The word feminism comes from French word “feminisme",
which belief that women should be allowed the same rights, powers and
opportunities as men treated in the same way. The term feminism itself is used
to describe a culture, political and economic movement aiming for both men and
women. For centuries human experiences have been synonymous with masculine
experience which made the collective image of humanity one sided and
incomplete. As centuries women has to face the patriarchal society, they have
been suppressed by the orthodox perceptions of Male dominating society. Women
has not been defined as a subject in her own right but merely as an entity that
concerns man entities in his real life. There are many writers who owned to fly
their wings by dissenting the patriarchy, such as Virginia Woolf, Margaret
Atwood, Jane Austen, Kamala Das and many more. Virginia Woolf was one of
the foremost individuals who had brought in the wave of modernism and a pioneer
of feminism in English literature. As she said
“ Lock up your libraries if u like;
But there is no gate, no lock,
No bolt, that you can set upon freedom of my mind “.
One of the major change occurred in feminism was brought up by women’s
liberation movement (WLM). It was a political alignment of feminist
intellectualism which emerged in the late 1960. Freedom is sought by those
feminist who believe that equality is undesirable or irrelevant although some
equate gaining an amount of freedom equal to that of men to the pursuit of
equality. As the whole feminist movement has developed the style of writing as well
as change the perception of society thus freedom became more apparent. During
the 19th century feminists have started
addressing the importance of independence, their needs for acknowledgement and
freedom. Whereas in the 20th century when women
finally gained their rights they became more respected in society and are more
equal to men. Female writers wrote about new topics more openly which is also
one of the major discrepancy in the development of English literature.
By: Ms. Sukhraj Kaur
No comments:
Post a Comment