It’s No Wonder Why So Many Men Avoid Books Written by Women
But that’s not exactly benefitting them — or our society
If you’ve ever taken a literature or writing class or even just looked at the winners of the most prestigious writing awards, you might be under the impression that literature is predominantly a man’s game.
But women have always written, too.
Women wrote in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Era. They wrote poetry, fiction and non-fiction. And, perhaps most importantly, they wrote despite their gender standing in their way — which some masked by taking pen names — and despite not having access to education, the ability to earn an income or a ‘room of one’s own’, as Virginia Wolf argued in her seminal essay by the same name.
Still, quite a few female writers managed to write and can be considered literary trailblazers. Apra Behn’s novel Oroonoko, published in 1689, is regarded by some historians as the first novel published in English, while Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein is often cited as the world’s first science fiction novel.
The first woman to earn a living through her writing is thought to be the late Medieval writer Christine de Pizan, who started writing in part out of necessity — she was a widowed mother of three, left…
