ABSTRACT
Literary criticism, like history and the social sciences, has traditionally asked questions that exclude women’s accomplishments. Feminist scholarship undertakes the dual task of deconstructing predominantly male cultural paradigms and reconstructing a female perspective and experience in an effort to change the tradition that has silenced and marginalized us. This chapter describes these efforts in anthropology (Part II), history (III) and literature (IV). In investigating the purposes cultural paradigms serve, feminist scholars expose the collusion between ideology and cultural practices; but we need to be aware of the ideological implications of our own assumptions and make sure that we are not recuperating the ideology of the systems we repudiate. In literary criticism, as in the social sciences, the inclusion of women raises questions that reshape it – challenging traditional notions of what constitutes evidence and excellence, redefining both the subjects and the methods of study, we enrich and enlarge the discipline.
