Gender Difference and Women''s Writings

defining women''s writing--four models: 1). Biological/Experiential, 2). Linguistic, 3) psychoanalytic, 4). Cultural (E. Showalter)

Gender Studies: Two kinds

1. the contrast in style and subject matter between masculine and feminine writing

authorship--male, pen as penis
novel as a female genre; domestic fiction

feminine writing--more concerned with community, open ending; associational logic; subjective
male--individualistic, closure, sequential, objective

2. Showalter

four model of difference--the biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural.
 

• the biological--the text is marked by the body
• the linguistic--women speaking men''s language as a foreign tongue. Women must use their own language, for if women continue to speak as men do when they enter discourse, whatever they say will be subdued and alienated.
• the psychoanalytic--Incorporating biology and linguistics, such a model of sexual identity stresses feminine difference as absence of the phallus--femaleness means remaining outside the closures of maleness.
• the cultural--the female psyche as a construction of cultural forces acknowledges class, racial, national and historical differences and determinants among women but offers a collective experience that unites women over time and space...

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