Thinking Activity: Final Solution

Final Solution by Mahesh Dattani

This book is about the hindu family in Gujarat who save 2 boys from Muslim community and are under threat to be skinned alive if they don't hand over the Muslims boys to the hindu rioter, and those boys are Friends with the girl whom house they shelter in and one guy love that girl is the brother of her best friend and other guy is her best friend fiance. She got scolded for that her friendship with Muslims guys and she take a full stand against that comments we see the bitterness in the both communities and there responses and author show the true face of the society to us in a way we understand best. But ending show that there is not perfect solution to end this communal hatred but there is hope coming generation may able to vanish this thing finally in the coming years. As in the ending we see all three young members were enjoying the water shower on each other and all there is love between boy of Muslim community and girl of hindu family is the difference they have to cross to become one in this life.

1.What is the difference between the movie and the play?

The play and the movie are parralel to the plot.But still if we look at the difference between original play "Final Solution" and the movie directed by Mahesh Dattani himself has slight differences.At the very beginning of the play it is a diary which tells story of past and present of Daksha or Hardika.While if we look at the movie there was the chair used instead of diary.And these both things symbolise as the medium of expression of Daksha.

2.Does the movie help you to understand the narrative structure of the play?

Yes, it's clearly can be said that the movie help me to understand the structure of the Play. The narrative of t okhe original play is used as it is as the same.We can find an additional thing that is chorus in movie.And the Chorus symbolise the community of Hindu.

Thinking Activity:Wide Sargasso Sea

In this thinking activity, you shall compare Jane Eyre with Wide Sargasso Sea and the character of Jane with Antoinette by applying Feminism and postcolonialism.

Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature.

Feminism

In the novel Jane Eyre, Brontë reveals a firm stance on feminism by critiquing the assumptions about social class and gender. She also places the context within the postcolonialism era during the Victorian society age. Throughout the novel, Jane is subjected to some kind of oppression, where she has no financial or social freedom. The challenges she faces existed during the Victorian era, whereby women were considered powerless and as objects to serve their families and society. Jane fights gender hierarchies and class to ensure a status quo.

Jane is the epitome of femininity, the first instance where Jane starts to reveal feminism is when she fights with her cousin, blamed even if she was not the one at fault, and locked up for a night. She says to Mrs. Reed

, “I’m not deceitful. If I were, I should say I loved you, but I declare, I don’t love you (Brontë, 2016).”

 Jane’s words seem mean; nonetheless, they are true. It is only fair to precisely tell others what one feels, instead of pretending as Mrs. Reed did even though she did not like Jane. The words are also ironic. In some way, Jane is trying to tell Mrs. Reed that she is deceitful as she had always acted as if she loved Jane and therefore being unfair.

In the novel Jane Eyre, Brontë reveals a firm stance on feminism by critiquing the assumptions about social class and gender. She also places the context within the postcolonialism era during the Victorian society age. Throughout the novel, Jane is subjected to some kind of oppression, where she has no financial or social freedom. The challenges she faces existed during the Victorian era, whereby women were considered powerless and as objects to serve their families and society. Jane fights gender hierarchies and class to ensure a status quo.

Jane is the epitome of femininity, the first instance where Jane starts to reveal feminism is when she fights with her cousin, blamed even if she was not the one at fault, and locked up for a night. She says to Mrs. Reed, “I’m not deceitful. If I were, I should say I loved you, but I declare, I don’t love you (Brontë, 2016).” Jane’s words seem mean; nonetheless, they are true. It is only fair to precisely tell others what one feels, instead of pretending as Mrs. Reed did even though she did not like Jane. The words are also ironic. In some way, Jane is trying to tell Mrs. Reed that she is deceitful as she had always acted as if she loved Jane and therefore being unfair.

In the novel Jane Eyre, Brontë reveals a firm stance on feminism by critiquing the assumptions about social class and gender. She also places the context within the postcolonialism era during the Victorian society age. Throughout the novel, Jane is subjected to some kind of oppression, where she has no financial or social freedom. The challenges she faces existed during the Victorian era, whereby women were considered powerless and as objects to serve their families and society. Jane fights gender hierarchies and class to ensure a status quo.

Jane is the epitome of femininity, the first instance where Jane starts to reveal feminism is when she fights with her cousin, blamed even if she was not the one at fault, and locked up for a night. She says to Mrs. Reed, “I’m not deceitful. If I were, I should say I loved you, but I declare, I don’t love you (Brontë, 2016).” Jane’s words seem mean; nonetheless, they are true. It is only fair to precisely tell others what one feels, instead of pretending as Mrs. Reed did even though she did not like Jane. The words are also ironic. In some way, Jane is trying to tell Mrs. Reed that she is deceitful as she had always acted as if she loved Jane and therefore being unfair.

 

Postcolonialism 

Brontë’s work also demonstrates postcolonialism whereby Western culture is considered Eurocentric. This means that European values are universal and natural compared to Eastern ideas that are inferior . For instance, Bertha, a foreign woman, reflects the Eurocentric and dominant ideologies of England in the 19th century concerning race. Bertha is the racial other and colonized madwoman who threatens British men and women as embodied in Mr. Rochester and Jane. Jane presents Bertha Mason as Vampiric, who sucks away from Mr. Rochester’s innocence. According to Mr. Rochester, he was innocent until the savage woman took his goodness. Also, Jane, a British, cannot get married because Bertha has occupied the wife’s position, denying Jane’s identity. The situation shows how British people characterized and feared women and foreigners during postcolonialism. The fear was not because they thought the subjects were powerful, but because they considered them inferior and evil. The “blood-red” moon reflected in Bertha’s eyes represents her sexual potency, whereby Bertha refuses to be controlled. Her stature is almost equal to her husband’s. According to postcolonialism, Bertha’s death is meant as a sacrifice to restore British people’s superiority, whereby Mr. Rochester acquires freedom to marry Jane while Jane achieves her self-identity.

Further, in the postcolonialism era, men considered women to be their appendages  Men would work, own business, and remain in public. However, only family life and marriage belonged to women. They had to depend on men spiritually, financially, and physically. For example, Adele and her mother demonstrate this idea, whereby they depend on Mr. Rochester for everything. Their dependence is further despised by the British people like Jane and Mr. Rochester consider them sensual and materialistic, characteristics associated with foreign women at the time.

The Wide Sargasso Sea novel also portrays irony as the author tries to describe the idea of postcolonialism. Rhys wants readers to realize that being a casted woman is demanding. Therefore, with Antoinette’s Creole character, individuals have to understand that they cannot change their inevitable, and thus they should accept events as they turn out.

In conclusion, aspects of feminism and postcolonialism contributed a lot to the works of the 19th century. Rhys and Brontë reveal this as they reveal the representation of women in the Victorian era. The authors also utilize irony to develop feminism further and postcolonialism ideas.-

Thinking Activity:Foe by J.M.Coetzee

Foe by J.M.Coetzee

Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolded as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Q. 1 – How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and Crusoe?

👉Cruso’s lack of journaling is a stark contrast to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

👉 Robinson Crusoe is much less passive and senile in regards to his own development on the island. Crusoe kept a painfully detailed account of every action he does on the island in a journal he updates daily. In this journal, Crusoe records every step for all of the tools he crafts, and he writes about his own progress with his newly acquitted relationship with religion.

👉This Robinson Crusoe is much more in tune with his own reality and interested in his own accomplishments than Foe’s Cruso.

👉 Robinson Crusoe fills his multiple homes with various types of pots, tables, chairs, fences, and even a canoe. All of these items Crusoe builds are to improve and aide in his growth on the island, and he must be mentally sharp in order to build these items. Cruso in Foe has not put any effort towards building tools, as he only has a bed when Susan arrives at the island, and from the quote, it seems like he may not have the mental capacity to build these tools. Although Cruso does builds many terraces, he exclaims that they are for the future generations and not himself.

👉One explanation for the difference in mindset and mental stability in the two Robinson Crusoe’s may be that in Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe felt that his island life had more value than Cruso did. 

Q.2 Friday’s characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe.

👉Defoe used Friday to explore themes of religion, slavery and subjugation, all of which were supposed to a natural state of being at that time in history, and Coetzee uses him to explore more strongly themes of slavery, black identity, and the voice of the oppressed. In neither book is Friday left simply to be a character, he is instead always used as a device through which the reader can explore other topics..

‘Your master says the slavers cut [your tongue] out; but I have never heard of such a practice… Is it the truth that your master cut it out himself and blamed the slavers?’ (Coetzee, J.M, ‘Foe’.)

👉The fact that this question is never answered, and that all attempts to force Friday to communicate fail drastically leave the reader wondering whether the slavers that captured Friday removed his tongue, or whether that was done by the colonialist Cruso, who felt there was ‘no need of a great stock of words’, (Coetzee, J.M, ‘Foe’). 

‘In a little time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me… I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name: I likewise taught him to say Yes and No and to know the meaning of them’.

👉Coetzee was asserting that it was not his right to give voice to an oppressed black character, and let Friday stand for the victims of apartheid and slavery, where Defoe (due to the beliefs of society at his time) believed that it was right and natural for Crusoe to claim the position of Master to Friday, and to speak for him.

👉Friday in Foe’s work, in standing for the victims of apartheid and slavery, is a black African character ‘he was black, negro, with a head of fuzzy wool’ (Coetzee’s Foe), whereas Crusoe’s Friday, not standing for those causes, is portrayed as being an anglicised version of a Caribbean man, who ‘had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance’.

👉The representation of Friday in these two texts is vastly different, and one could hardly believe that the two were in fact the same character. With different histories, and different personalities, in fact all both have in common is playing the role of the non-white slave in the text, to serve a literary purpose, in both reflecting the views of wider society towards non-white people, and in showing the development of other characters 

Q. 3 Is Susan reflecting the white mentality of Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe)?

👉In Coetzee`s version, ''Robinson Crusoe'' becomes the story of ''a castaway and a dumb slave and now a madwoman.'' The ''madwoman'' is Susan Barton.

👉J.M. Coetzee presents Barton as a submissive supporting actress to the extremely dominant character of Robinson Crusoe.

👉Barton’s role as a submissive supporting character to Cruso displays Coetzee’s formulation of Susan as a man’s woman. 

👉Susan is a sensual woman, and as the only female character in both Defoe’s novel as well as Coetzee’s novel, she is represented through her sexuality. Susan’s sexuality is first displayed in the beginning of the novel, when she is on the island and Cruso is alive. As she falls asleep one night, Cruso begins to make advances toward her. She describes the event by saying, 

“I pushed his hand away and made to rise, but he held me. No doubt I might have freed myself, for I was stronger than he” (30)

👉The presence of a female main character, Susan Barton, in Coetzee’s Foe critiques Defoe’s original imagination of Robinson Crusoe by showing the marginalized role of women in the seventeenth century. Susan is very much a man’s woman, a sensual woman represented through her sexuality. In his portrayal of Susan, Defoe is critiquing the traditional male attitude towards women.

Q. 4 Traces of white mentality in all the characters. (Master-slave, savage-Christian (white - civilized), giver – taker, shifting of power position – One is always ready to take place of Master)

Q.5 Which novel is convincing and has poetic justice? (or is there poetic justice? – Has writer achieved what it wished for? – Has Friday got the justice? )

Q. 6 Who is Protagonist? (Foe – Susan – Friday – Unnamed narrator)

👉Susan is the protagonist of the story. She is a British woman who went searching for her lost daughter. After searching for two years, she gives up and tries to return to England, only to be caught in the middle of a mutiny and marooned by the crew of the ship she riding home.

👉 The novel begins with her account of becoming a castaway and arriving on Cruso's island. Throughout the novel, Susan is obsessed with the idea of telling her story and the power of words. Although she lacks the talent to write, she is convinced that her story will find her fame. 

👉Despite her aging and impoverishment throughout the novel, she relentlessly pushes Foe to write an account of her time on the island. The nature of her character is ambiguous as although she appears good in some parts (e.g., her well-meaning attempt to send Friday back to "Africa" is an example of this), other aspects of her character (e.g., her anger that Friday won't do as she says, or her possible attempt of harm on the girl claiming to be "Susan," her daughter), suggest a less well-natured character.

👉 She can be seen throughout the novel attempting to control the narrative, in particular in the third section when she becomes Foe's lover (or as she sees it, his "Muse") in an attempt to inspire him to write the story in the way she wishes. In the last few sections, she appears to lose her mind as her speeches become longer and more erratic and she convinces herself that Foe and the others in the room are not real.

Sunday Reading: Ajanta Exhibition

On 26th September,2021 we visited Ajanta Exhibition held by Shree Khodidas Parmar Art Foundation from 24 to 26 September.IN this exhibition many artist displayed various paintings and art of the caves.Though the caves have worn out,the artists have brought the beauty of these ancient caves through their artwork.

The first Buddhist cave monuments at Ajanta date from the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. During the Gupta period (5th and 6th centuries A.D.), many more richly decorated caves were added to the original group. The paintings and sculptures of Ajanta, considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, have had a considerable artistic influence.

Padmapani

Padmapani is a Bodhisattva or someone who is on the path of enlightenment or becoming a Buddha. He is the epitome of compassion and is a popular character in Buddhist iconography. In Indian illustrations, he holds the Padma or the lotus flower thus being called Padmapani or the “One who holds a lotus in his hand”. The Sanskrit word “pani” means hand.

Vajrapani

Vajrapani is a Bodhisattva who is known to be the protector. He holds a thunderbolt or the Vajra in his right hand and is thus called Vajrapani or the “One who holds the thunder in his hand”.

Padmapani, the Bodhisattva of Compassion and Vajrapani, the Bodhisattva of Protection are frequently found flanking statues and images of the Buddha.

Buddha-Yashodhara-Rahul painting in Ajanta Cave 17

At the far end of the cave, beside the sanctum sanctorum was a painting that depicted a poignant episode in the life of Buddha.

It is well-known fact that Prince Siddhartha deserted his wife Yashodhara and newborn son Rahul when he left home to meditate and achieve enlightenment. After Siddhartha came back to Kapilavastu on attaining enlightenment and becoming the Buddha, he came to meet his wife at her door. Yashodhara sent their son, young Rahul to Buddha for seeking his father’s inheritance and the little boy left with him to become a monk. This moment was beautifully visualized in the painting in this cave.

Thinking Activity:The Home and The World

Hello readers

While discussing the novel The Home and the World our teacher had given us a group task on three major character of this novel.Mw and my group had discussed about the character of Bimala in detail.Before discuss that let’s see brief introduction about this novel.

The Home and The World by Rabindranath Tagore

The Home and the World is a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, set against the political and logistical nightmares of India’s 20th century caste system. Although the story focuses on the dynamic of a marriage—which shifts when a shadowy outsider enters the lives of the couple—much of the novel reads like a philosophical treatise. There are shifting viewpoints between the characters Bimala, Nikhil, and Sandip, and much of the book comprises their internal and external dialogues as they consider serious issues such as tradition, the roles of men and women in Indian culture, the nature of political change, the occasional need for violence in political activism, and other rhetorical exercises such as the weighing of the public good.

Here is the PPT prepared by me.

The home and the world from Daya Vaghani

As the novel begins, Bimala is happy with her life. She has married a good, kind man who is educated and generous. She is content to worship him and accept his support in all things. What she does not feel, however, is excitement. When the political firebrand Sandip begins making speeches in their village, she is infatuated by his words, but also stirred by some of his political ideas. She thinks of him constantly. Sandip, who is only interested in pursuing his own desires and climbing the social strata, does nothing to discourage her interest in him.

Her husband, Nikhil, sees what is happening, but is unwilling to intervene. Nikhil believes that, if one is committed to living morally and thoughtfully, one can accept whatever arises. He is sad that he feels like a burden to Bimala, but is determined to let her make her own choices.

Bimala’s choices lead her to steal from Nikhil to raise money for Sandip’s cause, money that he keeps for himself. Overcome with shame at how she has allowed a man who now disgusts her to cause such havoc in her life, Bimala must try to save her marriage, support her country, and recommit herself to living by her conscience, not her passions. As village unrest turns to outbursts of violence, the characters are all changed by the decisions they must make.

Character of Bimala

PPT on Group Task

Bimalas character in The Home and The World from Daya Vaghani

Bimala is a rare portrayal of womanhood by Rabindranath Tagore because unlike the other female characters in Indian literature, there are two sides of Bimala. She is obligated to serve her husband and take care of the household. Yet, she is also willing to overstep these boundaries to speak out for her people. This fact is what makes her a positive representation of women in The Home and the World. Bimala in Tagore’s The Home and the World is perhaps the liveliest character of the story. She is the centre of action as well as attraction of the novel. She emblematizes love amid the fire and fury of politics, and her psychological intricacy contributes much in making Tagore's novel an interesting study. 

Rabindranath Tagore’s Bimala is not a flat character. As we witness that she changes with the transition of events and situations. Now the change in Bimala occurs with the arrival of Nikhil's friend, Sandip, in the wake of the swadeshi movement. He appears to her as a hero of the swadeshi and Bimala gets almost overwhelmed and hypnotized by Sandip’s personality at the very first sight. She reveals her own feelings as she says:

 "The whole place is filled with an immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a big chair, hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve youths.” 

Sandip's spell seemed to stir her serene heart. His speech had a tremendous impact on her. She forgot her well sheltered aristocratic, conservative home, to which she belonged and started visualizing herself as the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood. Thus in the course of the novel Bimala transforms herself from a meek wife of the home to the inspired champion of the swadeshi in the wide world outside. However Bimala’s change, as portrayed by Tagore does not appear to be drastic. She had an intuitive attraction for the swadeshi. The storm of the swadeshi had effects on her even before she met Sandip. Earlier in the novel she proposed to burn her foreign clothes, but was prevented by her husband. She also wanted to get rid of her teacher Miss Gilby out of that intuition. Moreover, her husband Nikhil was also instrumental in bringing her out of her home of conjugal love to the world of the wild swadeshi fire. He sharply awakened her from her house-hold slumber to face the stormy real world. His advice was clear enough to draw her from the home to the world. Nikhil said -

 "Merely going on with your household duties, living all your life in the world of household conventions and the drudgery of household tasks—you were not made for that! If we meet and recognise each other, in the real world, then only will our love be true." 

After suffering disillusionment Bimala finally returned to Nikhil, the dear centre of her life and love. In fact, she had never loved Sandip truly, though she was fascinated by his external glamour and show. And when his tyranny and cupidity get exposed , Bimala’s retreat to her home and husband become all easy and inevitable. Her inner conflict, agony and tension pass away, and she returns to Nikhil who stands for Bimala’s true love, devotion and home. Thus after a through analysis of Bimala’s character we may conclude with the comments of Pradip Kumar Dutta, who in his book The Home and the World, A Critical Companion writes 

“Bimala in Tagore’s The Home and the World emblematizes Bengali womanhood in Tagore’s contemporary society. And at the same time, the subsequent changes in her way of living and thinking make her psychologically, an engaging personality”

Thinking Activity: Digital Humanities

What is Digital Humanities?

Digital humanities is an academic discipline that explores the intersection between digital technologies and culture. It emerged from the humanities, which study aspects of human society, and include well-known popular subjects, like history, philosophy, literature and modern languages.

As a new and emerging field, digital humanities aims to open up new areas for research in these subjects and to explore traditional questions in a different way.

For students, this could mean looking at culture, language or history through a digital lense; or using computer skills to better analyse and understand humanities data.

Digital humanities has grown in popularity in recent years, and while not every academic is convinced it is worth the hype - or that digital tools actually provide the best insight into humanities topics -, it is only likely to become a more relevant field in an increasingly digital world.

 

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum states in his article: “What Is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments?” 

The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing. 

 

 

How is Digital Humanities different from traditional Humanities subjects?

Digital Humanities is an extension of traditional humanities. While certainly all humanities courses use digital technologies in one way or another, Digital Humanities goes a step further than this. With Digital Humanities courses, information technology is a central part of the methodology for creating and processing data. The course makes more systemic use of specialised digital technologies, or may even focus specifically on digital aspects of human culture.

Digital Humanities is also made up of a broad community of practitioners, which includes both humanities academics and technology specialists. 

What is the need of Digital Humanities ? 

 

The question that comes to our mind is, after all What is the importance and need of digital humanities ? So the digital humanities teaches us how to become Real Human being. That humanities sees that people will not become a Robot. 

 

Digital humanities have a connection with the English departments. These are the reasons given by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum to explain what DH is doing in English Departments. 

 

We see the simultaneous explosion of interest in e-reading and e-book devices like the Kindle, iPad, and Nook and the advent of large-scale text digitization projects, the most significant of course being Google Books.

 

The openness of English departments to cultural studies, where computers and other objects of digital material culture become the centerpiece of analysis. 

 

A modest but much-promoted belle-lettristic project around hypertext and other forms of electronic literature that continues to this day and is increasingly vibrant and diverse.

 

The widespread means to implement electronic archives.

 

After numeric input, text has been by far the most tractable datatype for computers to manipulate. Unlike images, audio, video, and so on, there is a long tradition of text-based data processing that was within the capabilities of even some of the earliest computer systems and that has for decades fed research in fields like stylistics, linguistics, and author attribution studies, all heavily associated with English departments.

 

There is the long association between computers and composition, almost as long and just as rich in its lineage.

 

Harvard University edX Course

Introduction to Digital Humanities

Develop skills in digital research and visualization techniques across subjects and fields within the humanities.

This is very interesting and innovative course on the sites of Harvard University. As a part of Digital Humanities we had done this course. And here i want to talk about the learning outcome from this course. This course will show us how to manage the many aspects of digital humanities research and scholarship. Whether we are a student or scholar, librarian or archivist, museum curator or public historian this course will help us bring your area of study or interest to new life using digital tools.

 

Here are the name os some project:

China Biographical Database 

The Imperria Proejct

Neural Neighbors

 The Oxford Friars Project. 

Harvard Library Scanned Maps Project. 

Digital Giza 

CLiC activity

Now I would like to discuss CLiC activity. This is a very interesting activity for digital humanities. The full form of CLiC is Corpus Linguistics in Context. It was also a useful Activity to read the data. 

 

 Activity 15.4 Children’s feelings about governesses

 

9. Start again by going to the CLiC Concordance tab

(http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance).

10. Find “The Secret Garden” in the “Search the corpora” box, and select it.

11. Search in “All text” for the term governess.

12. You should find 8 examples.

13. Explore their contexts by clicking on the graphic “In bk.” for each line.

 

Here is what I got -

Activity 17.4 The speech of Austen’s characters

1. Go to the CLiC concordance tab (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance?).

2. Type Austen into the corpora box and select each of Austen’s novels.

3. Choose the subset “Quotes”.

4. Search for one more cluster from the cluster lists in 17.1 and 17.3 above. How

is it used in context?

 

Thinking Activity:Queer Theory

Queer Theory

👉Definition

Queer theory is a term that emerged in the late 1980s for a body of criticism on issues of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity that came out of gay and lesbian scholarship in such fields as literary criticism, politics, sociology, and history. Queer theory rejects essentialism in favor of social construction; it breaks down binary oppositions such as “gay” or “straight”; while it follows those postmodernists who declared the death of the self, it simultaneously attempts to rehabilitate a subjectivity that allows for sexual and political agency. Some of the most significant authors associated with queer theory include Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Michael Warner, and Wayne Koestenbaum."

              - From the Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, in Credo Reference

👉Queer Theory critically examines the way power works to institutionalize and legitimate certain forms and expressions of sexuality and gender while stigmatizing others. Queer Theory followed the emergence and popularity of Gay and Lesbian (now, LGBT or Queer) Studies in the academy. Whereas LGBT Studies seeks to analyze LGBT people as stable identities, Queer Theory problematizes and challenges rigid identity categories, norms of sexuality and gender and the oppression and violence that such hegemonic norms justify. Queer Theory destabilizes sexual and gender identities allowing and encouraging multiple, unfettered interpretations of cultural phenomena. It predicates that all sexual behaviors and gender expressions, all concepts linking such to prescribed, associated identities, and their categorization into “normal” or “deviant” sexualities or gender, are constructed socially and generate modes of social meaning. Queer theory follows and expands upon feminist theory by refusing the belief that sexuality and gender identity are essentialist categories determined by biology that can thus be empirically judged by fixed standards of morality and “truth.” 

👉Seminal Writers and their works

•  Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), described the categories of gender and of sexuality as performative, in the sense that the features which a cultural discourse institutes as masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual, the discourse also makes happen, by establishing an identity that the socialized individual assimilates and the patterns of behavior that he or she proceeds to enact.
• “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” 1977, reprinted in Within the Circle: 
• An Anthology of African-American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, ed. Angelyn Mitchell, 1994;
•  and Ann Allen Stickley, “The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview,” in Conditions: Five Two, 1979.

👉Examples 

Orlano by Virginia Woolf

“Much preferring my own sex, as I do,” Virginia Woolf wrote in a letter to a friend in the 1920s, “[I] intend to cultivate women’s society entirely in the future. Men are all in the light always: with women you swim at once into the silent dusk.” As her exquisite love letters to and from Vita Sackville-West tell us, Woolf made good on her intention — but nowhere does her lesbian sensibility come more vibrantly alive than in her novel Orlando: A Biography.

Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando is a masterpiece of modernist queer fiction. Chronicling the life of the titular protagonist, who changes sex from male to female and lives for over 400 years, the novel is both a satire of English historiography and a love letter to Woolf's partner, friend and muse, Vita Sackville-West

Both women were married to respectable men of financial means – Virginia to the publisher and author Leonard Woolf, Vita to the diplomat and writer Harold Nicolson. Though both had open marriages, which allowed them to conduct relationships with both men and women of the unconventional, forward-thinking Bloomsbury Set, such affairs had to be conducted behind the veneer of respectable marriage, and the relationships couldn't be made public.

Thinking Activity:Feminism

Feminism 

👉Definition

👉 According to Merriam-Webster, it’s “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.

👉 Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male point of view, and that women are treated unjustly within those societies.[6] Efforts to change that include fighting against gender stereotypes and establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to those for men

👉Key Concerns of Feminism(M.H.Abrams)

1.The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively patriarchal

2.It is widely held that while one’s sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concepts of gender

3. The further claim is that this patriarchal (or “masculinist,” or “androcentric”) ideology pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature

4.gynocriticism—that is, a criticism which concerns itself with developing a specifically female framework for dealing with works written by women, in all aspects of their production, motivation, analysis, and interpretation, and in all literary forms, including journals and letters.

5.One concern of gynocritics is to identify distinctively feminine subject matters in literature written by women—the world of domesticity, for example, or the special experiences of gestation, giving birth, and nurturing, or mother-daughter and woman-woman relations—in which personal and affectional issues, and not external activism, are the primary interest. 

6.Another concern is to uncover in literary history a female tradition, incorporated in subcommunities of women writers who were aware of, emulated, and found support in earlier women writers, and who in turn provide models and emotional support to their own readers and successors. 

7.A third undertaking is to show that there is a distinctive feminine mode of experience, or “subjectivity,” in thinking, feeling, valuing, and perceiving oneself and the outer world. Related to this is the attempt (thus far, without much agreement about details) to specify the traits of a “woman’s language,” or distinctively feminine style of speech and writing, in sentence structure, types of relations between the elements of a discourse, and characteristic figures of speech and imagery. 

👉Seminal Writers and their works

• Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792),
• John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), 
• Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
• Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949)
•  Mary Ellmann’s Thinking about Women (1968),
• Judith Fetterley’s The Resisting Reader
•  Patricia Meyer Spacks’ The Female Imagination (1975)
• Ellen Moers’ Literary Women (1976),
•  Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own:
• British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977); and
• Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979;rev. 2000). 
• Nina Baym’s Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (1978); and Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (2009). 

👉Example

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice concerns primarily of the social norms of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, in which was a patriarchal society ruled by men who held economic and social power. Pride and Prejudice has certain components that directly focus on the mixing of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy during the age of the Napoleonic wars and the beginning of an industrial revolution. Interested in the balance between pragmatism, or the necessity of securing a marriage, and idealism, particularly Elizabeth’s romanticism and individualism, Austen dramatizes her heroine’s struggle to find a place within the conservative and social institution of marriage. During Elizabeth’s struggle, it is to be noted that she also beings to emerge as a feminist character. Through Elizabeth Bennett’s outburst at Lady Catherine de Bourgh , her lack of horizontal hostility and being described as sporty be Georgiana, one can see that towards the end of the novel Elizabeth Bennett truly emerges as the feminist character she only subtly began as.

When Elizabeth meets with Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the Lady visits Elizabeth’s home, Lady de Bourgh confronts Elizabeth about her relationship with Mr. Darcy during which Elizabeth says to Lady de Bourgh

 “he is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal.” (Chapter 56, Page 306)

 This is the first time in the novel that Elizabeth can truly be portrayed as a feminist character. Feminism is a doctrine that equates women and men equal, and this moment when Elizabeth declares herself equal to Mr. Darcy is when Elizabeth emerges as the feminist subtly hinted in the previous chapters.

Feminism during that time is much different from how it has evolved to present time and a perfect example of a feminist during the era would be Charlotte Lucas. Charlotte can be seen as a feminist instead of Elizabeth during the first chapters of Pride and Prejudice because of her ability to make firm decisions for herself not based on wanting solely to live for her husband’s every want and need. Charlotte states 

“I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins character, connections and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering a marriage state.” (Chapter 22, Page 109) 

Elizabeth, during these first many chapters, was much like a carefree and witty young lady, however by making such a strong statement against Lady de Bourgh, she has truly rose above that rank to a feminist woman. Equating herself with a man and that too of a much higher status than herself shows that she has not only grown as a feminist but also in the way that she has become comfortable with herself as who she is that she will not take criticism from anyone.