Gender Difference
and Women's Writings
defining women's writin--four models:
1). Biological/Experiential, 2). Linguistic, 3) psychoanalytic, 4). Cultural
(E. Showalter)
Gender Studies: Two kinds
1. the contrast in style and subject matter between masculine and
feminine writing
authorship--male, pen as penus
novel as a female genre; domestic fiction
feminine writing--more concerned with community, open ending;
associational logic; subjective
male--individualistic, closure, sequential, objective
2. Showalter
four model of difference--the biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic,
and cultural.
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the biological--the text is marked by the body
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the linguistic--women spekaing men's language as a foreign tongue.
Women must use their own language, for if women continue to speak as men
do when they enter discourse, whatever they say will be subdued and alienated.
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the psychoanalytic--Incorporating biology and linguistics, such
a model of sexual identity stresses feminine difference as absence of the
phallus--femaleness means remaining outside the closures of maleness.
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the cultural--the female psyche as a construction of cultural forces
acknowledges class, racial, national and historical differences and determinants
among women but offers a collective experience that unites women over time
and space...