Sanja Knezevic

English 400

Dr. Robert Budde

October 8th, 2009

The Definition of Feminist Theory

The question of femininity and womanhood in literature has been a large topic for discussion and debate throughout history. Feminism is a body of social theory that tends to be provoked by the beliefs and experiences of women, some who feel that they have been misrepresented by the male gender. Feminist theory moreover tends to center on gender politics such as sexual objectification, stereotyping and female coercion and aims to recognize the nature of gender inequality. There are a number of topics that are discussed within feminist theory such as; examining the representation of women in male and female literature, exploring whether there is a solely “female language” and whether is available to men and questioning whether men and women are biologically different or “socially constructed” as different. Another large topic of discussion within feminist theory is the question of “What is a Woman?” Although the question may seem simple enough, it has brought forth many different literary works that have answered that question in a number of ways. A specific work that comes to mind when contemplating this question is The Second Sex written by Simone de Beauvoir. She wrote this book in an attempt to write about herself, and beginning with the fact that she is a woman, she then felt it necessary to define what a woman was, which then became the intent of the book. In the beginning of The Second Sex excerpt in our book A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader it begins with the phrase: If her functioning as a female is not enough to define a woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman? (51)
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