This entry describes Feminism and Gender Theory as a critical approach to comics. Since feminist literary theory and gender theory are general terms that encompass multiple critical approaches, it is necessary to limit the main features of these theories to the approaches that are shared by the majority of critics. First and foremost, feminist theory deals with representations of women in literary works and examines the socio-political ramifications of these representations. Dr. Sarah Gilbert and Dr. Susan Gubar are representative scholars of feminist theory. Gender theory, which is a separate theory that in some ways dependents on feminist theory, focuses on the issue of gender identity and how it is represented in issues of sexuality, power relationships and the marginalization of characters within literature. Dr. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Susan Bordo are representative gender theory scholars. Applying feminist theory and gender theory to comic books is fairly new, since formal gender theory is mostly a product of the second wave of feminism that occurred in the 1960's and 1970's. Gender literary theory is an even newer approach that examines works through the idea that gender is a performance of identity based on social conditioning.
Although feminist literary theory is relatively new to comic analysis, the theory developed over time and has roots in the first, second and third waves of feminism. Using feminist theory,it is possible to argue that Mary Wolstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) is the first feminist text (Donovan 24). Feminist theory as a critical approach became more defined during the second wave of feminism during the mid-twentieth century. Feminist theory has several approaches, including Marxist, Psycho-analytical, Radical Feminism, and Cultural Feminism, but all of the approaches share a focus on the ways women are oppressed within patriarchal society (Stuller 239). Gender theory adds a focus on how characters embody and enact masculine and feminine roles as dictated by the society (Brown 21).
Feminist theory and gender theory share several underlying assumptions:
Operating with these assumptions as a guideline, feminist theorists and gender theorists seek to expose the ways in which literature reinforces and reflects patriarchal attitudes toward women and other marginalized groups within the society (Duncan 257).
Feminist and gender theories ask the following questions when analyzing a text:
By asking these questions about a text, critics can look at how both conscious and unconscious mysogyny exists within a work and what part gender issues play within the text. For example, when analyzing the comic She Hulk, a spin-off of The Incredible Hulk, the way the character, Jennifer Walters, is represented and the way her alter-ego, She-Hulk is represented in both the dialog and how the character is drawn shows that She-Hulk's body is hyper-sexualized. in a way that male superheroes' bodies are not.
Because feminist and gender theory assumes that all literature is a product of a patriarchal structure and therefore demonstrates some type of gender bias, all types of literature, including comic books, are objects of study. Comic books that are about marginalize people like Fun Home or Ghost World can be analyzed using feminist and gender theory, but the superhero genre and its focus on masculine characters is most often the subject of analysis. Superman comics are a paradigmatic example of a type of comic book that would be an object of study for feminist and gender theorists.
Some key methods of gender and feminist theory for analyzing comics could include looking at how women are drawn in the work. Are men and women drawn accurately or are women's bodies sexualized by emphasizing their breast and buttocks? What types of costumes do male character wear? What types of costumes do female characters wear? The wriiten text analysis can include examining how characters speak to each other. Do male characters make most of the decisions? Do men and women act in gendered ways? In her feminist analysis of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane, Jennifer Stuller applies the Bechdel Test for gender bias which requires that a story meets the following criteria to be considered non-biased: two are more women charcters are presented, these women talk to each other, and the women talk to each other about something other than men ( Smith and Duncan 238).
and Randy Duncan. New York: Routledge, 2012.