Five classics: Feminist fiction books from before the 1960’s

As April is Women’s History Month, I’ll be sharing book lists with a focus on books considered classic feminist texts and other books by women authors.

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Are you interested in reading fiction books that shaped literature and how women were perceived?

Here are five older fiction books considered classic feminist fiction from the 19th century up to the 1960’s. Obviously that’s a large time span, so this is just a small selection of books.

All of these books have had a significant impact on literature and the way women have been perceived. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Five feminist fictional texts

Here’s a list of five feminist fictional books written before the 1970’s.

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
2. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
3. The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)
4. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
5. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Keep reading to find out more about each one.

1. Little Women (1868)

by Louisa May Alcott

Alcott wrote this coming-of-age novel focused around the lives of the four March sisters.

Through this novel, Alcott developed a new genre of literature by combining romantic children’s fiction with sentimental novels.

The book was an immediate success! Readers were eager for more about the characters, so Alcott quickly completed a second part. It was originally published in two volumes, however now the two volumes are often sold together in a single novel.

Summary (from Storygraph):

The lives and adventures of the four March sisters–Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy–are set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century New England while their father is off fighting in the Civil War.

Links:

• Find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia
• Access the book for free on Project Gutenberg

2. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This is a short story that powerfully portrays health issues and their treatment faced by women of this era (late 19th century).

It’s considered an important work of early American feminist literature due to its portrayal of women’s mental and physical health. It’s also considered a great work of horror fiction.

I find it’s a short story you can keep re-reading, getting something new from it each time.

Summary (from Storygraph):

First published in 1892, The Yellow Wall-Paper is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, this short but powerful masterpiece has the heroine create a reality of her own within the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wall-paper of her bedroom–a pattern that comes to symbolize her own imprisonment.

This key women’s studies text by a pivotal first-wave feminist writer, lecturer, and activist (1860-1935) is reprinted as it first appeared in New England Magazine in 1892, and contains the essential essay on the author’s life and work by pioneering Gilman scholar Elaine R. Hedges.

Links:

• Find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia
• Access the book for free on Project Gutenberg

3. The Awakening (1899)

by Kate Chopin

The Awakening is considered a precursor to American modernist literature, due to its blend of social commentary, a realistic narrative, and psychological complexity. It’s also one of the earlier American novels that discussed women’s issues without condescension (surprise surprise it took a woman to accomplish that).

It was considered quite controversial at the time of publication, mostly due to its open discussion of female marital infidelity.

Chopin faced many barriers when she tried to publish stories after she published this novel, and unfortunately she did not write another novel after this one.

Summary (from Goodreads):

When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin’s daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work “quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity.” Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.

Links:

• Find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia
• Access the book for free on Project Gutenberg

4. The Golden Notebook (1962)

by Doris Lessing

The Golden Notebook is considered as a companion volume to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It also became popular with feminists due to its realistic depiction of women’s lived experiences.

This 1962 novel by the British writer Doris Lessing is considered one of the best English-language novels since 1923 (according to Time Magazine).

Margaret Drabble describes Lessing’s writing style as “inner space fiction” because Lessing’s work explores a combination of mental and societal breakdown.

Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 for being “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.

Summary (from Goodreads):

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier year. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Links:

• Find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia
• You can read the book online here.
  • This was an experiment where seven women read the book online, while also commenting on the book and discussing it together. Each page/website has a short part of the book with the comments from the seven women below. You can read along the book together as if in a group.
  • Chapter 1 starts here.

5. The Bell Jar (1963)

by Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by Sylvia Plath, an American writer and poet. It was originally published under a pseudonym (”Victoria Lucas”) as it is semi-autobiographical.

The novel portray’s the main character, Esther Greenwood, as she descends into mental illness. The book is often considered a roman à clef as the protagonist’s experience tends to mirror the author’s, with Plath dying by suicide only a month after its publication in the UK.

I think it’s important to acknowledge and warn individuals that there are racists parts of the book. I personally don’t think that those parts are enough to negate the rest of the book, but I completely understand if you don’t want to read the book because of this.

Summary (from Goodreads):

We follow Esther Greenwood’s personal life from her summer job in New York with Ladies’ Day magazine, back through her days at New England’s largest school for women, and forward through her attempted suicide, her bad treatment at one asylum and her good treatment at another, to her final re-entry into the world like a used tyre: “patched, retreaded, and approved for the road” … Esther Greenwood’s account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.

Links:

• Find out more on:
  • Goodreads
  • Storygraph
  • Wikipedia

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Final thoughts

I couldn’t help to think that so many of the books considered to be “feminist texts” are just a genuine portray of women’s experiences.

Most of them are just women written as fully developed characters dealing with normal life experiences. Or, if they were considered controversial at the time, it might just be women going through experiences that society didn’t want to know about (like mental health and unfulfilling marriages).

I know that older male authors are not known for writing strong or well-rounded women characters, but I didn’t realize that the bar was so low.

I recently read Kafka’s novel The Trial and I was astounded at how terrible the women characters were. Now, I understand that his stories were groundbreaking and powerful commentaries on society, but the one-dimensional female characters were such a turn off, and made it extremely difficult to finish the book.

All that to say, I think we need to understand what it means to be considered a feminist text within the literary context of that era. It’s unlikely for it to match with what we consider feminism to be today.