I'm so angry I could scream!
1) Why should "women" writers be considered a single
genre? Do we ever generalise about "men" writers?
2) The writers you name were writing a long time ago.
Many people find old literature dull or boring.
Thomas Hardy and William Wordsworth hardly wrote
thrill-a-minute, action-packed, up-beat works.
3) Women's lives historically were predominantly spent
heavily involved in domesticity. I don't think they
had the experience to write about air-sea rescues.
They wrote about what they knew and thus provide us
with a facinating insight into how our ancestors
lived.
4) Can't a domestically-based novel be exciting?
Thousands of great novels about family groups have
been written. Very few novels are set in an
accountancy office.
5) Have you ever heard of any of these people: Toni
Morrison, Maya Angelou, Agatha Christie, Margaret
Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Chopin, Daphne
DuMaurier or Anais Nin and Pauline Reage or even JK
Rowling (the most successful author of all time). I
refer to books about everything from ghosts, slavery
and liberation, global travel, flying wizards and
future worlds to stacks of steamy sex. What exactly
do you want from women writers?
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Women writers article in the Guardian.
Having read this article I have written the following letter to the Guardian...
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2 comments:
I agree with you.
The Guardian type of columnist or reader has been conditioned to expect the continuing emancipation of women to produce too much womanly excellence. Equality for women means that most women will do dull, unsatisfying jobs, just as millions of men have done all along. Very few women will make it to the top, just as very few men do. Also women will write very few good books and many average or poor ones, just as men do.
As for frying fish fingers, that is tantamount to child abuse. Grill them.
That's not actually the point I'm making. My point is there are lots of great books by women which appear to have been overlooked by the writers of the article.
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