Women and Writing:

[Tom47]

This topic is planned to be about women who write.  The writings could be fiction, non-fiction, news reporting, philosophy etc.  As before I encourage people to contribute to this topic.  

My favorite all-time author is Jane Austen.  She was born into a large family at Steventon, Hampshire, England on  December 16, 1775.  Her six full-length novels are Sense and Sensibility (published 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Persuasion (1817) and Northanger Abbey (1817).  She also wrote Lady Susan (published 1871) a short story in epistolary form and two unfinished novels - The Watsons and Sanditon (The Brothers).  In addition, from age 12 or so to age 19 she wrote what are referred to as her Juvenilia.  These are short, mostly unfinished “experiments,” sometimes silly.

Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice are my favorite of Jane Austen’s stories although for different reasons, but I enjoy all of them and have read them multiple times.  Many people may think of Jane’s novels to be “Love Stories” in the sense of a woman and a man falling in love and getting married and they are, but to me they are mainly stories of the relationships between women and that men are in the stories to give the women something to talk about.  I’ve read that Jane Austen never, within her novels, wrote a discussion in which a woman was not present and while I don’t know if that is absolutely true it seems very likely.  So, to me Jane Austen’s writings are stories about women with men thrown in, to round things out.  The one possible exception to this is Mansfield Park.

Further, the people in Jane’s books are neither all good or all bad, which is like real life for the most part.  For example she said this about her character Emma “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”  This again is a difficult thing to do.  One character that she writes about is a very caring self-centered person.  

Jane and her one sister, Cassandra, were very close and except for brief trips apart, lived together for all of Jane's life.  This is reflected in her novels, all of the heroines had sisters, although not all of these sisters were close.  The sisters that were closest were Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility and Elisabeth and Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.  In the later book there were five sisters, but not all were equally close.  Even in stories in which the sisters are not particularly close, the heroine is, with the exception of Fanny in Mansfield Park, close to other women.  While there are certain similarities among Jane Austen’s heroines, they are all single during most of the stories, there are also variations.  The oldest is Anne Elliot from Persuasion while the youngest, at least at the beginning is Fanny Price from Mansfield Park.  Emma Woodhouse from Emma is the richest while Fanny Price is the poorest.  Persuasion is the most romantic story, in the way that word is usually used.  Northanger Abbey (Catherine Morland) has a “cute” story that is most like Jane’s Juvenilia and has a mystery in it.  Emma also has a mystery in it.  The two most confident heroines are Elinor Dashwood, the Sense in Sense and Sensibility and Elisabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.  

In four of the stories the heroines have experienced a setback in their financial status or are in danger of experiencing such a setback.  Pride and Prejudice in particular deals with the need for many women at that time to marry for financial support.  In a letter to her niece Fanny Knight, Jane Austen wrote: “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor — which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.”  (The path taken by Charlotte Lucas.)  However, in an earlier letter to Fanny she wrote: “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.”  (The one favored by Elizabeth Bennett, although Lizzie had the best of both worlds.)  Jane Austen didn’t have to marry for that reason because she was supported by her father and brothers.  Other of her stories also touch on the idea of marrying for money or status.

What is amazing to me is that she could write such intriguing stories (look how much they are still being read), yet nothing truly bad happens in them.  The reader might learn of something sad that happened in the past or to someone far away who was not “present” in the story, nothing truly bad happens to a character who we have gotten to know well and gotten to identify with.  That is difficult to do.  It seems to me that in many other stories, both from print and in the movies, sad events, such as innocent people dying, are put in with no other purpose than to raise the emotional level.  That is no purpose as to the plot.  Now people in Jane’s stories do get sad and upset at times and are disappointed in life, but in normal ways.  I want to make a point here.  Jane Austen’s father was a reverend and that put her and her family into the class of the gentry and while they weren’t particularly wealthy a number of brothers were successful and able to support Jane, her mother and her sister.  These were the people Jane primarily wrote about.  She rarely wrote about servants or the very poor, again the one major exception being Mansfield Park,  So, while Jane wrote about normal people’s lives, with their ups and downs, these were normal people among the upper class, the gentry, not servants and not the poor.

Tom,

[lmspear]

Tom47,

Your post just reminded me of an elective I took in my senior year of high school back in 1975, "Women in Literature."  We ended up reading Madame Bovary, Sons and Lovers, A Doll's House, Tess of the D'ubervilles and a bunch of others.  There wasn't a single female author on the syllabus, not a George Sand nor George Elliott, nor a Bronte in sight.  It still amazes me.  Many of us were reading Erica Jong's Fear of Flying on the sly.

Edited October 28, 2021 by lmspear

[Quiggin]

I remember Silas Marner being read in high school and Emily Dickinson much discussed in third year English. My community college English teacher admonished us for not all having read Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding – Mrs. Baker lived nearby and her daughters "Cassandra" and "Judith" had been our high school classmates.

My favorite Austens are the "autumnal" Persuasion, and Mansfield Park, which is a big novel, almost like one of Henry James. I liked how the narrative switches towards the end to an exchange of letters and you follow it thirdhand, through a kind of telescope. The Crawfords are not particularly "nice" or "good" people, and the father may be a bit compromised by owning a plantation in the Bahamas, but both he and Fanny Price seem to be pretty clear-sighted.

After you ran out of Jane Austen books to read, you were supposed to  go on to Barbara Pym as a kind of dessert.

Recently I came across Charlotte Brontë's impressions of Jane Austen in her friend Elizabeth Gaskell's biography that Brontë's father commissioned. Brontë writes to G. E. Lewes, George Eliot's partner, on January 11, 1848 and says:

Quote

. . . Why do you like Miss Austen so much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones than any of the Waverley novels?

 

I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully-fence, highly-cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a  bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will irritate you, but I shall run the risk.

 

Now I can understand admiration of George Sand: for though I never saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even Consuelo, which is the best, or the best that I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence), yet she has a grasp of mind, which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect; she is sagacious and profound; – Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant . . .

 

[Helene]

Persuasion is by far my favorite of the Austen novels.  I've never read Mansfield Park, but I should give it a go.

[Tom47]

Thank you Imspear, Quiggin and Helene for your comments.  

Imspear, your comment on the elective you took is interesting and telling in regard to how female creators are neglected.  I haven’t read any of the books you mention except Silas Marner, a long time ago.  I did read George Ellot’s Romola and enjoyed the parts about the developing relationship between the title character and Tessa.  The ending is very good.  

Quiggin, what I like more in books is the actual writing as opposed to the story itself.  That means that in Jane’s books it is the conversations and the insight they give as to the character’s personalities that I enjoy the most instead of how the story ends and that is why I enjoy reading the stories again and again even when knowing how it will end.  I looked up Barbara Pym and plan to try and find some of her books.

Tom,      

[dirac]

Thanks, Tom. FYI, we have a lengthy thread on Miss Austen here.

[Tom47]

Dirac thank you for the information on the Jane Austen thread.

Tom,

[Tom47]

In 1792 *Mary Wollstonecraft*’s (born on April 27, 1759 in London, England) book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects was published.  Quotes from this book include:

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.  I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists – I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

“It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.”

“I may excite laughter, by dropping an hint, which I mean to pursue, some future time for I really think that women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.”  (Chapter 9)

Chapter 6 - “The Effect which an Early Association of Ideas has Upon the Character” - is particularly interesting to me.  In part in that chapter the author writes “Educated in the enervating style recommended by the writer on whom I have been animadverting; and not having a chance, from their subordinate state in society, to recover their lost ground, is it surprising that women everywhere appear a defect in nature?  Is it surprising, when we consider what a determinate effect an early association of ideas has on the character, that they neglect their understandings, and turn all their attention to their persons?”  Thus, Mary Wollstonecraft is not excusing women’s faults – their defects in nature, – but is saying that these faults are the result of the associations made by women early in life.  That is the way they are informally or formally educated.   

She goes on to write “The association of our ideas is either habitual or instantaneous; and the latter mode seems rather to depend on the original temperature of the mind than on the will.  When the ideas, and matters of fact, are once taken in, they lie by for use, till some fortuitous circumstance makes the information dart into the mind with illustrative force, that has been received at very different periods of our lives.”  This I feel shows great insight on the part of the author.  A simple example is saying the alphabet.  One can easily and quite quickly say the alphabet forward if that person had been taught to say it from childhood, but for most people saying the alphabet backwards is difficult, if they have not practiced it that way and while saying the alphabet forward is simply a matter of habit, saying it backwards involves thinking.  Here is a nice short video by Kastra M. Strauss (3 minutes long) illustrating that idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjalBmkmkvE.  So, based on what Mary Wollstonecraft is claiming early associations of ideas could have a long lasting effect on the character and behavior later in life and the behavior and even the beliefs of women and men could be, at least in part, a result of the associations they were taught early in life.  

Starting in 1937 Gallup Polls asked people in the US whether they would vote for a woman for President.  In 1937 and in 1945 only one third said they would.  This means that even as late as 1945 some women would not vote for a woman for President.  However over time the percentage who said that they would vote for a woman increased until in 2015, 92% said they would vote for a woman for President with only 8% saying they would not.  Then in 2016 a woman, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote for President and in 2020 a woman, Kamala Harris, was elected Vice President.  Why would there be such a dramatic increase in the percentage of people who would vote for a woman for President?  One explanation is that most or all of the adults who were polled in 1937 were born before women in general could vote and most were born before the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to Congress, so generally men were more likely to be involved (associated) with politics and women weren’t.  With time more and more women became involved with politics and more and more women were elected to congress.  So, the people polled in later years had grown up at a time when women were more involved (associated) with politics and these people were more and more likely to say they were willing to vote for a woman for president and eventually did vote for a woman.  We can see this process happening in various cases such as civil rights, fashions, music, gender norms, even preferences for ballet etc. 

Mary Wollstonecraft was a very important and influential person in history and does not get the recognition she deserves.  I have not been able to write every outstanding thing about her so here are two short videos to fill in the gaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tYv3w4rZxI, 4 minutes by Hailey and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YPdheQISw 5 minutes by Tamar Gulian and Tani Zurnaci.

Tom,

[Tom47]

Elizabeth Cochran, later known by the name Nellie Bly, was born in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania on May 5, 1864.  She eventually moved with her family to Pittsburgh, PA and at age 18 read an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, entitled What Girls Are Good For, which maintained that a woman’s role was in the home and not being employed.  She then wrote a rebuttal letter signing it as Orphan Girl.  The managing editor was so impressed with the letter that he hired Elizabeth Cochran as a reporter.  At first Elizabeth used Orphan Girl as a byline, but soon adopted the pen name Nellie Bly which was inspired by Stephen Foster’s song Nelly Bly.  While with the Pittsburgh Dispatch she wrote articles on Working Girls, Slum Life and worked as a foreign correspondent in Mexico for six months.  

Within three years Nellie Bly moved to New York City and obtained a reporting job with the New York World.  In that capacity she started an investigation into the insane asylum on Blackwell Island (now Roosevelt Island).  To get the information she needed she took a room at a boarding house for women and started to act as if she was insane.  Eventually she was brought before a Doctor who admitted her to that asylum.  She remained in the asylum for ten days after which the New York World published the story of her time there.  As an outcome of what was printed various changes which improved conditions were made.  Nellie Bly went on to investigate the treatment of inmates in New York’s jails, conditions in factories and corruption in government.  She also interviewed and wrote about the activists Emma Goldman and Susan B. Anthony.

On Thursday, November 14, 1889, at 9.40.30 o'clock Nellie Bly started on a trip around the world.  The idea was to beat the “record” set by the fictional character Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s 1873 novel Around the World in 80 Days, as well as to sell newspapers.  Her plan was to travel eastward, basically paralleling the voyage in the novel, except leaving from New York instead of London.  At the same time the publisher of The Cosmopolitan magazine convinced Elizabeth Bisland, the literary editor for the magazine, to travel around the world westward to try and beat Nellie.   At the time Nellie Bly was 25 years of age and Elizabeth Bisland was 28.  Both women beat the 80 days time limit, with Nellie doing it in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds and Elzabeth doing it in 76 ½ days.  In fiction it was a man who traveled around the world in 80 days, but in reality it was two women who did it faster. 

Nellie Bly married in 1895 and inherited the Iron Clad manufacturing company when her husband died eight years later.  She ran the company and obtained a number of patents including one for a steel container.  Eventually she returned to reporting, reporting on the  women’s suffrage movement and the First World War.

Here is a somewhat long (23 ½ minutes) animated video on Nellie Bly’s life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACz2bwF1gEs.

This link, only 1 ½ minutes goes to a 2015 google animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrrgeZKvFEo. 

Recently a memorial to Nellie Bly was built on Roosevelt Island (which used to be Blackwell Island).  Here is a 1 ½ minute video of it.  It is at the southernmost tip of the island which is in the East River.  To the left is the borough of Queens and to the right is Manhattan:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTOHoLEeONM.

I wrote that Jane Austen is my all time favorite author so I couldn’t resist linking to this video of Elizabeth Bennet being iconic for more than 6 minutes straight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz767NyTX30.  

Tom,

[Tom47]

My error, the Nellie Bly memorial is at the northernmost tip of the island with Queens to the right and Manhattan to the left.

Tom,

[Tom47]

This post is about two female journalists.  As with the case for Nellie Bly these women faced difficulties because of bias against women in the public sphere, but in addition faced bias because of the race the dominant culture placed them in.

Ida B. Wells was born an enslaved person in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862 less than one-half a year before the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted.  A big part of her work as a journalist was to document, year by year, the many lynchings, which she published in her book A Red Record - Lynchings in the United States.  When younger she filed an anti-disrimination suit against the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad Company for forcibly removing her from the car that she had purchased a ticket for.  While she initially won the case her victory was later overturned.  Here is a 11 minute long video documentary narrated by Kat Blaque, giving more detailed information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dmgbXmF7yo.

Born in Laredo, Texas on September 7, 1885 Jovita Idar first became a teacher, then started working as a journalist for the newspaper La Crónica and afterwards for El Progreso.  Later Texas Rangers, under orders by the governor, destroyed the presses of that newspaper.  In 1916 she started her own newspaper - Evolucion.  A quote attributed to her is “when you educate a woman, you educate a family.”  She also wrote advocating women’s right to vote and was president of La Liga Feminil Mexicaista.  Lynchings violence was disrected against Mexican-Americans and other ethic minorities as well as against African-Americans.  

Here is a 11 minute video documentary about the life of Jovita Idar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NK-Y-WVsT4. 

Slavery was ended in Mexico in 1829, thirty-six years before the ratification of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution in 1865.  

If anyone knows more information about these courageous women please contribute.

Tom,

[Tom47]

With technical innovations come new occupations and a relatively new occupation is computer coding and since one can talk about writing a computer code I decided to add this post to the topic of Women and Writing.  Plus I feel the information in this post is pertinent.  One because of the lack of women in STEM and two because it deals with the addressing of a common stima, taboo and a source of unnecessary shame for girls and women.  This post will be about two young women, who are computer coders (programers) Sophie Houser and Andrea Gonzales, who, as teenagers developed, wrote the code for, Tampon Run, a computer game in which a female character throws tampons at menstrual shamers, tampon haters, male characters.

Here is a video of the young women giving a TED talk in which they first speak about their own experiences and then talk about the lack of women computer coders (7 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJUIX-pLoVk.

This second video shows the young women talking about the game they created and the book they wrote, Girl Code - Gaming, Going Viral and Getting it Done (2 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uubiZQYQ0U.

Sophie Houser and Andrea Gonzales meet while at a “Girls Who Code” summer program .  See here for the Girls Who Code website: https://girlswhocode.com/.

According to what I have read, many girls throughout the world miss school during their periods and it appears that many times this is due to menstrual shame and the inability to obtain menstrual products.  These links are to keep me honest, so that those who doubt my claims can check them.  (India and Kenya, Africa, Globally and In General.)   But this is not only in less developed nations.  According to this article “nearly 1 in 5 American Girls have missed school due to lack of period protection” In the USA and according to Teen Vogue “Researchers for Always, a menstrual product company, found that of 500 girls aged 10 to 18 polled [in the UK], 7% had skipped school because of their period and lack of access to products.” 

A solution to girls missing school because of a lack of access to period products would be to provide them for free at schools.  What adds to the problem  is that according to a 2019 article by Natasha Bach “35 of the 50 US states charge a Tampon Tax,” that is tampons are treated as a luxury by those states.  (See here: https://www.yahoo.com/now/35-states-u-still-charge-170021575.html.)   Then there is the issue of menstrual shame, something that Sophie and Andrea are fighting against. See here: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1034131.  I remember seeing in a National Lampoon magazine a cartoon showing a woman President starting a nuclear war because she was menstruating and I thought it was particularly strange given that, at least in our current society, men are much more likely to engage in irrational, violent or criminal behavior than women are.  

There is a book called “The Red Badge of Courage” about war and a bloody wound.  Well menstrual bleeding is a red badge of honor since it  is the result of women ovulating and without women ovulating there would be no new humans.  There seems to be at least one culture that honors the beginning of menstrual bleeding.  According to this site: https://www.friendsofunfpa.org/left-in-the-dark-how-period-taboos-put-women-and-girls-at-risk/, “ In Sri Lanka, for example, girls have a poopunitha neerathu vizha [puberty function] when they begin menstruating. The party is akin to a Sweet 16, Bat Mitzvah, or Quinceañera celebration and includes ceremonies, gifts, and the girl’s family and community.” 

Thinking about euphemisms for words involving menstruation and menstrual products.  The term sanitary pads or hygiene products seem to me (maybe because I am a man) harmful as they suggest, incorrectly as I understand it, that there is something necessarily unsanitary or unhygienic about menstrual blood.  Then there is the phrase that starts with “She is on the . . . “ that I see as being insulting. Others I feel are somewhat cute, but evasive.  I remember seeing a movie set in the 1920s where menstrual pads were called “mice beds” and in the movie Grease when Rizzo said “I feel like a defective typewriter” and explained “I skipped a period.”

Tom

PS, From my experience I have found that the people on Ballet Alert are always kind and respectful of my feelings unlike some on other websites I have contributed to.  I don’t expect everyone to agree with me and I appreciate and learn from respectful disagreements.  So, I thank the members and the administrators of Ballet Alert for this.  

Edited January 21, 2022 by Tom47
clearification