Dr.

Richard Clarke LITS2307 Notes11A

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MARXIST FEMINISM

Gender is often defined, you might recall, as the social construction of sex, that is, the interpretations
imposed upon the anatomical sex of human beings, resulting in certain qualities and roles being
attributed to and internalised by males and females. In other words, certain conceptions concerning
what it means to be male as opposed to female are ingested and regurgitated in the beliefs and the
behaviour of both men and women. Of course, one is not always consciously aware that one has
imbibed and manifested such attitudes.
Feminism is, you might recall, not a monolithic discourse: there are in fact several strains as
a result of which it might be better to speak of several Feminisms. For Feminists who engage with
Psychoanalysis, one’s gender is largely a function of one’s anatomical sex (the strictly Freudian view
is that ‘anatomy is destiny’) and / or determined by specific events that occur during the earliest
formative stages of a human being’s psychic maturation (this would be the ‘Object-Relations’ view).
For psychoanalytic Feminists, the root of patriarchy (a term that reflects the historical fact that men
have been dominant over women in all social systems) lies in the biological differences separating
men from women. From this perspective, each human forms part of what is sometimes called a
kinship system in which one’s place and function in society is determined largely by one’s gender: to
be precise, whether or not one is capable of bearing children. For Freudians, moreover, one is not
normally conscious that one’s behaviour as a male or female is shaped by these factors. Indeed, our
knowledge of such things is said to be repressed as a result of which our psyche is split into
conscious and unconscious components.
For Feminists who engage with Analytical Psychology, one’s gender is partly a function of
anatomy (one is normally biologically either male or female) and partly a product of our socialisation
(certain historical patterns of behaviour have led to particular qualities and roles being ascribed to
females and males respectively, resulting in the formation of archetypes of masculinity and femininity
in the collective unconscious). For Jungians, one is not normally conscious that one’s behaviour as a
male or female is to a large extent scripted by the codes inherited via the collective unconscious.
However, coming to grips with the contents of the collective unconscious also gives us the
opportunity to transcend one’s gender by engaging with archetypes alien to our immediate
experience (e.g. the anima in the case of the male) and, through the process of individuation, to
attain something of an androgynous state in which the masculine and feminine components of our
psyche exist in balance.
Although Psychoanalysis is the school of thought that has been most influential upon
Feminism, some Feminists prefer to approach questions of gender from a Marxist vantage-point.
Marxist Feminists tend to draw upon Marx’s ‘base / superstructure’ model of society in order to argue
that gender distinctions are, in a nutshell, entirely a function of economic rather than anatomical or
other factors. You might recall that, according to Marx, the social relations of production, the means
of production, and the forces of production constitute the economic base of a given society and that
this base determines in turn the ideological superstructure. Marxist Feminists contend that,
notwithstanding undisputable biological differences, patriarchy (meaning a social system in which
men and women are unequal) is rooted in economics: to be precise, the forces of production are so
constituted that historically men have largely owned the means of production while women have
owned only their labour. From the Marxist point of view, the class-structure is primary and gender
differences secondary, men and women being historically differentiated by their relationship to the
means of production. To put this another way, the class-structure (i.e. the unequal distribution of
wealth) is also a gender-inflected hierarchy, inequality between the sexes being ultimately reducible
to economic inequality. This results in a sexual division of labour in which women either are not
allowed to work at all (outside of the home, of course) or are confined to certain menial, poorly
remunerated tasks in the public sphere. From this perspective, women’s oppression at least since
the Renaissance in modern Europe and, by extension, in countries affected by European
expansionism during this period is part and parcel of the economic mode of production termed
Capitalism. To eliminate the oppression of women, therefore, one must change the economic
structure.
Marxist Feminists believe that the economic base, gender-inflected in this way, in turn
determines the superstructure where are found gendered institutions (for example, in the Church
women were historically not allowed to become priests) and often misogynous or at least
stereotypical ideologies of gender (i.e. the ideological construction of masculinity and femininity and
the respective roles to which they are best suited). The main function of gender ideologies is to
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justify discrimination between the sexes in general, the sexual division of labour in particular and, by
extension, the oppression of women in general. Given that everything in the superstructure is the
effect or reflection of causes found in the base, for Marxist Feminists, ideas about the respective
attributes and roles of males and females are entirely determined by those economic factors found in
the base. Hence, the following Marxist Feminist rewriting of the traditional Base/Superstructure
model:

IDEOLOGICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE

C Ideologies of gender (sometimes misogynous, most often stereotypical)

C Social Institutions (which privilege men)
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ECONOMIC BASE

C Social Relations of Production (the class structure is also a gender hierarchy)

C Forces of Production (sexual division of labour)
C Means of Production (owned by men)

Rosemary Tong distinguishes in her useful Feminist Thought: a Comprehensive Introduction

between (out and out) Marxist Feminists per se and Socialist Feminists who combine Marxist thought
with other discourses, most notably Psychoanalysis. The latter, while accepting that the economic
determinants of patriarchy should not be overlooked, contend that the differences between men and
women are simply not reducible to economic inequality. They argue that there would be no
economic differences separating men from women were it not for the sexual differences that
distinguish the former from the latter. If Marxism is the model best suited to explicating the
economic stratification of any given society, Socialist Feminists are of the view that it needs to be
combined with other schools of thought such as Psychoanalysis which do not ignore the equally
important role played by biological differentiation. This is why Socialist Feminists are often called
dual systems theorists.

MARXIST FEMINIST AESTHETICS / CRITICAL THEORY

Marxist Feminists seek to interpret literature written by both women and by men with reference to the
social relations of production and reproduction specific to the place and time depicted or to the place
and time in which such women wrote. These two sorts of criticism correspond broadly-speaking to
the expressive (where the emphasis is on the writer) and the mimetic (where the focus is on the
object of representation), respectively. In the former (what Feminists like Showalter call
‘gynocriticism’), female writers are examined for the economic and related factors which impinge
upon their work and which are responsible for their possession (or not) of what those Feminists who
might be influenced by Hartsock might term a feminist standpoint, in other words, a consciousness of
the truth about patriarchy. In the latter (what Feminists often term ‘feminist critique’ or ‘images of
women’ criticism), male writers are scrutinised for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of their
representation of women in particular and male-female relations.

Marxist Feminist Gynocriticism:

Although Hartsock does not have anything to say about literary matters per se, the applicability of her
comments to an understanding of feminine authorship ought to be evident. Evidently, not every
woman writer will possess a feminist standpoint. However, whether she does is explicable with
reference to her location within the class and patriarchal structure. Some women writers who have
imbibed prevalent stereotypes about women will regurgitate them and thus support the status quo,
while others who have for whatever reason succeeded in seeing through them will interrogate and
even subvert them in their works. Such women will be able to offer works that are truly realist,
capturing not just the class conflict which drives history but, equally importantly, the link between
class conflict and the conflict between the sexes.
To put the foregoing differently, Marxist Feminists seek to explore the socio-historical context
in which a given female writer writes in order to explain what and how she writes. Such critics focus
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on both the ideologies of gender and the institutionalisation of gender difference in that society to
explain the writer’s career, subject matter, and choice of literary form(s). These ideologies and
institutions (part of the Superstructure) are viewed as determined by the means, forces and social
relations of production in the Economic Base of the society in question. The writer’s ability to
develop a class consciousness and/or feminist standpoint is explained by reference to the sexual
division of labour, the strength and pervasiveness of the ideologies, and the institutionalisation of
gender difference in her society. For Marxist Feminists, unequal gender relations are ultimately
derived from or determined by unequal economic relations (the class structure). Socialist Feminists
seek to extend this framework by contending that the possession of a feminist standpoint by a
woman writer is a function not only of her location in the class-structure but in the kinship system, for
which reason Marxism should be conjoined with Psychoanalysis.

Marxist Feminist Critique:

When studying male writers, Marxist feminist most critics tend to adopt a broadly mimetic approach,
the goal of which is to judge whether the writer in question has accurately portrayed women in
particular and male-female relations in general. That is, they read the socio-historical context
portrayed as a reflection of a real place and time inhabited by actual people. They try to explain the
motivations impelling the actions of both male and female characters in ultimately economic terms:
that is, the ideologies of gender in which the characters are immersed to a greater or less degree and
which they express or reject both in their actions and words as well as the institutionalisation of
gender asymmetry are in the final analysis derived from the economic organisation of the society
portrayed. The accuracy of the depiction is most often explained with reference to those socio-
historical factors which have made a writer what he is.
Marxist Feminists are, like Feminists in general, attentive in this regard to the literary
construction of femininity in particular. They often focus on how the women portrayed by male writers
frequently fall into one or other of two extreme categories – the sinner / whore and the saint / virgin –
in a way that fails to do justice to their true complexity. From the Marxist Feminist perspective, such
a dichotomy is attributable to the stage of history in which the author produced his works. For
example, Shakespeare’s works were produced in what Caudwell would describe as the ‘period of
primitive accumulation’ of capitalism. At that time, a certain ideology of femininity (‘women ought to
be chaste, silent and obedient’) predominated within the ruling class and was absorbed by the other
classes because these were qualities by which propertied men (members of the emerging
bourgeoisie) were able to ensure that their wealth was kept within their immediate family and wider
class. (It should be borne in mind that notwithstanding the fictional place and time portrayed by
Shakespeare [e.g. Venice or classical Rome], his plays are in every sense representations of
Renaissance England.) Virtuous women are most often praised, wicked women indicted in such
plays. Socialist Feminists, of course, often seek to complicate such purely economistic readings by
arguing that an author like Shakespeare was as much a function of his location in the kinship system
as the class-structure of the place and time. To this end, they supplement a Marxist model with a
Psychoanalytic one.