Showalter defined the feminine phase of feminism as a period beginning in 1840 and ending with the death of George Elliot in 1880. She identified women's writing from this period as an attempt to equal the literary achievements of the men in the same era. She qualified female writers of this period as necessarily internalizing their ideas of the female nature. Showalter explained that female writers in this period held a view that if their work rivaled the work of the male culture, academic acceptance and cultural acceptance of equality would occur naturally.
Showalter defined the feminist period of feminism, beginning in 1880 and ending in 1920, as a time when women began writing in protest to male cultural standards and the social boundaries that prevented female authors from advancing through their art. The writing of this period included a demand for autonomy and a desire for self-reliance. This period coincided with a rise in feminist political action in America, demonstrating the significant relationship between female authorship and female political action.
Showalter identified the period from 1920 to the present as the female period, a phase that focused on the unique experience of being a female. She explained that an imitation of male techniques, for the purpose of equality or acceptance, is a form of dependence on the male traditions and by the female phase, women were no long reliant and these traditions. Further, she explained that activism is another form of dependence, necessitating that equality or independence must be a granted right or a gift from a superior. Showalter asserted that by the female phase, women had surpassed their dependence and proceeded into a world of feminist art where a female author could focus on the essence of the female experience.
Showalter defined Gynocritics as the abandonment of the fixation on male culture and traditions, both the angry fixation and loving fixation. She explained that the purpose of Gynocritics is the examination of the purely female experience, without regard for male critical techniques or masculine cultural acceptance. The field of Gynocritics begins with the vision of the female culture, unique to itself. She rejects androgynous gender studies, the idea that no genders exist, or that literature should be studied with no recognition toward gender. Instead, she focused on the unique gender qualities that differentiates men from women