Five classics: Nonfiction feminist texts written before the 1980’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.


Are you interested in learning more about the history of women’s movements and gaining tools to think critically about how society is shaped by the patriarchy?

Here are five older nonfiction books considered classic feminist texts from a range of eras, from as early as 1792 up until the 1970’s. They each had a considerable impact on women and society.

However, as these are older, they may lack the depth of insight provided by intersectionality (considering more than just gender to affect one’s experience). I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

It’s important to note that these books are primarily focused on the women’s movements in the Western societies (including North America and the UK). They are also all written by white women, who tend to have a limited understanding of gender.

If you have suggestions for books that focus on women’s movements from elsewhere around the world, especially from early in the 20th or 19th century, please let me know in a comment below!

Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash

Five books from White Women Feminists

Here’s a list of five classic feminist books with white women authors.

  1. A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
  2. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (1929)
  3. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
  4. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
  5. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer(1970)

Keep reading to find out more about each one.

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

  • Year Published: 1792
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, classics, feminism, philosophy, challenging, informative, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance:
    One of the earliest feminist philosophy works

Mary Wollstonecraft argues in this work that women should have access to education and that we are depriving society of their contributions. It’s considered on the of the earliest feminist philosophical works.

The book was generally well received when it was first published in 1792.

Wollstonecraft’s work ended up having significant impacts on the women’s rights movements, especially those in the 19th century. The influence of her work can be seen during the suffragette movement in the US, particularly at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

Summary (from Goodreads):

In the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted, either by the words or conduct of men.In what does man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation consist?The answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole; inReason.

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2. A Room of One’s Own (1929)

by Virginia Woolf

  • Year Published: 1929
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, classics, essays, feminism, informative, inspiring, reflective, medium-paced
  • Importance:
    Highlights the importance of space for women

This book is actually a collection of lectures she delivered to two women’s colleges in October 1928, which is important to note to better understand the audience and context of the work. She was addressing women enrolled in higher education, which would be quite privileged women of that era.

This quote sums up her key message:

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Virginia Woolf
Source: A Room of One’s Own

The book highlights the need for women to have space to create, both a physical space (a room) with sufficient needs ($) to alleviate stress from daily tasks, along with a metaphorical space to be accepted in the literary world.

The book also highlights the lived experiences of different women authors in fiction, along with theorizing what would happen if Shakespeare had an equally talented sister.

I found this book quite enlightening and interesting. However, it does come with limitations. The book is primarily focused on a certain demographic (white, privileged and educated women), limiting her analysis.

Summary (from Goodreads):

A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

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3. The Second Sex (1949)

by Simone de Beauvoir

Translated by: Sheila Malovany-Chevallier & Constance Borde

  • Year Published: 1949
  • Storygraph Categories: nonfiction, classics, feminism, philosophy, challenging, informative, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance:
    Groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy

Simone de Beauvoir is a famous philosopher who was part of the existentialist movement in France.

The Second Sex is a feminist philosophical work that discusses the treatment of women both now and throughout history. The book had a huge impact on the second wave of feminism and inspired The Feminine Mystique among other feminist texts.

Simone de Beauvoir was one of the first to identify the sex-gender divide, meaning the difference between biological sex and the societal/social construct of gender.

Simone de Beauvoir was bisexual and had an open relationship with fellow philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. She had many lovers throughout her life. However, her relationships with young women, many of whom were her students, are questionable, with some sexual abuse allegations.

Summary (from Goodreads):

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was back then, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

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4. The Feminine Mystique (1963)

by Betty Friedan

  • Year Published: 1963
  • Storygraph Categories: nonfiction, feminism, challenging, informative, slow-paced
  • Importance: Credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the USA

The Feminine Mystique is considered to be one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. It is also commonly associated with sparking the second wave of feminism in the US.

Betty Friedan was asked to conduct a survey of her former classmates only to find that many were unhappy with their lives as housewives. This inspired her to began researching what would ultimately become this book.

In this book, Friedan challenges the concept that women could only be fulfilled as a “housewife-mother.” Rather she showed that many felt unfulfilled in this role.

The book was a best seller, and sold over a million copies. It drew many women to the feminist cause, specifically white, middle class women.

Despite its huge influence and significance, the message is clearly aimed at a specific demographic: the white suburban housewife. I think it’s important to both acknowledge its influence and its limitations.

Summary (from Goodreads):

Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th–anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.

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5. The Female Eunuch (1970)

by Germaine Greer

  • Year Published: 1970
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, feminism, gender, philosophy, adventurous, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance:
    Made shockwaves within the feminist movement

The Female Eunuch made shockwaves within the feminist movement in 1970 as it focused on how women are taught to repress their sexuality.

Greer’s focus of the book is to show that a “traditional” (read as white), suburban nuclear family sexually represses women, which also devitalizes them and turns them into eunuchs.

I am looking forward to reading this book, as I think it will have interesting points to make. However, I also expect this to have limited applicability because women who aren’t white tend to either be overly sexualized or exoticized, which are just different ways to control women’s sexuality.

Summary (from Goodreads):

The clarion call to change that galvanized a generation.

When Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” was first published it created a shock wave of recognition in women, one that could be felt around the world. It went on to become an international bestseller, translated into more than twelve languages, and a landmark in the history of the women’s movement. Positing that sexual liberation is the key to women’s liberation, Greer looks at the inherent and unalterable biological differences between men and women as well as at the profound psychological differences that result from social conditioning. Drawing on history, literature, biology, and popular culture, Greer’s searing examination of women’s oppression is a vital, passionately argued social commentary that is both an important historical record of where we’ve been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.

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Final thoughts

I know these books are all by white women authors and their limitations may make them less appealing. However, I do know these books were still hugely influential and affected the course of history.

Personally, I think it’s worthwhile to read these landmark books to understand how they affected society and see how things have changed over the years. I know it can be frustrating to read some of these books from a 21st century perspective as the intersectionality gaps seem huge.

Nevertheless, there is still useful information and arguments in these books that can help us understand the evolution of women’s movements and where we need to go in the future.

History can be a great teacher, as we can learn from our past mistakes and move towards a better future. Looking back, it’s not surprising to see how limited the audiences were for some of these books, but we can also make sure we don’t regress back to that state.

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