second Sex, the writer put forward the point that woman was not born but made. She studied gender differences of inpidual development from childhood to old age in many aspects, such as biology, psychology and religion. “The other” was an important concept in this book. Because of “the other”, many women got unique properties which form the “feminity”. And “ferminity”had relationship with women’s status in our society. To be free, women must break the bondage of the “feminity”.
During the third phrase, feminist critics worked on constructing theories. In 1977 Elasne Showalter published A Literature of Their Own:British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. The theories put forward in this work satisfy the demand of systematizing of women’s literature. In Towards A Feminist Poetics Showalter put forward the theory of feminist criticism for the first time, which played an important role in the development of feminist criticism. French feminist critics Helen Cixious,Lucy Irigaray and Julia Kristeva investigated in feminine discourse. Cexious coins a new word “ecriture feminine(write in body)” which focused not on specific woman but on women’s textualization. It was based on Derrida’s deconstruction and Lacan’s psychoanalysis with the aim of subverting the patriarchal discourse of the concept of writing .
In the field of feminist literary criticism, there existed many similar themes, like gender, sex, race, class, family, body, maternal instincts, and so on. Critics saw from different angels and took use of different theories to read different themes. Feminist criticism had achived a lot all around the world and made great contributions to the development of feminism.