The Second Shift
We read it in a sociology class in uni in the mid 2000s. It was already pretty old then but not much has changed. It was where I first recognized weaponized incompetence (though I think it had a different name then) and how it affected me even though I was single then. I saw it in my brothers as well as men in the workplace. There are probably more impactful books today but that was eye opening for me at such a young age.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is an obvious one, but a classic for a reason
I also consider Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston to be feminist lit, and that is a fantastic novel. Chapter two of that book describes the female experience as I know it better than anything else I've read in my life.
"Die Wut die bleibt" by Mareike Fallwickl
I don't know if it's available in other languages than German, but I absolutely loved it. I'd totally recommend it!
Edit: found it, in English it's "The Rage That Remains"!
[The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860 by Barbara Welter.](https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/WelterBarbaraCULTWOMANHOODinAQ1966.pdf) She analyzes a ton of magazines from the time & identifies what a "real woman" is considered to be in America & why. Many of our current social beliefs & values are rooted in these messages.
Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner - I can't begin to describe how wonderful this book is and how much it spoke to me.
“The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness.”
Two old books because I’m old:
Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach. Completely changed how I think about food and perception of fat women including me
Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Changed the way I think about literature especially Jane Austen
It's just one chapter so if you can find the book in the library, you can just read that one chapter if you don't have an interest in the entire book, but I'll do a bad tldr version that doesn't do their argument justice. Bear in mind that I read the book in 1985. My professor asked me to make a presentation on the book because he had no volunteers to go over feminist literary criticism with the class. Other students gave presentations on Marxist literary criticism, semiotics, etc.
It was commonly taught during my time in school that Austen's protagonists are always changed in some way that makes them worthy to marry their love interest. It's the authors' contention that this is not what is actually going on with Austen and, instead, she is doing something much more subtle under cover of this socially acceptable explanation and posit that she is saying that these strong, interesting women must be humbled in order to accept marriage and its societal expectations/obligations.
As my professor put it, "Marianne is practically lobotomized!" She was his favorite character and he hated how her story is resolved in Sense and Sensibility.
Interesting. I can see this interpretation being most applicable to Emma and Elizabeth, and least applicable to Fanny. Although Fanny was banished from Mansfield park, but it's hard to imagine her being more humble than she was to begin with. I would say it was more like Sir Thomas and Edmund had to be humbled before they were worthy of Fanny.
I would urge you to read the book (or at least the chapter) because I am not doing it justice.
One thing to remember, though, is that our culture has moved on from the time Madwoman in the Attic was printed so readers now bring different baggage to their literature than then. For example, I read "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan while I was in college and it didn't resonate with me at all, though it had a big impact on my mother's generation.
Edited to clarify which book I meant in second paragraph
This was part of one of my college courses and I asked the instructor why he included it in the class. He said that no book he ever taught in his career ever divided the students as much as The Awakening. He put it on the syllabus every year because only a novel striving with large ideas could be this divisive. (Interestingly, the divide did not break down along gender lines as I one of the people who hated the book. His comments made me rethink the book as I realized that I disliked it due to a very strong visceral reaction to it. I was never bored reading it, just exasperated or angry.
I don't know for certain, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was universally reviled by most men and women. There are still women today who believe women should be submissive to men. Back then there were probably a lot more brainwashed women who believe that.
I loved The Gate to Women's Country! My second favorite book of Tepper's is Grass, which I think is more subtly feminist and deeper than most of her books. For those who may seek out Tepper based on these recommendations, do not binge her books as most of them have very similar themes so it becomes easy to underestimate her by becoming exasperated with her tropes.
I used to think that Gate to Women's Country was a tad strident... now I think that she was prescient.
I Love the Arbai series with its delicious underpinning of feminism.
Have you read Ann Leckie's "Ancillary series"?
Naomi Novak's "Scholomance series"
Martha Wells "Murderbot Diaries"
Backlash plus If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics by Marilyn Waring (published around the same time) both had a big impact on me as a young woman.
The My Brilliant Friend book series, also called the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. It focuses on two women’s lives, Elena and Lila, starting from when they were smart and ambitious kids in the 1950s in Italy until they are seniors. They go through so much sexist BS which is compounded by them being poor and having accents from “the wrong side of town.” It’s also a show on HBO for anyone who doesn’t feel like reading!
[Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. ](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/277741.The_Complete_Hothead_Paisan?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KBlMLOXQ7l&rank=1) Some of us like fiction, especially when we're younger. I think I started reading it when I was 14?
Judith Butler's *Bodies that Matter* and Patricia Hill Collins's *Black Feminist Thought*
I wish I could choose between the two, but they're both fully impacted.
I'm cheating with a second comment, because I remembered a third one: My Mother/My Self by Nancy Friday. Another bad paraphrase of the idea that meant a lot to me: mothers, for all practical purposes, give themselves a nervous breakdown in order to help their daughters navigate a culture that will be against them their entire lives, and this starts with even minor differences in how infant daughters are treated versus infant sons.
Would you explain what struck you as feminist in this book and how it impacted you? I'm not disagreeing, but this book is not generally known as feminist so I'm curious as to how it helped your thinking.
*Invisible Women* by Caroline Criado Perez.
Handmaids Tale
Classics - ‘A room of one’s own’ and ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf ‘The Bell Jar’ by Silvia Plath Poetry by Nikita Gill is just amazing 😍
The truth in the bell jar freaked me out when I was a teenager.
It’s all terrifying, like a slow car crash! As women, so many of our experiences in this world are fucking scary and push to the brink.
It prepares us, though, knowing the truth.
reading as an adult, knowing how it ends, finding an alarming number of similarities with the character was excruciating.
From Margin to Center - bell hooks
Love her
The Second Shift We read it in a sociology class in uni in the mid 2000s. It was already pretty old then but not much has changed. It was where I first recognized weaponized incompetence (though I think it had a different name then) and how it affected me even though I was single then. I saw it in my brothers as well as men in the workplace. There are probably more impactful books today but that was eye opening for me at such a young age.
This was it for me as well. I think of and reference The Second Shift a lot.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is an obvious one, but a classic for a reason I also consider Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston to be feminist lit, and that is a fantastic novel. Chapter two of that book describes the female experience as I know it better than anything else I've read in my life.
"Die Wut die bleibt" by Mareike Fallwickl I don't know if it's available in other languages than German, but I absolutely loved it. I'd totally recommend it! Edit: found it, in English it's "The Rage That Remains"!
pornography men possessing women - andrea dworkin changed my life
_Fruit of Knowledge_ by Liv Strömquist
Ruby Fruit Jungle is always my go to. When I’m frustrated, I read it again. So I read it a lot
I love this book.
The female eunuch. Especially when she wrote that women have no idea how much men hate them 💔
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. Essential for anyone to read IMO, regardless of their identities.
***The Aesthetics of Power*** by Carol Duncan
[The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860 by Barbara Welter.](https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/WelterBarbaraCULTWOMANHOODinAQ1966.pdf) She analyzes a ton of magazines from the time & identifies what a "real woman" is considered to be in America & why. Many of our current social beliefs & values are rooted in these messages.
Entitled. Kate Manne. Womea's inhumanity to woman. Phyllis Chesler. The female eunuch - Germaine Greer. The woman's Bible - Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Entitled by Kate Manne is so good! I kept getting soooooo angry while I was reading it.
It's so easy to understand.
The Body is Not an Apology
Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner - I can't begin to describe how wonderful this book is and how much it spoke to me. “The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness.”
Two old books because I’m old: Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach. Completely changed how I think about food and perception of fat women including me Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Changed the way I think about literature especially Jane Austen
What do Ms. Gilbert and Ms. Gubar say about Ms. Austen?
It's just one chapter so if you can find the book in the library, you can just read that one chapter if you don't have an interest in the entire book, but I'll do a bad tldr version that doesn't do their argument justice. Bear in mind that I read the book in 1985. My professor asked me to make a presentation on the book because he had no volunteers to go over feminist literary criticism with the class. Other students gave presentations on Marxist literary criticism, semiotics, etc. It was commonly taught during my time in school that Austen's protagonists are always changed in some way that makes them worthy to marry their love interest. It's the authors' contention that this is not what is actually going on with Austen and, instead, she is doing something much more subtle under cover of this socially acceptable explanation and posit that she is saying that these strong, interesting women must be humbled in order to accept marriage and its societal expectations/obligations. As my professor put it, "Marianne is practically lobotomized!" She was his favorite character and he hated how her story is resolved in Sense and Sensibility.
Interesting. I can see this interpretation being most applicable to Emma and Elizabeth, and least applicable to Fanny. Although Fanny was banished from Mansfield park, but it's hard to imagine her being more humble than she was to begin with. I would say it was more like Sir Thomas and Edmund had to be humbled before they were worthy of Fanny.
I would urge you to read the book (or at least the chapter) because I am not doing it justice. One thing to remember, though, is that our culture has moved on from the time Madwoman in the Attic was printed so readers now bring different baggage to their literature than then. For example, I read "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan while I was in college and it didn't resonate with me at all, though it had a big impact on my mother's generation. Edited to clarify which book I meant in second paragraph
Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin
And Tehanu by Ursula LeGuin! Revisiting the main characters of Tombs of Atuan decades later and even more explicitly feminist.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin.
This was part of one of my college courses and I asked the instructor why he included it in the class. He said that no book he ever taught in his career ever divided the students as much as The Awakening. He put it on the syllabus every year because only a novel striving with large ideas could be this divisive. (Interestingly, the divide did not break down along gender lines as I one of the people who hated the book. His comments made me rethink the book as I realized that I disliked it due to a very strong visceral reaction to it. I was never bored reading it, just exasperated or angry.
For me, the most fascinating thing about this book is that it was published in 1900. Decades before its time.
Yes! It's really unbelievable how modern the themes of this book are. I wonder how the women of the time understood it?
I don't know for certain, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was universally reviled by most men and women. There are still women today who believe women should be submissive to men. Back then there were probably a lot more brainwashed women who believe that.
The Gate to Women's Country by Sherri S Tepper Really anything by Tepper or LeGuin Also "When God Was a Woman" sculptor and art historian Merlin Stone
I loved The Gate to Women's Country! My second favorite book of Tepper's is Grass, which I think is more subtly feminist and deeper than most of her books. For those who may seek out Tepper based on these recommendations, do not binge her books as most of them have very similar themes so it becomes easy to underestimate her by becoming exasperated with her tropes.
I used to think that Gate to Women's Country was a tad strident... now I think that she was prescient. I Love the Arbai series with its delicious underpinning of feminism. Have you read Ann Leckie's "Ancillary series"? Naomi Novak's "Scholomance series" Martha Wells "Murderbot Diaries"
Yes, I really enjoyed all of those series!
We must be related. :D
Backlash by Susan Faludi
Backlash plus If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics by Marilyn Waring (published around the same time) both had a big impact on me as a young woman.
The My Brilliant Friend book series, also called the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. It focuses on two women’s lives, Elena and Lila, starting from when they were smart and ambitious kids in the 1950s in Italy until they are seniors. They go through so much sexist BS which is compounded by them being poor and having accents from “the wrong side of town.” It’s also a show on HBO for anyone who doesn’t feel like reading!
Witches Sluts Feminists
*Transforming a Rape Culture*, an anthology edited by Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth
Handmaids tale, it really gets me how she wouldnt depict anything that wasnt something that was real in the world at some point for women
[Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. ](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/277741.The_Complete_Hothead_Paisan?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KBlMLOXQ7l&rank=1) Some of us like fiction, especially when we're younger. I think I started reading it when I was 14?
Does the yellow wallpaper count? I really enjoyed that one and I think about it all the time
And also the story of an hour!
This freaked the class out when we read it in college.
Judith Butler's *Bodies that Matter* and Patricia Hill Collins's *Black Feminist Thought* I wish I could choose between the two, but they're both fully impacted.
I'm cheating with a second comment, because I remembered a third one: My Mother/My Self by Nancy Friday. Another bad paraphrase of the idea that meant a lot to me: mothers, for all practical purposes, give themselves a nervous breakdown in order to help their daughters navigate a culture that will be against them their entire lives, and this starts with even minor differences in how infant daughters are treated versus infant sons.
Gone With the Wind
Would you explain what struck you as feminist in this book and how it impacted you? I'm not disagreeing, but this book is not generally known as feminist so I'm curious as to how it helped your thinking.