feminism focuses on the fact that men designed and benefit from patriarchy, a system of government, culture, and civilization. Although it may appear to be normal, patriarchy is not inherent or natural to human society. Patriarchy only appears normal because it has been in operation for so long and because men have kept themselves in decision-making positions that allow them to perpetuate the system. An important effect of patriarchy is that it robs women of their identity through objectification. Because patriarchy encourages males to act on their propensity to see women as objects of sexual desire, it places women only in that role, and therefore removes the possibility of women having identities beyond that objectification. Therefore, patriarchy is the problem, and feminism seeks to overturn it as a system (Richter, 1998).
In applying these ideas to literature, approaching a traditional story by focusing on gender and the problems of patriarchy will yield yet another (and quite legitimate) reading. As feminist critics examined the Western canon, they criticized the fact that male authors wrote a disproportionate number of these works (Richter, 1997; Woolf & Gordon, 2005). Some women-authored works relegated to secondary status (or worse) at the time of their publication were rediscovered as feminism gained acceptance. One such work is Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening, written in 1899, which literary critics virtually ignored until the middle of the 20th century. Today, The Awakening is one of the most studied texts in college classrooms and some high schools (Chopin, 1899/1994), but it took a shift in the way society views gender roles and the objectification of women for that change to occur.
Applying a feminist perspective to major events and character interactions in a text can yield some fascinating authorial moves that a formalist reading might not.
Postmodernism
The ideas of postmodernism (for example, skepticism, the rejection of objective truth, knowledge as socially constructed, and so on) also found their way into the interpretation of writing in the late 1960s and the years following. One example of this is poststructuralism. Poststructuralist critics desired to remove the structures traditional culture had placed on the reader’s view of the written text. A traditional view focuses on binaries—good versus evil, black versus white, United States versus the world, and a whole variety of dichotomous approaches to understanding ideas. Poststructuralism sought to identify the complexities of the world, to show that difficult ideas resist the reduction to simplistic two-sided discussions. While there is an appeal in identifying the complexities of human life and applying this to the reading of a text, poststructuralism was also seen as an attack on a more traditional or conservative worldview.
Perhaps the deepest and most challenging form of poststructuralism is deconstructionism. Emerging out of language theory, deconstructionism identified the disconnect that can occur between the written word on the page and the thing it refers to—between the signifier and the signified (Richter, 1998). Deconstructionists point out that writing itself perpetuates the distance between signifier and signified because the gap between the two continually grows as language proceeds. Eventually, meaning itself is lost in this disconnect. Starting there, deconstructionists sought to reject nearly all Western culture traditions and began an attack on the Western canon. If language defers meaning, meaning cannot be the source of our understanding of the value of a text. If that is true, no one text is better than any other. A text by an author outside the Western tradition is no better than a traditional canonical text. Once at this philosophical point, one can attack the very idea of a text. Soon, one can read nearly everything with meaning, connotation, theme, and purpose (Richter, 1998). While deconstructionism does not play a significant role in close reading as this book describes, it is an important critical lens and an interesting look into how far literary theory can go.
Reader-Response Criticism
Another important approach to interpreting literature is reader-response criticism. While the role of the reader in experiencing literature had been sidelined during various historical periods (for example, during the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prioritized the “genius” of the artist), by the 20th century, literary critics were re-establishing the vital role of the reader or audience in experiencing literature (Richter, 1998). One way to understand reader-response theory is to see it as something like the opposite of formalism. Formalism identifies the text as the sole object of scrutiny—the roles of the author and the reader are not important to the creation of meaning. Reader-response theory examines the reaction of the reader as the key element in establishing meaning. Wayne C. Booth (1961) expressed this idea most fully in The Rhetoric of Fiction.
One inherent difficulty with the reader-response method is its potential to generate as many readings of a text as there are readers of the text. While it is correct that the reader is vital to the creation of textual meaning, students practicing close reading will need to share a common method that produces common results. Further, the common elements of literary criticism provide the basis for standardized tests, not the response of the reader. Although reader-response theory has its role in the interpretation of literature, it isn’t useful on its own for close reading in classrooms.
In the end, multiple valid readings of any written piece are the result. This fact challenges every teacher to present a reasonable approach for arriving at a valid reading of the text. Formalist literary devices provide the foundation for any critical reading of a text and will provide the evidence for students to assemble meaning. Students might then apply one of the critical lenses to establish a valid reading, grounded in solid textual evidence. As teachers work with beginning critical readers, the focus must be solidly on formalist ideas, since this will provide emerging literary critics with the necessary tools to be accurate in their analysis, both in class and on standardized tests.
Having reviewed the historical background of literary criticism and its instructional technique, close reading, let us consider two important factors in bringing this technique to the classroom, its research background and important instructional shifts that close reading helps us meet.
Research Background
In examining the research background on close reading as an instructional strategy, it is useful to define a turning point in interest in the strategy. Prior to the implementation of the CCSS and the subsequent revisions of state standards in non–Common Core states, close reading was not a widely practiced instructional strategy in U.S. secondary schools, and thus “it has not been studied directly through rigorous academic research” (Student Achievement Partners, 2016, p. 10). Since 2005, with changes wrought by the aforementioned revisions of state standards, there has been increased interest in the use of close reading. Luckily, there are encouraging research studies of aspects of close reading that suggest the strategy is highly effective.
Close reading accesses several important aspects of the teaching of reading, most importantly vocabulary and syntax instruction. Further, close reading encourages the development of fluency through its repeated readings of texts, made more broadly effective with its focus on deliberately practicing with complex texts. Researchers K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer (1993) have shown that working repeatedly with complex texts, where students have feedback on their progress over extended periods, results in highly developed interpretation skills. An additional area that close reading accesses is the standard of coherence, where closely reading complex texts develops students’ appreciation for what texts have to offer. Students who develop a high standard of coherence expect to understand a text deeply and will work to achieve that understanding (Pearson & Liben, 2013).
Researchers have shown the importance of vocabulary development for decades. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley (1995) studied the effects of poor vocabulary development on students at risk in a study of conversations in the home as the children developed. The study showed that low-socioeconomic families provide fewer exposures to conversation than high-socioeconomic families. In 2003, Hart and Risley published a study including the 1995 information with additional data that demonstrated students from low-socioeconomic families can arrive at age three having been exposed to thirty
