Closing Remarks on Critical Theory

Now that it is the end of the semester, I feel much more capable about critical theory than I did before this class. All of the guest lecturers and discussions truly aided my overall understanding of specific theories and the way in which they are applied to a literary text. The blogs that I posted and maintained throughout the semester allowed me to personally engage and apply certain theories on my own outside of class. If I were to look back on all the theories we covered this semester, I would have to say that my favorite was Marxist criticism. I enjoyed Marxist criticism the most, because I felt as though it was genuinely useful in analyzing not only a literary text, but many components of life itself. Now that I have a better understanding of the ruling class' position over the working class, I feel as though I look at simple things differently than I had before. After reading Dr. Craig's post on Marxism, I came to realize that in many ways sports are used by the ruling class, in order to perpetrate the working class' condition, while at the same time increasing their own. Because sports are an outlet for the working class, they indulge in it heavily--buying tickets, T-shirts, etc--in which all the money goes directly to the ruling class. I was in the mall during Thanksgiving break and would take notice of advertisements that the ruling class constructed, in order to capture the working class' interest and money. Because we live in a capitalist society, where an emphasis is placed on the separation between the ruling class and the working class, it is easy to say that Marxism is faced on a daily basis for each and every one of us. As long as society exists, a separation between the ruling class and the working class will continue to exist, and in this sense, Marxism remains a timeless theory. Other theories such as Psychoanalysis are not as timeless, because their key ideas were pertinent at one point in time, but not so much anymore. When it comes to applying Marxist literary criticism to a particular text, I think that it serves a genuinely useful purpose. A writer's social class has a major bearing on the literary text he writes, whether he realizes it or not. A text contains certain aspects such as diction and sentence structure, which aid in further uncovering the social class of the writer. The social class of the writer proves important, because it serves as an influential force perpetrating particular ideas and beliefs that are singular to a given social class/culture. Therefore, if the writer's social class was identifiable through the text that he/she wrote, a reader may be able to better analyze and determine the origin from which the ideas came. The wealth of different theories that we learned in class truly aided my understanding and overall approach when analyzing a literary text. Although this is the last and final post for the critical theory blog, I plan on further developing my understanding of theory, and broadening my scope to learn other theories and interpretations beyond those we've learned in class. I really enjoyed this class, and feel much more theory-competent now than ever before. Thank-you!

Thoughts on Feminism

Tonya Krouse's post on Feminism proved to be very useful to my understanding of what it means to be a feminist. The way I always tended to define feminism in my own life typically always took a negative connotation. Today, through the media, feminists are viewed as dark, masculine, angry figures that lurk the streets with black combat boots on. I suppose the way I always pictured a feminist was in this light, because I thought that feminists, being against the feminine nature of women to be nurturing and docile as ingrained by society, could not be pretty or try to be pretty, for the sake of ruining their message. Because of this, a feminist must be masculine, in order to create any sense of equality between men and women. I always had a problem with this though, because I wondered why women tried their very hardest to be a man? Why couldn't a woman just indulge in the fact that she was a woman, different yet special, and be content with this? I understood the fact that feminists try to gain equal rights to men, but in the process of doing so, why must they become man-like themselves? In my own personal definition of a feminist, I always found the feminist's masculine approach to be degrading to femininity, at the very same time that it was trying to emancipate females lesser position in society. However, after reading Tonya Krouse's post about the many different feminist approaches there are, I feel as though my initial definition of feminism was very close-minded and media-fed. Krouse stated that in l'ecriture feminist theory, feminist theorists feel as though " 'writing the body' empowers female subjects." Therefore, females are allowed to indulge in their feminine sexuality and still hold a feminist stance that seeks to empower women. Before I always thought that to be a feminist meant giving away one's feminine sexuality and identity as a woman, in favor of a mans. But because feminist theory and criticism maintains such a broad perspective in relation to all the different types of feminism, a very close-minded interpretation of a feminist as merely masculine and angry is completely false. Now I feel as though a feminist can be pretty and nice and indulge in her femininity, while still holding true to the feminist cause. Thanks for the post Tonya!