' Reading Ourselves: Toward A Feminist Theory Of Reading?

Dear Mother,

Today, the image of a woman is portrayed to follow the footsteps of men. Men are seen as the genearch ones, the dominant ones, the ones who created the language and the universal. Due to these standards, I noticed that women readers become an agent of their immasculation, bifurcation for women’s readers to hero, and have an androcentric canon. In our society, we as women tend to continue to follow the footsteps of men in order to fit the male universal. Unfortunately, some women decide to try to fit in the place of the male universal, which requires women to rejects themselves and their uniqueness, living in an androcentric society that requires one to erase women’s achievements and expressions, also living in a society where

Schweickart. First, I found it very shocking that women’s literature is often left out for the world to read. Women’s literature is often seen as personal experience stories compared to men's literature, which are more of a self-centered literature. “The point is not merely to interpret literature in various ways; the point is to change the world” (Schweickart, pg. 39). Being able to change the world through literature is very important because without literature, and without the knowledge, how is one being able to change the world? For a woman’s point of view, readers will be able to understand the different point of views from both men and women. Since male literature is often read more , the idea of being self-centered, women are often judged because of the idea of being more open minded than men. Readers should be able to read the achievements and awareness between male and female instead of just the male

I found this idea interesting because it explains how we as individuals live in an androcentric society, but it also explains how women’s achievements are often hidden from history because men want to be the only dominant gender in literature. In literature, women are often expected to read the text by both male and female perspectives, yet males are not expected to do the same. Living in an androcentric society means that women will continue to learn from the male lead, causing women to read texts through a male perspective, having women chose the roles of heroes or males instead of being themselves, having women be kept in the dark to express their ideas. Living in this society makes a woman feel like they need to reinforce their beliefs. Women should be able to learn without following the male’s androcentric canon and not getting punished for interpreting it by their own personal experience. When I was writing this section mom, the only example that I could think of was the story you explained to me a few months back about work. I remember you coming home, very frustrated and tired, and I asked you “what was wrong?” Then you explained to me that you and your male coworker did an amazing job cleaning a house that took both of you about 3 hours to clean. The owner gave many compliments on how great her house looked, yet she focused more on the areas you worked on. I told you