Elaine Showalter's Feminist Literary Creation Theory

Elaine Showalter,as the mother of American feminist criticism,she analyzed the development of feminist criticism and divided its development into three stages.The first stage mainly criticize the phenomenon of "misogynism" in male literary works,Analyzing the distorted female images in the work;the second stage mainly is to discover female literature hidden by patriarchal culture;the third stage focuses on rethinking the basic viewpoints of feminism and revising the theoretical assumptions based on male literary experience.In the process of developing from the first stage to the second stage,it is clear that feminist criticism is centered on women,which has effectively promoted the theoretical process of feminist criticism.Through reading Showalter's theoretical monographs,we know that the focus of her theoretical research was female's Writing",that is,female's literary creation and literary works,and she played a very important role in the process of feminist criticism from female image research to female writer research.From the perspective of female writing,exploring her views on feminist literary creation from three aspects:In the first chapter,analyzes the reasons why Showalter chose female writing as her research object.According to Showalter's opinion,there are three stages in the development of feminist criticism.The research of female image criticism turning to female writing has its historical background.Showalter's main research object is female writing and the reasons are various,mainly including the development trend of feminist criticism theory,profound cultural accumulation and her personal experience.A detailed analysis of the background of Showalter feminist criticism can help us better understand her feminist literary creation theory.The second chapter,combs the content of Showalter's feminist literary creation theory.Women have long been regarded as "the other" and exist on the edge of society,so there are great differences between female's writing and male's writing.From the predicament before female's writing to the evaluation of female's literary works,which are the object of Showalter's study.The first section analyzes the writing dilemma faced by female writers in different periods under the patriarchal culture and female writers faced the dilemma,chose to explore the way out of writing from female experience,and attempt to break the male-dominated patriarchal culture.The second section discusses the practice of female's writing,including the division of female writing stages by Showalter,the dual nature of the language used by female writers,and her analysis and evaluation of four modes of female writing: namely,biology,linguistics,psychoanalysis and culture.The third section focuses on the discussion of female literary works,including the construction of female literary history in Britain and America,the analysis of the images in the works,and the reconstruction of criticism standards for female's literary works.The third chapter is the evaluation of Showalter's feminist literary creation theory.Its value mainly lies in the profundity of theoretical discussion and its contribution to the development of American feminist criticism.She has some problems in the definition of some feminist concepts and the construction of the history of female literature.When discovering the value of Showalter's theory,we should pay more attention to its shortcomings and guide more people to think about the problems of feminist criticism.Generally,Showalter's research on female writing has not formed a systematic theoretical framework.This paper will focus on her academic monographs and papers,and analyze her discussion on feminist literary creation.While understanding her theoretical research methods and her feminist criticism theory,further considering the shortcomings of her theory and used it as a mirror to promote the further development of feminist criticism theory.