ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three broad areas of academic children’s literature criticism influenced by feminist theory: the rereading of texts for previously unrevealed interpretations; the reclaiming of texts that had been devalued or dismissed; and the redirection of feminist theory into providing a welcoming climate for texts by patriarchal colonial societies. The desire for feminist rereading comes from an understanding of the ways ideological assumptions about the constitution of good literature work. Feminist reinterpretations of familiar classics like The Secret Garden and Little Women turn stories we thought were about struggles to conform to the social order into stories about women’s healing and successful communities of women. The critical lessons in feminist/postcolonial theory increasingly have to do with ideology and with constructions of the subject. Critics who work in feminist theory, postcolonial studies and children’s literature all find themselves interested in common grounds: in the dynamics of power, in ideology, in the construction of the subject.
