Serena Driver unravels the fundamental legacy of women’s Literature.

This year heralds a change in contemporary poetry – for the first time in centuries of the tradition, England has a female poet laureate: Carol-Ann Duffy. A staunch feminist, she is famous for collections such as ‘The World’s Wife’, in which she transforms world history by writing from the perspective of the side-lined women involved with famous historical or fictional men. She defines the modern empowered literary woman today. However, it has taken hundreds of years for women’s writing to reach this level of acceptance and recognition, and for them to even be in a position to attempt it in the first place. Women have been making their livings ever since the history of humanity, but it was through the medium of literature that they began to exist independently from the financial and social necessity of men. It was a long and arduous road for these key literary women through history to assert and prove their ability. This article will focus on a few iconic literary women that have not only made literature what it is today, but have also helped to carve out the path of feminism along the way.

Widely considered to have been the first woman to make a living by her pen was the 17th century political writer, poet, playwright and novelist Aphra Behn. Even by today’s standards Behn was a woman of astounding versatility who lived an extraordinary life. Travelling to Africa in her childhood and sent to Holland as a spy for Charles II, most probably using sexual charms to gain information, she had experienced far more of the world than the average female of her time. Imprisoned briefly for debt and widowed, Behn was a woman ‘forced to write for bread and not ashamed to own it’. Widowed and without many other options, she turned to literature, becoming well acquainted with many male literary figures and gaining fame through her plays. It is testament to the gender prejudice in literature that Behn was scandalised and made into a quasi-prostitute figure. The reality was an intellectual, radical and empowered woman freed from the social and sexual constraints usually imposed upon women (by men). To this day, Aphra Behn remains surrounded in intrigue and dubious morality, and has only recently begun to be dug up out of the grave of anonymity and examined for her vast literary worth. She wrote on a vast sliding spectrum of genres, from political tracts to erotic poems and bawdy plays. Her lewd language was complained about while it was dismissed in men’s work. Furthermore, she was not afraid to canvas such taboo subjects as female erotic desire, homosexuality and impotence, which was why future, more censored societies were happy to bury Behn and her work in the dust of history.

Behn was one of the first novelists of either gender and a pioneer in the form. She wrote, among others, an epistolary novel entitled ‘Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister’, decades before Samuel Richardson’s classic epistolary novel ‘Clarissa’. In this novel, the female protagonist Sylvia sleeps with and then elopes with her brother-in-law. She then embarks on a moral decline, using her beauty to seduce and control young men. Sylvia starts to dress as a man occasionally, for the freedom it gives her. Her role as seducer and controller inverts the traditional set up of women corrupted and abused by men. Behn swaps physical strength for the strength of sexual desire that Sylvia learns to manipulate, and her cross-dressing symbolises that in some way her power is related to her taking on a masculine element. Behn herself supports this idea, when she writes in a preface to her play The Lucky Chance, that the poet in her is her ‘Masculine Part’.

Women often subvert traditional gender roles in their desire to represent the female point of view in their work. Delarivier Manley, an early 18th century writer, presents a scene in her work The New Atalantis (which incidentally she was detained for due to its erotic content) where a young man lies on a bed, exposed and feigning sleep in an attempt to seduce a Duchess. We see the man through the Duchess’ eyes as she lingers over his form, before throwing herself down next to him. This passage is radical again for its subversion of typical literary tropes – the potential seducer eyeing up a maiden’s physical beauty before overcoming her. Manley makes an attempt at equalising the sexes – but this ultimately fails as after the Duchess’s consummation of her desire, she becomes nothing but a commodity, eventually falling out of favour and losing any power she had possessed.

This power struggle between the sexes and gender roles occupied another female maverick not afraid to show her wit and intelligence. Jumping to the end of the 18th century, Mary Wollstonecraft – often labelled the first feminist in the definition we use today – defied the boundaries of femininity and called for more women with ‘masculine’ characteristics. She wasn’t after a revolution of women in top hats and trousers though – she meant more women with the virtues of morality, reason and intelligence. These traits were seen as existing solely in the sphere of men. Gone was the liberal and licentious world of Behn’s 17th century England. Women were supposed to only function in the domestic sphere, with a focus on motherhood and ornament. Women’s fashion, with its restrictive corsets and excessively high hairstyles, encourages this emphasis on uselessness and frivolity. Wollstonecraft argued that a ‘revolution’ in ‘female manners’ and the attitudes of men was needed. In a forum charged with heated debates on monarchy and government against the background of the unfolding French Revolution, Wollstonecraft managed to unite arguments on citizens’ rights with arguments on the rights of women – a topic that no one else had seemed too passionate about. Wollstonecraft attempted to do the impossible – write a treatise on feminism when the language did not yet exist for her to do so. The only way she can describe her ideal woman is in masculine terms. However, Wollstonecraft opens the can of worms on women’s role in society, which future novelists and women writers would examine further.

For the first time during this period, writing was an acceptable career choice for a woman. If Behn was a pioneer of the novel – the most popular and widely-read medium in literature today – it was women in the 18th century who expanded and cemented the form. Subject material was still limited; a woman was expected to focus on the domestic, or write educational tales for young ladies. Within the new genre being explored in this time – Gothic fiction – women were well established, but their contributions were sneered at by many males in literary circles. When one literary advisor read Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ manuscript, he congratulated it on possessing ‘no dark passages, no secret chambers… – things that should be left to ladies’ maids and washerwomen.’ All this condescension heaped on the most celebrated classic of a literary icon. The role of women writers is evident – to stick to impoverished narratives that entertained the ‘low-born masses’ and not to attempt entry into the realms of literary merit.

Austen followed the rules on subject material and wrote on the domestic sphere. However she diverts from the beaten track by trialling and perfecting a uniquely female perspective. She doesn’t attempt to transfer masculine traits onto women. Austen never gives us a scene between two men. She focuses on the experiences of women in realistic settings that allow her to satirise her society and its rules. Underneath the civilised gatherings, conversations around the dinner table and marriage gossip, social criticisms and a cynical wit are hidden.

Through history these and many other daring and inventive women have worked to establish women in the literary scene and attempt to reform a sexist society. They begin by creating strong fictional women – but can only relate their strength to masculinity. Excellent writers have to struggle against complaints and attempts to ruin reputations from disgruntled literary men. By gaining from predecessors work and building on it, women writers slowly formed a distinct style that was unique from the assumptions and tropes used in male fiction. Austen made a breakthrough with her style that did not seek to emulate male fiction but asserted a female literary culture. However, the battle for equality in fiction continued well into the 20th century, famously taken up by Virginia Woolf, and still continues today. A female poet laureate is only the tip of the iceberg for women in literature.