- Determine how social attitudes have shaped perceptions of women in literature, and women's perceptions of themselves.
- Interrogate women's texts in terms of gynocriticism (women centred criticism) in order to counter patriarchal critical assumptions about literature.
- Examine how women writers have been empowered by their precursors and contemporaries.
- Deconstruct traditional images of women.
- Ascertain patterns of women's self-discovery and self-assertion in three novels.
- Trace the matrilinear motifs in women's writing.
- Determine the social and literary significance of the roles in which women are cast.
- Analyse how women writers have used language and silence in order to subvert patriarchal discourse.
- Determine how women express distinctively female experiences.
- Investigate how the margins are being redefined in women's writing, and how the canonical centre is being relocated or undermined.
