It certainly is fair, and I suppose many an academic hour is spent on that. But I wouldn't "call them out." To me that phrase sounds like an attack--like attacking a work because it reflects the time in which it was created.
I guess it's a matter of what degree of opposition or disagreement you're comfortable with. I would agree with FRiend Lee's assessment:
Frankly I'm getting tired of opera, particularly classical opera. The storyline is always a variation on the woman who went wrong and is punished by losing her reputation or dying and the men are always strutting around. I don't get excited about the women's lamenting or drama and the men's bravura.
I'm not into opera but I think the same sentiment applies to literature. I would never advocate banning a book, but analyzing and criticizing outdated gender assumptions in canonical works seems completely valid. And if that criticism rises to level that could be described as "attacking" -- whatever that means in regard to long-dead authors and works in the public domain -- that wouldn't bother me in the least. Those on the other side are free to argue that the literary value of the work outweighs such issues.
I guess another way to put it is, sure, works are a reflection of their times, just like historical figures are. To some extent I'm able to compartmentalize and separate, say, Thomas Jefferson's severe flaws from his intelligence and insights or whatever. But I don't just shrug and say, oh well, lots of people owned slaves and raped and/or slept with them back then so it's no big deal.
Traditional education (and maybe education now as well, or at least in Florida
) ignored Jefferson's faults. I think literary education has done the same with these gender issues, or at least did when I was taking literature classes (which admittedly was so long ago Tostoy was practically still alive
).