Being a woman in any industry is tough. Generally, the public expects a lady to be one of two things: a bitch or a pushover. And if she exhibits any sort of self-confidence, suddenly she’s self-serving, a hypocrite. Women having ideas of their own is dangerous. Independence from the structured, carefully laid out system of society—a system that has been in place for hundreds of years—is a major threat.
In writing, in publishing and media, it’s no different. And unfortunately, some people still think women just can’t do the job right. In April of this year, amid a flurry of criticism, a Women Writers’ Association was established in the Shanxi Province of China, making it the first social group for women writers in the country. What did the dissenters have to say? Basically, that the women must have formed the group because they couldn’t find success in the mainstream literary circles.
We aren’t intelligent. We can’t think critically. We should probably just go back to our vacuums and stoves and start pumping out meatloaf and babies.
One of the first known woman-written pieces of “literature” in the English language is a poem called “The Wife’s Lament.” The poem is anonymous and written in Old English, but scholars have deduced that the author of the piece, found in the tenth-century Exeter Book, is female. That’s a start. But considering that for hundreds of years before that men were sharing poems and stories, it’s disappointing.
In the Middle Ages, female authors started to appear more in English Literature, though they usually had to write anonymously if they wanted to remain “proper” ladies of society. It didn’t matter how many readers gobbled up Marie de France. Nobody knew who she was (though many speculate about her identity), because she was doing something outside the norm. Marie de France and her contemporaries were following their passion—an intellectual passion that had been deemed “man’s work.”
A break for ladies of the quill seemed to arrive at last in 1650 when Anne Bradstreet’s collection of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published in England. She has been labeled America’s first poet, but unfortunately, I had never heard her name until I did a little research on my own. No English class I’ve ever taken mentioned her. We talk about America’s first airplane and car and theme park. But not the first poet—probably because she was, well, a “she.”
After The Tenth Muse was published, conditions only improved slightly. Ann Radcliffe was one of the most well known female authors of the late-1700s, publishing numerous books and poems and defining the Gothic Romance novel. She was popular and risqué, and rumors of her mental uneasiness abounded. She did, after all, pen novels about haunted mansions and crazed lunatics. But she also inspired authors like Jane Austen. Not much is known about her personal life, as she was a female author and was probably encouraged to remain reclusive. Radcliffe pioneered the use of scenery and description, and her work affected other Romantics like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. But, especially because of our modern condemnation of romance novels as tacky, over-the-top, and deprived-housewife-reading-material, she is often overlooked.
This history is extremely repetitive. Women gain an inch in literature and art and are set back a foot because society deems them too brash, too promiscuous, too forward. As a woman trying to make it as a writer, I am part of a daily struggle, arm-in-arm with my peers and colleagues, to prove myself. No, I am not selfish, but I do have something to say. Blame me for sharing it. No, the only material I know how to read and write is not fluff, but please, feel free to get on my case for enjoying a little shallow sarcasm or a magazine about fashion. Because NASCAR and basketball games are so intellectually stimulating.
I will probably come out ahead because I have faced discrimination. Does that make it easy? Does that help me dismiss the behavior? No. But I’m not going to let other people’s fears or insecurities bring me down. And I hope the ladies of the Women Writer’s Association don’t either.
I guess a little self-confidence is intimidating.