My discussion is based on the excerpt from Nina Baym’s Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors. Nina baym has states in the beginning of the writing that “This paper is about American literary criticism rather than American literature”. I am curious why she starts her argument saying that. What she means by criticism? We always read literature through the prospective of the theories of the literature. So we understand and believe the way theory tells us. The theories are controlling our literature and excluding women authors from the cannon. We believe the way story tells us about character rather thinking in-depth in our own.
The women authors were not cited on their writing. I believe writing has nothing to do with male and female because they both can be good writers. By the way, in the middle of nineteenth century the female authors were exist but why they were not included on the book?
I believe the critics play the gender role of criticism. They think women cannot be the excellent writer. They look at women in their literary traditional way. Their social condition stops them from being novelist. The women don’t have enough resources to be a good writer. Women should do only house work and they should not have authority as an author. Literary criticism is actually banding female authors. Why do you think it is happening? The females are part of their family. So why do the critics don’t want to include female names on their writing?
1 response so far ↓
Mel Gili Zhu // Oct 3rd 2014 at 4:10 pm
Your discussion was interesting and well done. I believe Baym begins with “This paper is about American literary criticism rather than American literature” to tell the readers what she is going to discuss and make it clear what her perspective is. She addresses three important ideas that have to do with literary criticism especially on the spectrum of female writers. Baym mentions the absence of female writers in the American canon, female roles in criticism and the problem with literary criticism. Literary theories are too controlling that woman are exclude from the cannon and there is major male dominant acceptance in the canon for writers. I agree about the gender role of criticism were the idea of literature in cultural reality is male based on literature theory. This idea can be compared to today’s society with gender equality or feminism.