An Ode To Fearless Women: Feminism And Literature

“For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanisation, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.”- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Feminism literally took seventeen centuries to crawl its way into Literature. It was the 18th century when a book named A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft surfaced and is known to be the first feminist book; one of the earliest known, strong literary work on feminism.

It was actually the late 18th century when Wollstonecraft wrote this book and unfortunately, there was no known work on feminism for the next hundred years. It's known that in the Victorian Age any piece of work by a female writer was silently published, mind you any piece, not just a feminist piece; for your reference, the authors in this age were like George Elliot, Jane Austen, Bronte Sisters.

It is imperative to note here that the only known female author in the seventeenth century was Aphra Behn who in a time when very few authors—let alone female authors—could support themselves through their craft. Aphra Behn was a well-known and highly regarded writer in London who apparently “ate” from what she wrote, meaning the only woman author who could sustain her life from writing itself and henceforth became an inspiration for upcoming writers.

It’s believed that by the 18th-century fiction writing had begun in England which could've proven to be an opportunity for women writers to voice out their stories and atrocities faced by them but here too men took the center stage. Ironically a male, Samuel Richardson, was writing about women’s lives and their stories; his famous works on women including Pamela and Clarissa. So all in all, men became the torchbearers for fiction writing.

But around the same time period, there was an illustrious politician

Eliza Haywood. She’s known for writing romance novels in the 18th century one of which is The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy.

Today looking back at her work, it is apprehended that her work essentially contributed and influenced what novels are today.

By the end of the 18th century, feminism had spread its roots as a concept.

Then came the 19th century which is considered as the Golden Age of ‘Women Writing’.

The most prestigious name in this age is retained by Jane Austen. She holds this position primarily for her world-class six novels which subsist under the umbrella term Novel of Manners (work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with finely detailed observation the customs, values, and mores of a highly developed and complex society).

Through her novels, she tried to communicate to the world about the dismal condition of women and the circumstances they had to outlive every day, of how they’re deprived of education and have to depend on men’s mercy even for their mere survival.

Another great author of this age was Wollstonecraft’s daughter,

Mary Shelley, PB Shelley's wife. Mary made a name for herself in the writing world for her gothic novel Frankenstein. She introduced a new form of horror and it’s believed that she took inspiration for this piece from her own life.

Another name we can’t miss while covering the 19th-century women authors is the Brontë Sisters.

The Brontë family was a literary phenomenon unequaled before or since. Both Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights have won lofty places in the pantheon and stirred the romantic sensibilities of generations of readers. Penguin Classics united these two enduring favorites with the lesser-known but no less powerful work by their youngest sister, Anne.

Drawn from Anne’s own experiences as a governess, Agnes Grey offered a compelling view of Victorian chauvinism and materialism. Its inclusion made The Brontë Sisters a must-have volume for anyone fascinated by this singularly talented family.

As the 19th century was on the verge of termination another feminist fiction writer named Kate Chopin who in 1899 published the novel named The Awakening which was legit refused to even be placed in libraries at that point in time just because it had something that jolted the readers. It had elements of the heroine enjoying sexual pleasures (well that’s also solely a man’s right so how could she!).

With the onset of the 20th century, making her way into the writing domain in England arrived Virginia Woolf. With some great novels to her credit, she also devised some remarkable essays, the most beautiful one being A Room Of One’s Own. It’s a 172-page long essay where Woolf focuses on the writing career of a woman. It's the first known major feminist criticism work that essentially established the concept of feminist criticism. She furthermore holds an exceptional position in this discussion as she came out as a Bi-sexual after her relationship with fellow author Vita Sackville-West; the relationship which in fact encouraged her to pen her novel named Orlando.

A contemporary writer at the same time was Rebecca West who even after getting a lot of negative reaction published numerous fictional works. She also delivered some beautiful pieces shedding light on the state of women who conceived and eventually bore illegitimate babies as she herself had an identical experience with a writer of that time.

Cutting the long story short, after the pieces by these authors came into limelight, two world wars passed and the status of women did not remain reduced to conventional household roles. Women authors started instilling real-life stories into their work making it more approachable and comprehensible to a common woman either sitting at home or thriving in this patriarchal world run by men.

Some amazing writers without which this piece will be incomplete need a mention here: Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God) , the amazing Toni Morrison (first black woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature), Alice Walker (The Colour Purple), Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying, portraying female sexuality), Monica Ali (She Isn’t Going to Give Up- A Feminist Reading), Arundhati Roy (The God Of Small Things), Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (The Palace of Illusions), Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other- Man Booker Prize 2019).

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Author-

Ishta Kaushal

ishta020@gmail.com

Ishta is currently pursuing her Bachelors in Commerce (Honors) with Minors in English Literature from Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi. She comes from the hills of Shimla, which is where she took to reading really early on moulding her into the ardent reader that she is today. According to her it would be quite unfair on her part to call herself a feminist, if she couldn't contribute to a feminist community right in her college i.e. the Women’s Development Cell.