ENGL 3Q95 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Elaine Showalter, Paroxysmal Attack, Crazy Jane
25 Nov 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Feminine: in the feminine phase (1840 1880), women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its assumptions about female nature. Feminist: the feminist phase (1880 1920) was characterized by women"s writing that protested against male standards and values, and advocated women"s rights and values, including a demand for autonomy. Female: the female phase (1920 ) is one of self-discovery. Women reject both imitation and protest two forms of dependency and turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature. Laertes calls her a document of madness and according to showalter, the stage conventions associated with her role have emphasized the feminine nature of ophelia"s insanity as contrasted with hamlet"s universalized metaphysical distress. She tends to be dressed in white and have her hair loose decorated with fantastical garlands of wildflowers.
