Karen Offen's Defining Feminist Theory

Feminism is a philosophy and movement advocating for equality between men and women on the grounds of social, political and, economic rights. For hundreds of years, women have been held back from opportunities because of their gender. Feminist activists have and to this day, are still fighting for women to have equal opportunities as men through social and political theories by protesting and campaigning. In Karen Offen’s book titled, Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach, she states that although its true origins are unknown, the invention of the word féminisme (French for “feminism”) was thought to be coined by a French philosopher in the 1830s, named Charles Fourier (Offen 126). She also reveals through her research of France …show more content…
Page, who’s full name is Patricia Kathleen Page, was born in England in 1916 and grew up in the Canadian Prairies. She is as a modernist writer best know for her poetry but also writes fiction and non-fiction novels and short stories, along with books for children (Rooke and Djwa). P.K Page signed her name with initials instead of her full name because it confuses the gender of the author as a result of the theory created by T.S Eliot during the Modernist Period, which has been termed the “Impersonal Theory of Poetry”. He discusses his theory in his critical essay titled, Tradition and Individual Talent. Eliot’s theory is that the poet has no personality of his own as Eliot thinks that the poet and poem are two separate entities. The feeling and experiences resulting from the poet is something that differs from the personality and feeling in the poem, because art emotion is disparate from personal emotions. Eliot does not deny the emotions of the poet, but he rather is saying that the poet should depersonalise and escape his emotions. This impersonality can only be achieved by the poet “surrendering himself wholly to his work” (Eliot 42). All of Page’s experiences, feelings and emotions in regards to being a woman are portrayed into her stories but do not affect the outcome. Page mixes her modernist aesthetic and themes of feminism to challenge, “the very structure of western patriarchal tradition” (Killian 88). By writing from a feminist perspective, both Atwood and …show more content…
The term, “the gaze” has turned into a concept in feminist theory but is more notably known as “the male gaze”, which refers to how men look at women; coined by the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey, introduced in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema which was published in 1975. The male gaze enforces the sexual politics of the gaze and states that in film, women are typically the objects of heterosexual male desire. It is a sexualised way of looking that objectifies women and empowers men, which is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideologies and discourse. Laura states that “the determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure” (Mulvey 837) by concentrating on aspects considered to be interesting to the assumed viewer (for example, in a movie, focusing on a woman’s derriere as she walks away) because it is considered sexual and will satisfy the male desire. Though it was introduced as part of film theory, the term has now translated to and applies to other forms of media and has been adopted my feminists who use the gaze as a way to fight the patriarchal affect on women’s bodies. The male gaze then affects how women look at themselves as they start to internalize these perceptions about themselves and their bodies. They will compare themselves to unrealistic and over sexualized images in the media that are filtered through the male sexual