Historic Female Writers and the Men Who Tried to Hold Them Back
A look at four historic female writers and the famous men who undermined their careers.
This article considers four women who lived at a time when the literary community was reluctant to embrace and celebrate female authors. These women faced the same rigid criticism from the men closest to them. Women have historically been under-represented in the literary world. Not because they weren’t productive writers, but because of the discrimination they often faced. Women were discriminated against by publications and rarely given the opportunity to see their work in print. And many reader were unwilling to buy books written by women.
But in these four women’s cases, famous men tried to discourage their ambitions, which may have kept them from getting further in their careers.
- Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald
Much of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing was either inspired by or plagiarized from his wife, Zelda. When Scott married Zelda, she was a high-spirited, effervescent, and stylish artist who had become restless in the small town where she grew up. Both Fitzgeralds aspired to ascend social ranks. Scott obsessed over writing a best-selling novel and becoming a millionaire.
Scott referred to Zelda as the “First American Flapper.” He borrowed a lot from Zelda’s personality and writings for his own work. On their honeymoon, Zelda, who was also an aspiring writer, left her journal and pages of her writing on her bed. She came back to find her journal had been moved and several of the pages missing. Over the years, she suspected Scott took her work and incorporated it–at times word for word–into his novels The Beautiful and the Damned (1992) and The Great Gatsby (1925). A claim Scott repeatedly denied stating Zelda was not a good enough writer to have come up with the ideas.
After publishing her first and only novel Save Me the Waltz (1932), Scott harshly criticized Zelda’s writing. The novel was published as a favor by the publishing house and sold poorly. Scott called her a “third-rate writer” and a “useless society woman.” Prior to the book’s publication, Zelda’s mental health began to decline as she showed signs of depression and obsessive behavior. The disappointment of her novel’s poor reception only led to her further decline. Within a year, Scott had her institutionalized in a sanatorium leading her doctor to believe she had schizophrenia, although she didn’t exhibit standard symptoms.
Zelda carried the burden of having creative ambitions of her own while married to a successful writer with a massive ego. Did she go crazy? Or was she driven to despair after years of being gaslit and manipulated by her abusive, narcissistic husband? We’ll never know, but we are left to wonder what her literary career might have been if she had been free to grow artistically.
2 & 3. Victoria Ocampo, Silvina Ocampo, and Jorge Luis Borges
Victoria Ocampo, born into a wealthy Argentinian family, lived the life of an intellectual and an heiress. Ocampo had a fondness for literature and published her first book circa 1923, De Francesca a Beatrice, an essay collection in French on Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Ocampo founded the literary magazine, Sur, in 1931 and served as the chief editor. Sur quickly became the most important literary magazine in South America. Sur published works from many of the greatest authors of the day including Albert Camus, Aldolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortazar, and, among them, Jorge Luis Borges. Ocampo discovered Borges and invited him to be a founding partner of Sur. Borges credited his career to Ocampo saying, “I was nobody, I was an unknown boy in Buenos Aires…At the time, I did not exist, but she saw me, distinguished me when I was nobody.”
The two disagreed on nearly everything, though, and often fought bitterly. However, they maintained a friendship throughout the years. Despite Ocampo’s influence, Borges held sexist opinions towards women, as Casares often depicted in his diary entries on their conversations. Borges worked as a translator for Sur translating works from English or French into Spanish. Borges and Ocampo once famously fought over the translation of a poem about deaf children turning into angels. Borges mocked Ocampo’s translation as childish, which deeply wounded Ocampo.
Casare and his wife, Silvina Ocampo (Victoria’s youngest sister), spent nearly every evening with Borges. The three collaborated on a mystery novel titled The Book of Fantasy (1940). Silvina also wrote poetry and short stories on her own. Although she didn’t produce much work, she was one of the most well recognized Argentine female writers of her day. Ted Paz Leston said of Borges on Silvina:
Borges liked her poems, but was scandalized by some of her stories. Silvina’s freedom as a writer was unbearable to him. Borges admired writers to the extent that he saw them as disciples, and Silvina was not his disciple.
Although Borges owed his career to the two Ocampo sisters, he criticized their artistic sensibilities. His criticism stemmed, in part, from his belief that women didn’t belong in the literary and intellectual realm.
4. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre ran in the same circle of Existential French philosophers. The two had an open relationship for most of their adult lives. One of de Beauvoir’s most notable works, The Second Sex (1949), served to fuel second-wave feminism and women’s rights movements around the world.
Sartre and de Beauvoir influenced each other’s writing and thinking. The two often disagreed and their writing styles varied greatly. And they strove to distinguish themselves from the other’s work. However, many people criticized de Beauvoir claiming she didn’t have an original thought independent from Sartre and that the contributions she did make were heavily influenced by Sartre. In her memoirs she stated:
A compassionate friend of mine told me this: If you win the Goncourt Prize, state that The Mandarins is absolutely your own work while talking to the journalists. As you know, there are rumors that your works are actually written by Sartre.
De Beauvoir did in fact win the Goncourt Prize for The Mandarins (1954), which is the highest literary prize in France. The Mandarins fictionalized the group of intellectuals de Beauvoir associated herself with and included a character based on Sartre.
De Beauvoir even discredited herself as a philosopher and the suggestion that Sartre would have considered her a philosophical influence on him saying:
Sartre is a philosopher and I am not…On the level of philosophy, I have been influenced by Sartre. Obviously, I could not have influenced him, since I did not do philosophy…I had no philosophical influence on Sartre.
While an influential intellectual in her own right, de Beauvoir was viewed as living in Sartre’s shadow. It’s impossible to deny the impact de Beauvoir had on feminism and ethics. And de Beauvoir can be remembered as a great philosopher, apart from Sartre.
These four female authors are a few of my favorites and I’m continually interested in their lives. The men I’ve mentioned had varying degrees of influence on their work, both positive and negative. As a writer myself, I’m personally grateful to live in an age and society that allows women the space to express themselves. I don’t believe I would be the writer I am today without the fearless efforts of the women who came before me.
Thanks for reading and drop me a comment with your favorite historic female author!
