Reading Literature Through Feminist Lens

Feminism as a social and cultural movement has drastically altered the way literary texts are read and interpreted. Feminist literary theories have consistently shown a tendency to revaluate literary traditions beyond schematic studies, blurring the boundaries between social commentary, theory, philosophy, culture, politics and history in order to comprehend the complex relationships between culture and gender. The essays in the present volume address the ways in which feminist literary theory has developed across the multiple stages of feminism, drawing from a similarly varied corpus of literary works. While assessment of women’s writing feature in this volume as a means of showcasing the “difference” produced by women authors, the essays also read into texts by male authors as a means of interpreting the patriarchal structures operating in texts by both male and female authors. The variety of literary works which cover several historical, literary and cultural periods are also helpful in showing a wider arc of gender mechanisms in literature. The essays in this anthology demonstrate how the various strands of feminist literary theory can be applied to texts, besides inviting readers to develop their own feminist theoretical interpretations of texts.