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University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company f 77-31,865 f FLYNN, Elizabeth Ann, 1944- | FEMINIST CRITICAL THEORY: THREE MODELS. I The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1977 | Literature, English f | University Microfilms International,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 © Copyright by Elizabeth Ann Flynn 1977 FEMINIST CRITICAL THEORY: THREE MODELS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Elizabeth Ann Flynn, B.A. , M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1977 Approved By Reading Committee: James R. Kincaid Mildred B. Munday Marlene Longenecker /f' Adviser department of English PREFACE This dissertation has almost shaped itself. It began as a feminist examination of Middlemarch, then became feminist interpretations of Middlemarch, To the Lighthouse, and The Bell Jar, and finally emerged as feminist analyses of Mrs. Dalloway from three theoretical perspectives— Marxist, archetypal, and neo-Aristotelian. These metamorphoses can be explained quite simply: my original intention was to formulate a theoretical model to be used in the practice of feminist criticism and then to apply the model, but this proved an impossible task. I could not settle on a single theoretical per­ spective and so I decided upon three instead— chosen some­ what arbitrarily. The Woolf novel was chosen somewhat arbitrarily as well. My present study is designed to test the usefulness to the feminist critic of the three critical models. I wish to express my appreciation to my adviser, Jim Kincaid, who encouraged me to become involved in a project of this sort and who has allowed me to grope toward some understanding of literary theory in general • and Northrop Frye in particular. For him, I feel sure, the study of literature is the pursuit of freedom. I ii would also like to thank the other members of my reading committee, Mildred B. Munday and Marlene Longenecker. Both worked closely with me from conception to completion and both offered perceptive comments and enthusiastic encouragement. I could not have asked for a more cooperative committee. I am also grateful to my parents— for everything. But certainly I owe my greatest debt to my husband, John, who has always given intellectual development highest priority. iii VITA December 17, 1944 Born - Jersey City, New Jersey 1966.............. B.A. cum laude, Pace University New York, New York 1966-1967 .... Teacher, Newburgh Free Academy, Newburgh, New York 1967-1969 .... Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1969.............. Research Assistant, College of Humanities, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1969-1971 .... Lecturer, The Ohio State Univer­ sity, Columbus, Ohio 1971-1972 .... Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1972-1974 .... Substitute Teacher, The American International School, Duesseldorf, West Germany 1974 ........... Teaching Assistant, Research Assistant, The University of Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, West Germany 1974-1977 .... Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Twentieth-Century British and American Literature Women1s Studies Nineteenth-Century American Literature Nineteenth-Century British Literature The Novel iv TABLE OP CONTENTS Page PREFACE ................................................ ii VITA. ...................................................iv LIST OP TAB L E S......................................... vi LIST OP F I G U R E S ..................................... vii CHAPTER I. FEMINIST CRITICAL THEORY: SOME PRELIMINARY 1 OBSERVATIONS II. MODEL ONE: MARXIST CRITICISM THE M O D E L ....................................... 31 MRS. DALLOWAY.................................. 48 III. MODEL TWO: ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM THE M O D E L ....................................... 77 MRS. DALLOWAY............................... 94 IV, MODEL THREE: NEO-ARISTOTELIAN CRITICISM THE M O D E L ...................... 120 MRS. DALLOWAY............................... 133 V. CONCLUSIONS................................... 159 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................... 170 a p p e n d i c e s A. Fleishman’s Structural Scheme............. 177 B. Schaefer's Structural Scheme ......... , . 178 C. Daiches' Structural Scheme ........ 179 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Pratt's Classification of Feminist. 80 Criticism Table 2. Fleishman's Structural Scheme ............. 177 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure. 1.. Bazin's Structural Scheme............... 153 Figure 2. Schaefer's Structural Scheme ......... 178 Figure 3. Daiches' Structural Scheme ........... 179 vii CHAPTER ONE FEMINIST CRITICAL THEORY: SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS In her review of feminist literary criticism for Signs, Elaine Showalter remarks, "On the whole, feminist literary criticism and scholarship have been stubbornly empirical; they have generated relatively little theory and abstraction."^ Actually, a fair amount of feminist critical theory has appeared; it has remained somewhat invisible, however, since it has been published in diverse places and since no one has yet provided an overview of it. Feminists have been practicing feminist criticism for the past seven years. It is certainly time to examine feminist critical theory in an attempt to assess its use­ fulness to the feminist critic. Important theoretical statements have appeared in anthologies devoted to feminist criticism and in scholarly journals such as Critical Inquiry and College English. An anthology of feminist criticism edited by Susan Koppelman Cornillon, Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspec- tives, includes six articles of a theoretical nature. Josephine Donovan's anthology, Feminist Literary Criticism: Explorations in Theory, contains such significant essays 2 as Cheri Register's "American Feminist Literary Criticism: A Bibliographical Introduction/" essentially an overview of feminist practical criticism up to the early months of 1973, and Carolyn Heilbrun and Catharine Stimpson's provocative "Theories of Feminist Criticism: A Dialogue." Annette Kolodny's "Some Notes on Defining a 'Feminist Literary Criticism"' appeared in Critical Inquiry in the autumn of 1975.4 Early in 1977 Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards published their The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, an anthology which contains three essays which could be considered theoretical.5 Also, numerous unpublished papers exist, most of which were presented at g regional or national MLA conventions. The problem is not so much that feminist critics have ignored theoretical issues; essays of a theoretical nature are increasing. Rather, there is a lack of agreement among feminist theorists and there has been an unfortunate hesitancy to relate feminist criticism to other forms of literary criticism. Of the essays mentioned above, none concentrates on discussing the relationship between a fem­ inist perspective and another critical perspective. Fraya Katz-Stoker's "The Other Criticism: Feminism vs. Formalism" makes such an attempt, but it is too brief and it employs an unnecessarily limited conception of formalism. What is needed is a fuller exploration of the issues raised hy Annis Pratt and Lillian S. Robinson in their debate over the rel­ ative merits of a formalist or an historicist feminism 3 criticism. The earliest collection of feminist criticism, the May 1971 issue of College English, which was devoted exclusively to the subject, contained Pratt's "The New Feminist Criticism," and Robinson's reply, "Dwelling in Decencies: Radical Criticism and the Feminist Perspective."® Pratt defends an archetypal approach, i.e.,
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