In this paper, I am going to use American feminism as the main framework of the analysis. The main focus is put upon the meaning of gender and gender roles since these issues were one of the main sources of oppression on women during the Renaissance period.
Feminism mainly deals with “gender politics, power relations, and sexuality” (Chadorow 15). Mostly explored themes in feminist theory are “sexual objectification of women, patriarchy, oppression and stereotyping” (Gilligan 484). According to Showalter there are three phases regarding feminism.
The first one is called feminist critic in which the woman analyzes a literary work through a feminist perspective as a reader. The second phase is called Gynocriticism that regards a woman as a feminist writer. Gynocriticism provides us with a female framework to analyze literature. The third phase she mentions is gender theory. In gender theory the ideologies behind people’s conduct towards gender are examined(20-40).
Since Elizabethan society was a patriarchal society it is of high importance to elaborate upon the view of feminism theory over patriarchy. Engels referred to it as the earliest system of domination establishing that Patriarchy is “the world historical defeat of the female sex” (207). Thus, one might assert that patriarchy is a form of political organization that distributes power unequally between men and women to the detriment of women.
According to feminism, patriarchy weakens women and makes them follow male dominant ideologies consciously and/ or unconsciously. Based upon Pateman’s assertions such a patriarchy frees men to do whatever they want and subjugates women as beings that need to be controlled (117-119). But feminist theorists such as Tickner believe that we may fight patriarchy and the ideologies it promotes “by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations” (100).
Based upon Butler’s claims there is no such a thing called gender and/ or sex which people can use to impose discrimination upon people (20-22). She regards gender as “an identity tenuously constituted in time” which is built by “repetition of [some] acts” (Butler 87). Thus, as Cacoullos claims Butler provides us with a performative model which conceives both the subject and its identity by repeated performances. Her main intention in offering this performative model and in reconceiving the concept of subject is to claim that the subject of feminism is not stable and/or coherent. She rather suggests that “one cannot be totalized or summarized by a descriptive identity category (104-107).
