What are the basic tenets of feminist criticism?

Feminist literary criticism grew out of political feminism. Starting with the suffrage and similar movements that struggled to obtain voting and property rights for women, the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in many western countries have been marked by a struggle by women for full social, political, legal, and economic equality. 

Part of feminist theory involved understanding how the mechanisms of patriarchy infuse every element of our lives and societies. Feminist literary critics draw on...

Feminist literary criticism grew out of political feminism. Starting with the suffrage and similar movements that struggled to obtain voting and property rights for women, the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in many western countries have been marked by a struggle by women for full social, political, legal, and economic equality. 

Part of feminist theory involved understanding how the mechanisms of patriarchy infuse every element of our lives and societies. Feminist literary critics draw on this insight to analyze how patriarchy affects both how we read literary works and which works we read.

The first element of feminist literary criticism, sometimes referred to as part of "liberal feminism", argues that the literary canon, the works normally read and taught in school, is a patriarchal construction that marginalizes and excludes female authors. Many feminist scholars have sought to increase the proportion of women writers being taught and to reprint in modern editions (or preserve in electronic archives) the works of neglected female authors.

The second, more theoretical, feminist approach uses feminism as a way to read and understand literary works, showing how the narratives and character descriptions replicate patriarchal ideologies.