english critics LEARN

Saunders

GG, female

From an evolutionary/Darwinian point of view

‘In addition to offering sexual favors, Myrtle makes a desirable mistress because of the very qualities rendering her unsuitable as a wife for a man like Tom.’

‘Daisy believes Gatsby’s mate value approximates hers.., her ideas about a shared future with Gatsby lack the element of magical promise that so enthralls him.’

‘a durable alliance created to serve overlapping self-interests and protect elitist privilege’

‘Daisy benefits from Myrtle’s death in the same way, if not to the same degree, that Tom does from Gatsby’s’

‘They fortify the stability of their union by eliminating sexual rivals, and they do so with callousness that underlines their essential compatibility.’

‘ she is a defecting spouse’

Smuts

GG, female

Women have been ‘portrayed as dangerous and polluting, and it is their sexuality that makes them so’

Judith Fetterley

GG, female

‘the imaginative structures to which the book gives such brilliant expression are merely those of all men’ (beauty and fidelity)

Hwyel Dix

Skirrid, male

Argues that Welsh writing in English can be seen as postcolonial literature

In a period of the reclaiming of Welsh voices, Sheers poetry engages with the practice of ‘writing back’, a practice associated with postcolonial literature

Hathaway

Skirrid, male

‘What stands out in his poems about his family is an attempt to circumvent those inevitable divisions and find within them, or in spite of them, a greater sense of unity and connection’

Church

Skirrid, male

‘this border from a seemingly simple childhood into the strangeness and complexity of manhood.’

‘In Sheers’ collection, it seems that these ceremonies within Welsh society are linked with violence’

Alice Penfold

TCP, female

TCP could be argued to be a womanist bildungsroman

Celie uses the present tense ‘think’ and ‘thinking’ throughout The Color Purple; Mr, or any man, even whilst physically inside her, can never gain access to her mind and internal consciousness. Celie, then, begins to take control in the only way she knows how, by letting her thoughts drift to the familial and romantic relationships that mean something to her and thereby removing her emotionally

Weston

TCP, female

‘Walker’s emphasis is always on the inherent yearning for unity in all life – of body and mind, of flesh and spirit, and especially of male and female.’

Coult

ASND, male

‘Lightning flashes of emotional energy’

‘B comes in search of a hero who can rescue and protect her’

Heeney

ASND, male

It is Stanley’s American identity that wins out ultimately

Blanche xenophobic, originating from slave-owners

Kinder

ASND, male

‘Williams sets up a polarity in the idiolect and sociolect of the two characters’

Todd

ASND, male, Marxist

‘a Marxist critique would be more likely to see her as a representative symbol of the inevitable defeat of a capitalist elite.’

Simons

TCP, female

‘By visualizing a sympathetic correspondent, both Celie and Nettie use their writing to escape from solitude.’

‘letter-writing provides her with the fantasy of being listened to’

her letters can cross continents and cultures, and can find liberation and adventure when their writer remains oppressed and static

Eamon Grennan

Othello, female

‘When it is over, both its temporarily liberated speakers are under the sentence of death, condemned to a world of final silence’

‘a play of voices’

‘Her speech becomes the agent of moral restoration’

Ruth Vanita

Othello, female

Torture of the wife is displayed as tragedy but they also endorse them as a form of justice

“Othello’s blackness does not diminish his power over his wife” 

“Paradoxically, social prejudice against him results in an outcasting of Desdemona which isolates her even more than other wives and places her more completely at her husband’s mercy” 

“The dramatist raises the curtain on the most invisible, least glorifiable, and yet most condoned of all forms of violence- the violence of armed men on the unarmed women within their power.” 

Lisa Jardine

Othello, female

‘Strong' women were only seen on the Early Modern Stage so that they could be 'systematically taught the errors of their ways.'

Desdemona is "A stereotype of female passivity"

G. Wilson Knight

Othello, male

The handkerchief is 'A symbol of domestic sanctity.'

The ‘Othello music’ contrasts with the way Iago speaks

Othello’s language is poisoned by Iago

Dilley

Gatsby, male

‘If we interpret Gatsby’s futile pursuit of Daisy as analagous to the American Dream, then we can see how what he dreams of is every bit as artificial and corrupted as Gatsby himself’

The female characters are all ‘engaged in some form of pretence and reinvention’

From other female authors’ perspectives, female reinvention can be empowering (e.g. Lorelai from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos)