Must Read Feminist Works

I believe we all know the reality that classic books written by women authors centuries ago were often attributed to male names. We read about women's lives predominantly through a male pen and perspective. The idea of women being writers was not considered acceptable until relatively recently. Of course, women needed certain things to become writers: time, their own space, and financial independence. Women writers are breaking the sentence, against to men-oriented writing and world, breaking men's sentences; meaning they are experimental and writing their own way. Women are portrayed by women, not men. I present to you the exemplary works of some female authors who have succeeded in this and who have critiqued and paved the way for others to do the same.

A Room of One's Own, an essay by Virginia Woolf, is one of the most famous and significant examples of women's role in literary life. While Woolf emphasizes that women should exist in the literary world, she argues that they need a space –a room of their own– and financial independence to do so. Additionally, she criticizes the historical exclusion of women from education and economic opportunities and discusses how systematic inequality suppresses women's voices. In advocating for gender equality in the literary world, she creates a fictional character –Judith, the sister of William Shakespeare– to illustrate the challenges and obstacles a talented woman would face in the patriarchal system during the Elizabethan era.

The Golden Notebook tells the story of the narrator, Anna Wulf, and her post-war life in Britain. It is a novel divided into five sections, including the final section titled "The Golden Notebook," featuring notebooks in black, red, blue, and yellow. Each notebook corresponds to a different aspect of Anna's life. With sections encompassing her experiences as a writer, her political disillusionment, her sexuality, her personal diary, and her identity, The Golden Notebook critically examines the role of women in society and their psychological, social, and emotional lives. Anna, a single mother, struggles to hold onto life while feeling rejected by society and grappling with her fragmented identity. The novel is considered a feminist work as it critiques how women's lives are shaped by men while also embarking on a journey to explore women's roles and sexual identities. Although not the first of its kind, The Golden Notebook is one of the pioneering novels, exploring women's gender in a complex and intimate manner.

Doris Lessing, in her short story To Room Nineteen, also focuses on the space a woman should have, as mentioned by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own. Even if not for writing, a woman needed a space to concentrate on her own thoughts. In To Room Nineteen, our unnamed narrator uses the attic, a place typically associated with the "mad woman," as her own space for solitude. Here, we see that Lessing not only breaks away from the male-oriented narrative style but also challenges the stereotypical notion of a confined space in stories.

We have all heard of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In addition to this novel, which critiques the role of women in society by portraying the female body as a baby-making machine, we also witness her feminist thoughts in her short story "Lusus Naturae" and her poem "Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women." "Lusus Naturae" means a freak of nature. The "freak" in the story is a woman who is shunned and feared by society due to her monstrous appearance. "Lusus Naturae" tells the story of how a woman's body is controlled by society and how she is viewed as a figure of fear when she does not conform to societal beauty standards. "Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women" is another example of experimental writing. Many writings by female authors are experimental because what they do is actually oppose literary conventions in male tradition and develop writing strategies in response. In a society where women are seen as lacking intelligence, Atwood's poem responds to works that praise logic, i.e., men, while also alluding to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In this poem, Atwood discusses how the stereotype of stupidity is a societal cliché attributed to women solely by men. She deconstructs the stereotype of the stupid woman through irony and satire, critiquing how society devalues women based on patriarchal standards.

Maya Angelou's poem, "And Still I Rise", is a powerful statement of resistance and strength from a feminist perspective. The poem, which highlights the systematic segregation and marginalization of women, especially Black women, emphasizes how pain is transformed into power with lines like "I rise," underscoring resilience, defiance, and individual empowerment. While critiquing the devaluation of women by societal expectations, the poem celebrates women's strength and resilience, encouraging them to embrace their identities.

Joanna Russ, like the other women writers I mentioned, critiques in her essay, "How To Suppress Women's Writing" how women are silenced in literature and life within a male-dominated society. She discusses how women's support in publishing is minimal and addresses gender stereotypes in a satirical tone.