Feminist Reading Research Articles

An Analysis of the Four Sisters’ Personalities in Little Women from Feminism

The famous American author Louisa May Alcott’s masterpiece, Little Women, is one of the classics of American literature. Since its publication, the book has been warmly welcomed by a large number of readers and has struck a chord in the hearts of countless readers, especially female readers. This paper intends to analyze the characters of the four sisters in the novel from a feminist perspective. The paper begins with a review of Western feminism. Secondly, the paper reviews the literary career of the author Louisa May Alcott. Finally, the paper explores the feminist consciousness contained in the novel through the analysis of several female characters. The paper points out that the women in Little Women are different from the women portrayed in traditional works in that they have a feminine spirit that seeks a sense of independence and equality. Through a feminist reading of Little Women, we can see that Louisa May Alcott’s demands for equal rights and freedom for women, as conveyed through her works, are also a clear reflection of the writer’s feminist consciousness.

Commodification of the Female Body: A Feminist Reading of Ruth Chukwudebe's <i>Heavenly Modella</i>

The commodification of the female body remains a critical issue in feminist discourse, particularly within the fashion industry, where women's physical appearance is often reduced to a marketable commodity. This study offers a feminist reading of Ruth Chukwudebe’s Heavenly Modella, a play that boldly critiques the objectification and exploitation of women’s bodies in the pursuit of profit and social validation. Through the moral struggle of the protagonist, Thania, and her alliance with Praise, a talented but marginalized seamstress, the narrative reveals the tension between personal integrity and the patriarchal pressures of the fashion world. The study examines how the fashion industry enforces male-centered beauty ideals, coercing women into compromising their values, while simultaneously showcasing the power of female solidarity as a form of resistance. By analyzing key dialogues and interactions, this research demonstrates how Heavenly Modella not only exposes the harmful realities of body commodification but also offers a compelling vision for an ethical and empowering alternative. Using feminist theoretical frameworks - Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory and Bartky’s concept of disciplinary body practices, the paper argues that the play reclaims female authority through resistance and creative collaboration. The study concludes that the commodification of the female body in fashion can and must be challenged, with dignity, faith, and self-respect emerging as powerful counter-narratives. This research contributes to ongoing feminist conversations on gender, power, and cultural transformation, advocating for a fashion industry that honors women’s worth beyond their physical appearance.

Revisiting a choq pa bursting shargo (women: the miserable): Feminist critique in Balti folktale

This study examines the Balti folktale “Choqpa Bursting Shargo” through a feminist lens, focusing on the representation of female characters and their societal roles. The research aims to explore gender roles, major themes, and the portrayal of patriarchal structures in the narrative. It highlights the elements of oppression and the marginalization of women in a male-dominated society, drawing attention to the societal norms that perpetuate gender inequality. The study employs a qualitative approach, utilizing feminist literary criticism to analyse the folktale. The research is based on textual analysis, examining key themes and character interactions to reveal underlying patriarchal ideologies. The methodology involves identifying patterns of gender discrimination and assessing their implications within the broader socio-cultural framework. The analysis reveals that women in the folktale are subjected to systemic oppression and are often portrayed in subservient roles. The narrative reflects the realities of patriarchal norms, illustrating how female identity is suppressed and controlled. The concept of double marginalization is also explored, emphasizing how women face compounded oppression both as individuals and as a collective. In conclusion, the research underscores the significance of feminist readings of folklore in unveiling deep-seated gender biases. The study highlights the continued relevance of such tales in contemporary discussions on gender equality, advocating for a more inclusive and equitable representation of women in traditional narratives.

“Ready? Now Drop the Bomb”: A Feminist Reading of Nuclear Overlay Maps and the Cartographic Politics of Comparison

ABSTRACT This article engages a feminist and critical cartographic lens to examine nuclear overlay maps, which superimpose a nuclear event from one place onto another. Often used to promote nuclear awareness, these visualisation techniques nonetheless evoke a troubling history of mapmaking and war simulations in service of state violence. While nuclear overlay maps can effectively evoke an emotional response (i.e. fear and awe), they tend to reinforce hegemonic geographical imaginaries, and may thus impede meaningful anti-nuclear solidarities. Engaging feminist geographies of emotion, scale, and intimacy-geopolitics, I analyse a series of popular open-access nuclear overlay maps to show how they (1) eliminate place relationality; (2) reproduce colonial notions of Indigenous land as terra nullius; (3) misleadingly depict nuclear events as fixed points in space and time; and (4) permit viewers’ continued geographical ignorance. The increasingly prevalent use of nuclear overlay maps warrants critical examination of their implications for geographical knowledge production.

A Feminist Reading of Judy Chicago's Installation The Dinner Party (1979)

Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" (1979) is a landmark feminist installation that reimagines the traditional dinner table as a symbolic site of women's historical contributions and struggles. This research paper provides a feminist reading of the installation, exploring how it challenges the patriarchal structures that have historically excluded women from cultural and historical narratives. The artwork features a large triangular table with 39 place settings, each dedicated to an influential woman from history, ranging from mythical figures to real-life trailblazers. Each setting includes a hand-embroidered runner, silverware, and a ceramic plate, often adorned with butterfly and flower motifs symbolizing the vulva, thereby reclaiming the female form from objectification and celebrating it as a source of creativity and power. "The Dinner Party" not only elevates traditional female crafts such as embroidery and china painting, often dismissed as mere "domestic arts," to the status of fine art but also critiques the gender biases that permeate the art world. This paper examines how the installation engages with feminist theory, particularly through its emphasis on collective female experience and its critique of historical erasure. By including a diverse range of women from different cultural and temporal backgrounds, Chicago's work highlights the interconnectedness of women's struggles across history. Furthermore, the paper discusses the critical reception of "The Dinner Party," analyzing both the acclaim and the backlash it received within the art community and beyond. This feminist reading underscores the work's enduring relevance as a powerful statement on gender equality and its call for a more inclusive recognition of women's roles in shaping society.

Kunstfaggruppens infrastrukturelle aktivisme

“The Infrastructural Activism of Kunstfaggruppen: A Feminist Reading of Art Librarians’ Work in the 1970s” This article explores the art librarians in Kunstfaggruppen’s (the Art Subject Group’s) infrastructure-creating and agenda-setting activities, situated at the inter- section between visual arts and the library system. During the 1970s the group, dominated by women informed by feminism, ensured that art libraries became a recognised part of the art institutional landscape in Denmark. This article argues that this happened through a form of “infrastructural activism” (Smith). Seeking to create an alternative to the bourgeois art institution, this activism operates on both infrastructural and representational levels within the frameworks of art. The ar- ticle suggests that the infrastructural and activist work thatdrove Kunstfaggruppen in the 1970s had a feminist impulse, but also critically considers the relationship between the counterculture of the women’s movement and the cultural politics of the welfare state, whilst reflecting on the potential of the art library infrastructure today.

A Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis of Pecola Breedlove’s Language as a Tragic Female Protagonist in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

This study employed Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to analyze Pecola Breedlove's language as a tragic female protagonist in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. While Morrison's work has been extensively analyzed through feminist and postcolonial lenses, limited research has explored how Pecola's language functions as a site of her oppression and marginalization. Specifically, the study aimed to examine Pecola's spoken dialogue by analyzing the process types within the ideational metafunction, mood structure, and pronoun usage within the interpersonal metafunction. Additionally, the study explored how her language reflects her identity as a tragic female protagonist. The results indicated a prevalence of mental and material processes, interrogative and imperative mood structures, and exclusive pronouns in Pecola's language. These linguistic choices depicted her as an emotionally and psychologically burdened character who lacks agency, emphasizing her vulnerability, desperation, and alienation. Together, these features contributed to the development of her tragic characterization. Through the exposure of how language encodes powerlessness, this study offered a fresh linguistic perspective on Pecola's tragic characterization and deepened feminist readings of The Bluest Eye. Future research can build on these findings by applying SFG to other marginalized characters in Morrison's works or across different literary genres, deepening the understanding of how grammatical structures shape meaning and representation in literature.

Gender, Class, and Political Power in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits: A Feminist Reading of the Post-Colonial Landscape in Chile

In The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende explores the intersection of gender, class, and political power through the lives of the Trueba family, with a focus on the experiences of the female characters. This paper examines how women in the novel engage with political movements, challenge dictatorial oppression, and navigate patriarchal structures. Central to this exploration are Clara, Blanca, and Alba, whose individual journeys highlight the complexities of female agency in times of political and social unrest. Through their activism, spiritual resistance, and personal struggles, these women subvert traditional gender roles and demonstrate how women carve out spaces for resistance within male-dominated spheres. The feminist critique within Allende’s work exposes the limitations imposed on women’s agency in revolutionary movements, while also showcasing their significant contributions to the fight for social justice and gender equality. This analysis reflects the broader feminist discourse on the intersectionality of gender, class, and political struggle in the context of Latin American history.

The Embodiment of Algerian Women's Trauma in Ahlam Mosteghanemi's The Bridges of Constantine (A Postcolonial Feminist Reading)

The Embodiment of Algerian Women's Trauma in Ahlam Mosteghanemi's The Bridges of Constantine (A Postcolonial Feminist Reading)

Overshadowing Masculinity: A feminist Reading of Afuh Margaret's Born before Her Time, Flowers in the Desert and Tala Julie Enjema's Daughters of Ekema

This paper articulates masculinity’s diminishing strength in Africa and highlights new women imaging within the interaction of time, cultural analysis and feminist discourse. It limits its search to the 1960s and 1970s socio/economic and political landscapes. Principally, it underlines the timid beginnings of misogyny and stresses on its gradual but steady growth. Guided by a study of Margaret Afuh's Born Before Time (2003) Flowers in the Desert (2009) and Julie Enjema Tala's Daughters of Ekema,(2012) the paper uncovers the female African’s pain under the intersection of patriarchy, culture and gender, and challenges the drawbacks by establishing alternative ways to the traditional orchestrated demeaning behaviours. In theoretical assessment, it uses womanism; an African feminist theory positioned by its theorists as a significant tool for Africa’s positive transformation. The essay premises that the mindset of the empowered African woman is geared towards developing the entire human society.

The ‘Yang Gui-ja Phenomenon’ and Feminist Reader Agency Research : Focused on I Wish for What is Forbidden to Me

The ‘Yang Gui-ja Phenomenon’ and Feminist Reader Agency Research : Focused on I Wish for What is Forbidden to Me

Voices of Resistance: Gender, Citizenship, and Rights in Miyah Poetry

The term Miyah has a specific meaning in Assam. Unlike in other parts of India, where it is used to address a gentleman in an honourable way, in Assam it is a pejorative term that refers to the community of Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin. This community is now reclaiming this identity through various forms of creative expression including poetry. The perpetual “other” in Assamese nationalist assertions, the Miyah until recently was accorded very little agency in the popular imagination. Miyah poetry emerged as a powerful mode of resisting injustice and suffering during the preparation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam (NRC), a complex and tedious bureaucratic exercise that could render a huge section of the population “undocumented migrants.” This is a genre of poetry that is resisting two kinds of power relationships – the hegemony of the Assamese language and the class hierarchy associated with the term Miyah in everyday usage. I argue that there is an explicit gender dimension of the word Miyah which has remained largely unexplored. The question of citizenship has different implications for men and women within the Miyah community, and it merits our attention to explore this difference through a feminist reading of Miyah poetry.

Nicole Gravier’s Research in the 1970s, or Photography as an Image Analysis Tool

Abstract The article proposes an interpretative reading of the research that Nicole Gravier conducted during the 1970s. From her first tests, the artist made use of the photographic medium, which would remain her expressive tool of choice throughout the decade. She deconstructs the myths of visual communication, even everyday ones, by immersing herself in them through photography. Often the protagonist of her own works, Gravier arrives with the Photoromans series to criticize and question the stereotyped rhetoric of the female image, making these works interesting materials for a feminist reading.

Self-Actualization and Identity: A Feminist Reading of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Self-Actualization and Identity: A Feminist Reading of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Die Ruine als Fetisch Die sexualisierten Kodierungen von Konservieren und Restaurieren bei John Ruskin

This article is based on the theory that John Ruskin (1819‑1900) attributed a male gaze to decaying architecture in his writings and described it with feminine characteristics. Decaying architecture symbolizes ideal virginity, which can only be destroyed by a falsifying restoration. This reading of Ruskin’s writings will be linked to a critical history of architecture that examines architecture in its patriarchal normativity. Building on this link, a feminist reading of the history of monument conservation will be formulated.

Feminist Reading Together in a Different Register

In this paper we reflect upon our multi-year reading group as a site of decolonial feminist praxis that motivates reading in a different register from how we were trained to read as academics in the humanities. In collaborative study we willingly open ourselves to change, to being worked on by one another and by the texts we read. Our reading together has initiated the undoing of settler colonial academic subjectivity and the co-creation of new forms of scholarly subjectivity grounded in relations of care, openness to transformation, and a growing commitment to epistemic justice. In giving an account of our group history and process we reflect on our complicities with settler-colonialism in the university and consider the ways that reading together has cultivated our capacities to listen to counter-narratives, formulate institutional and self critique, and engage in epistemic reparations.

Examining Love as a Central Ethic of Leadership: a Kierkegaardian and Feminist Reading

Examining Love as a Central Ethic of Leadership: a Kierkegaardian and Feminist Reading

An anti-colonialist and feminist Sandokan?

This article offers an anti-colonialist and feminist reading of the 1976 Italian TV miniseries Sandokan. Produced at the height of political radicalization in Italy, this series is arguably an expression of the anti-colonialist spirit of the time. In addition, this series is remarkable because it hit an audience record which was probably never reached again: almost 30 million viewers in a country of 60 million. Sandokan is a Malaysian nobleman who becomes a pirate after the British slaughtered his family. Though he certainly fits within the Robin Hood trope, Sandokan not only robs the rich to give to the poor, but he also takes back from the British what they are stealing. Apart from the anti-colonial slant, the miniseries is of interest because of its gender aspects. In the series, a few White women assertively challenge both male and colonial supremacy. Finally, one crucial aspect of the series which has so far been neglected is interracial love, represented by the union of Sandokan and the White Lady Marianna. While their sentimental and physical love defies nineteenth-century racial-colonial relations, it cannot last because of Marianna’s death.

The Gospel According to Maryse Condé: Black Feminist Literary Ethic in L’Évangile du nouveau monde (2021) and What’s Love and Laughter Got to Do with It

This essay considers L’Évangile du nouveau monde (2021), Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé's last published novel during her lifetime, to be a victory lap of her œuvre, one in which she revisits her greatest thematic and poetic hits, while reaffirming her allegiance to social justice and the freedom of literature. Pascal, the novel's main protagonist, is a floundering full-time messiah and part-time author who travels from the Caribbean to Brazil via New York, bearing witness — albeit poorly — to some of the world's most pressing issues: police brutality, misogyny, xenophobia, exploitative work practices, and more. Behind Pascal's struggles to fulfill his mission to bring harmony to the world with his writings, Condé playfully conceals a capacious literary ethic rooted in humor, as an essential mode of critique, and love, as a Black feminist reading and writing praxis that insists on the complementary roles of intellectual mothers and fathers in the project of global emancipation.

Religion, gender-based violence and silence: A radical feminist reading of women’s agency in Chika Unigwe’s novel

The intersection of religion, culture and gender-based violence (GBV) continues to provoke critical debates in feminist scholarship and activism. Although substantial steps are noticeable in terms of addressing numerous forms of violence against women, religion and culture in the African context continue to promulgate harmful practices. Chika Unigwe’s novel, The Middle Daughter, highlights a world where religion, GBV, social norms, rape myths, silence and agency intersect, shaping women’s lived experiences. Nani, the protagonist, overwhelmed by the loss of her sister and father merely 2 years apart, is lured by a preacher – a wolf in sheep’s clothing – who shoves her into an abusive marriage. Raped but determined to keep the assault under the tongue, Nani further drifts away from her family, friends and community. Imprisoned and battered, yet, Nani’s silent resilience emerges – a quiet but radical strength that defies religio-sociocultural norms. This study is a review of African feminism in eradicating GBV. It discusses how Unigwe’s radical feminist lens unveils the competing female strength and the limits of silence as a form of women’s agency, thereby critiquing the dominant ‘soft’ African feminist approaches.Contribution: This study adopts a radical feminist theory to critique the ‘soft’ African feminisms which fail to serve women facing the intersectional forces of religion, culture and GBV. It argues that feminist activism in Africa has been going on for a lengthy period, yet the double standards embedded in religio-sociocultural beliefs and practices sustain women’s oppression.