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.


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.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

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

  • Year Published: 1868
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, literary, emotional, hopeful, lighthearted, medium-paced
  • Importance:
    Created a new genre

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:

2. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  • Year Published: 1892
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, horror, short stories, dark, mysterious, fast-paced
  • Importance:
    Mental health portrayal

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:

3. The Awakening (1899)

by Kate Chopin

  • Year Published: 1899
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance:
    Landmark of early feminism

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:

4. The Golden Notebook (1962)

by Doris Lessing

  • Year Published: 1962
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, classics, literary, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance:
    Realistic depiction of women’s lived experiences

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:
  • 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

  • Year Published: 1963
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, literary, dark, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • Check trigger warnings before reading this book
  • Importance:
    Powerful depiction of mental health and Plath’s only novel

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.

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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.

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.

Links:

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.

Links:

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.

Links:

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.

Links:

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.

Links:


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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