Best female writers

[StreetStyleCat]

Ecriture Feminine had more detractors amongst women than men anyway - it seems that a great deal of the backlash doesn't come from a Patriarchal rejection of women's writing, but rather, a feminist and post-feminist rejection of the labeling woman, as somehow intrinsically different, and inherent in the work.

Quite ridiculous how some feminists have labeled women as different and special id est even enlarged the space of misunderstanding between two genders. Somebody (was it Irigaray?) even said that women spoke another language.
This is probably the reason why women themselves have detracted the feminists. Fundamentalism's never the right way.

But female authors... my favourites are Jeanette Winterson and Amelie Nothomb. If you try Winterson, don't start with her first and most famous book "Oranges are not the only fruit", it is not as good as her later works and you get a wrong idea!

[Sancho]

StreetStyleCat, I dig that kitty pic in your avatar.

Also I'll add Alice Munro to this list. I just finished her short story collection, Too Much Happiness and absolutely loved it.

[Thom Holliday]

You're not on another book site are you? I swear I've answered this question earlier last week...

Haha, nope, this is the only book site I'm a member of. It must be a pretty standard question.

[JuniperWoolf]

Margaret Atwood is becoming one of my favorite authors.

Hear hear.

Haha, you can tell that she'd be really mean if you met her in real life, though.

I'm just remembering a friend from art school who happened to be a woman... and black. She adamantly refused to show in any exhibition of "women-artists" or "black-artists" because she felt these virtually suggested that the work of women or black artists was somehow of lesser merit and not worthy of inclusion in a show simply of "artists".

Yeah, good point. Margaret Atwood said something similar in Cat's Eye when the reviews of her protagonist's art show constantly mentioned the fact that she was "one of Canada's trailblazing female artists."

[JBI]

Hear hear.

Haha, you can tell that she'd be really mean if you met her in real life, though.



Yeah, good point. Margaret Atwood said something similar in Cat's Eye when the reviews of her protagonist's art show constantly mentioned the fact that she was "one of Canada's trailblazing female artists."

She supposedly has a reputation for being an arrogant B**** (according to someone who was her secretary for a while), and for yelling at everyone, thinking herself somehow more important.

I don't know her though - there is the bit of hypocrisy how she writes about suffering, delimitation, abusiveness, and violence meanwhile enjoys a nice wealthy life, after a rich upbringing and a first-class education. But I guess that is all part of the adopted hysteria.

That being said, I don't know her - the author is dead as they say, so we can just critique the work, and see how it exemplifies a sort of feigned hysteria.

[stlukesguild]

If I asked for suggestions or your thoughts on the best, say, 19th century or science fiction writers, would that mean I would be implying that I thought less of 19th century writers or science fiction writers?

Perhaps such a question would not so stigmatize the writers in question... but then again is there not surely a qualitative difference between "the best 19th century science fiction writers" and "the best 19th century writers"? Indeed, I would suspect that if one were to ask for a list of "the best 19th century writers" few science fiction writers would come to mind. What I am suggesting is that it is something of a shame that many cannot approach Jane Austen or Emily Dickinson or Anne Carson as brilliant writers, period. Just as, to use JBI's analogy, Dante is a brilliant writer, period... not a brilliant Florentine writer or a brilliant heterosexual male writer, etc... This is why my artist friend refused to exhibit in shows limited to "Women Artists" or "Black Artists" because she felt to do so placed her in an artistic ghetto, as it were... outside of the larger dialog. Of course I'm not going to push the issue. I have little use for such politically correct obsessions with what amounts to mere semantics... but as JBI also suggested (amazing! We actually agree at times) it would be nice to discuss Blake alongside of Tu Fu or Emily Dickinson or Firdowsi without the latter artists only popping up when the dialog is geared specifically to Asian or Chinese writers, women writers, Non-Western/Middle-Eastern writers, etc...

...there is the bit of hypocrisy how she writes about suffering, delimitation, abusiveness, and violence meanwhile enjoys a nice wealthy life, after a rich upbringing and a first-class education.

I don't imagine that such is all that uncommon. I have an artist friend who is very well off (a rich wife) and lives in a nice big house on a hill... not far from NYC... with a spectacular view of the Hudson River Valley spreading out beneath him. He continually goes on ranting about Communism, Socialism and the duty of the artist to promote the Revolution and challenge the government, rather than offering pretty baubles and intellectual diversions for the Bourgeois... yet I somehow doubt that for all his talk, he'd be willing to surrender his home and comfortable lifestyle for the good of the Proletariat.

[sixsmith]

That brings up another question - what makes a writer female. To compare the two, it would seem you would need to consider writing by females as fundamentally different, in the sense that science fiction, or speculative fiction is, from that stance, considered a category based on a selective set of features.

My question would be, how is women's writing different from men's writing. Ironically on the original runs of the Bronte sisters, the reviewers assumed they were male authors, which seems to suggest a sort of lacking in intrinsic quality of "female".

I don't mean to spit on a tradition, but ultimately, that view is so 1970s and 80s - now I think the whole idea of "Women's" writing is looked at suspiciously, as all essentialist categories are looked at skeptically, at least by modern theorists/critics.

Ecriture Feminine had more detractors amongst women than men anyway - it seems that a great deal of the backlash doesn't come from a Patriarchal rejection of women's writing, but rather, a feminist and post-feminist rejection of the labeling woman, as somehow intrinsically different, and inherent in the work. The late poet P. K. Page, for instance, was known as referring to herself as a "feminist but not feminist poet." This, as an action denies the categorical in interpretation, and lends a degree of freedom and liberty to the work as not being chained down to a set of tropes/a tradition.

A discussion about the 'best female writers' is not necessarily 'categorically essentialist'. Indeed, the OP and other posters likely did not need to free themselves of trope or tradition. They simply proceeded to ask, employing the notion that women write fiction of varying quality, who the best female writers are. The concept of better and best is, of course, profoundly flawed but so too is the suggestion that the idea of women writers is 'inherently essentialist'. That is, of course, save for the essential quality of being a woman, a quality which, in the context of this discussion, is pretty straightforward . Cultural theory has its uses, but it also has the capacity distort and complicate the simplest of questions.

[JuniperWoolf]

I don't know her though - there is the bit of hypocrisy how she writes about suffering, delimitation, abusiveness, and violence meanwhile enjoys a nice wealthy life, after a rich upbringing and a first-class education. But I guess that is all part of the adopted hysteria.

Does her economic status really necessarily pertain to her writing, though? I mean, does a person really have to be poor in order to experience or be aware of sexual abuse, assault or gender discrimination?

Besides, if every writer who was born into money avoided subjects such as poverty or suffering we'd be short more than a few great novels.

[Bastable]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Katherine Mansfield.

[JBI]

Does her economic status really necessarily pertain to her writing, though? I mean, does a person really have to be poor in order to experience or be aware of sexual abuse, assault or gender discrimination?

Besides, if every writer who was born into money avoided subjects such as poverty or suffering we'd be short more than a few great novels.

It's not that; it's just she churns out book after book of Hysterical, or Quasi-hysterical women suffering as "unloved artists" in a cold, impoverished world of sexual abuse, and delimitation.

I wouldn't mind if she did it sometime - but that is really all she does. Despite this, she is the exact opposite. Why then can she not write about anything happy? It's not as if she has had anything particularly impoverished in her life, judging from her upper-middle-class upbringing, seemingly successful career, marriage, and reputation.

Yet half her novels are just long rants against things.

Her politics to me seem to suggest a sort of solidarity of women as "the abused" when I find it rather rude that she is neither the abused, nor are many women. I'm looking for, to be honest, a stronger narrative of more than just the hysterical, or quasi-hysterical female being abused - something which, if it is going to gender things so severely, at least offer a little more nuance.

[WildWildEast]

Try Rose Tremain. She is amazing. She won several prizes for her books.
The Colour
The Way I Found Her
The Road Home.

Margaret Atwood is my favourite female writer.

[mona amon]

It's not that; it's just she churns out book after book of Hysterical, or Quasi-hysterical women suffering as "unloved artists" in a cold, impoverished world of sexual abuse, and delimitation.

I wouldn't mind if she did it sometime - but that is really all she does. Despite this, she is the exact opposite. Why then can she not write about anything happy? It's not as if she has had anything particularly impoverished in her life, judging from her upper-middle-class upbringing, seemingly successful career, marriage, and reputation.

Yet half her novels are just long rants against things.

Her politics to me seem to suggest a sort of solidarity of women as "the abused" when I find it rather rude that she is neither the abused, nor are many women. I'm looking for, to be honest, a stronger narrative of more than just the hysterical, or quasi-hysterical female being abused - something which, if it is going to gender things so severely, at least offer a little more nuance.

I agree. I love some of her books, but they are riddled with these abuse cliches that make me want to roll my eyes and say "Tell me something new".

I don't know if her background necessarily disqualifies her from writing about abused women etc. if she has the skill and the empathy to enter into their feelings, but I guess she does not, and that's why these parts of her novels lack authenticity.

[stlukesguild]

It's not that; it's just she churns out book after book of Hysterical, or Quasi-hysterical women suffering as "unloved artists" in a cold, impoverished world of sexual abuse, and delimitation.

I wouldn't mind if she did it sometime - but that is really all she does. Despite this, she is the exact opposite. Why then can she not write about anything happy? It's not as if she has had anything particularly impoverished in her life, judging from her upper-middle-class upbringing, seemingly successful career, marriage, and reputation.

But I question whether we should confuse the artist and the art... or expect that the art is merely a mirror of the artist. This is a rather Freudian interpretation that often falls quite short of the mark.

I studied under an artist who had what many might presume to have been a rather traumatic and tragic life. He grew up in Poland and was a budding young musician... a cellist... before the war. When the war began, he was in in the section of Poland seized by the Russians and as a young intellectual he was sent to one of the Soviet Gulags at age 15. Caught drawing caricatures of Stalin, the guards broke his arm in several places. Following the German invasion of Russian all the Polish prisoners were set free as a per demands of Allied forces before any British or American assistance was to be forthcoming. Of course there was no chance of returning home... and the British and Americans weren't about to take these Polish citizens and so they were largely left to fend for themselves. He wound his way through Kazakhstan into the Middle-East and eventually Africa where he was stricken with Malaria. The disease so infected his arm that it became useless and he was forced to learn to develop his left arm. He eventually made his way to South Africa, then Britain, and finally the United States where he changed artistic directions and majored in art. His paintings were/are purely abstract... dealing with the magic of light and color... and are intended as spiritual expressions. In person, they are indeed quite transcendent. He used to ponder, however, why it was that so many of his students... myself included at that time... who were hale and healthy Americans born and raised in the most prosperous nation on the planet... seemed so driven to create dark, brooding, angst-laden images while he, who had lived through so much, was driven to paint images of transcendent beauty... joy... and ecstasy.

In his last last years, Pierre Renoir was racked with the continual pain of arthritis. It so ravaged him that he could not even hold his brushes, but needed to have them taped to his hands. In spite of this, his images never changed; his paintings remained as they had always been: a celebration of sensuality, beauty, and Eros.

The Romantics blurred the line between art and the artist... so that the work of art became... and still is seen by many... as a sort of diary... a biography. In many ways the biography is more valued by the audience than the art. Van Gogh and Picasso are the two highest priced artists at auction largely as a result of their biographies. This is not to say that their art is not "great"... but rather that the biography... the "cult of personality" is valued by many more than the actual art.

At the same time... I do understand and agree with you, JBI, with regard to what may smack of a certain hypocrisy. I can think of any number of artists in any field of art who seem to remain focused upon themes of tragedy... brooding... darkness... ugliness... themes in a minor key, as it were, is spite of having every conceivable advantage in their own private and professional lives. But again... do we assume that art is a mirror of the artist... or are some artist simply drawn to... and perhaps more competent at darker themes? Again... I think of the misunderstanding of certain listeners who imagine that Mozart is somehow shallow in comparison to Beethoven because he generally avoids the use of the minor key... and as a result, his music generally feels more joyful or uplifting... and then I wonder... is it as simple as that? All one needs to do to be thought of as "deep" and "profound" is to compose in a minor key... paint with an excess of black, gray, and blue... or simply select tragic themes to paint or write about?

Just some rambling thoughts late at night.

[Eric Vornoff]

I daresay Lyudmila_Petrushevskaya. If the question of eligibility for Nobel Prize makes much meaning to me, she would be the first in my list of eligible modern Russian authors. Splendid personality.

May be I would add to this list Bella Akhmadulina who is also a great poet.

[bouquin]

She supposedly has a reputation for being an arrogant B**** (according to someone who was her secretary for a while), and for yelling at everyone, thinking herself somehow more important.

I don't know her though - there is the bit of hypocrisy how she writes about suffering, delimitation, abusiveness, and violence meanwhile enjoys a nice wealthy life, after a rich upbringing and a first-class education. But I guess that is all part of the adopted hysteria.

That being said, I don't know her - the author is dead as they say, so we can just critique the work, and see how it exemplifies a sort of feigned hysteria.

I've read Cat's Eye - didn't like it much. My favorites are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton, Mary Shelley, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, Katherine Mansfield, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers.