Literature has always been an important part of the change and has had a major impact on the development of each society. It has helped shape civilisations, exposed injustice and changed the political system. It provides us with an insight into each society and helps us connect with human experiences.
Literature is thought provoking; it allows us to raise questions and gives us a deeper understanding of issues and situations.
Judith Caesar
Women in Literature
Previously dominated by men, women too have taken charge of writing their experiences and sharing their emotions through writings.
The tradition of women writing was ignored for quite some time, due to the inferior position the women held in the male-dominated society earlier. Thus women’s literature gives an insight into the lives of a marginalised section of the society who had a different picture to paint for each era of humankind.
A Vindication on the Rights of Women (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft is a landmark treatise that opened doors for many women after her to publish their work and break the norms surrounding the issue of women in literature.
Some other books that changed the course of women’s literature are:
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| It is notable because it praises other women writers publishing at the time, including children’s writer Sarah Fielding and Anna Laetitia Barbauld | Narrated through a fictional character, this long-form essay presents an argument on the necessity of both a metaphorical and literal “room” for women’s literature within the literary tradition. | Catharine Maria Sedgwick was the first American woman to do well financially through novel writing. Sedgwick’s novels portrayed strong, domestically inclined heroines with much to teach the supporting characters. |
Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers
Drawing parity between a witch and writer and how both of them mesmerised you through their work and leave you completely awestruck with their magic.
To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn’t afraid of facing challenges.
Paulo Coelho
The Literary Witches mentions both witches and visionary authors are figures of formidable inventiveness, empowerment, and general badassery. The author Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan praise the witchy features of well-known and unknown authors, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many others, through poetic portraits.
Virginia Wolf:
The author explains the beautiful portrait of Virginia. She mentioned that when crossing the street on a wet day, Wolf easily jumps from one pool of consciousness to another, adoring each creature that encircles her. Virginia sees her own pool, which overflows with rain, rises higher, and becomes a deep, tumultuous river before she can go to the next street. She isn’t going to make it through this one.
Virginia’s body transforms into a lighthouse as she floats down the river, her one enormous eye illuminating all she views with rich, buttery vision, transforming bottom-feeding fish and garbage into things of beauty and meaning.
A wolf cub bursts from the lighthouse’s eye, like Athena from Zeus’s brow, before Virginia is sucked under forever. Virginia has only one child. The wolf’s daughter engages in combat.
Emily Bronte
Emily imagines herself smoothing the moors for Heathcliff’s lovely feet while she sweeps the carpet. Emily fantasises about him coming in like the wind she walks against – strong gusts, clamped hands howling beneath her outerwear.
As they ascend the damaged trees outdoors, what do the ants whisper to Emily? She listens with her ear to the bark. She’ll be a part of their palace… She’ll be the queen of the ants… She’ll pit them against the queens of other ant colonies… She’ll be there to witness their love and battle.
Emily uses ice and rope to construct a telescope. She focuses on her own eye until she sees a galaxy, then through the galaxy until she sees a stranger’s eye through this tunnel.
Mirabai
THIS INFAMY, O MY PRINCE,
IS DELICIOUS!
SOME REVILE ME,
OTHERS APPLAUD,
I SIMPLY FOLLOW MY INCOMPREHENSIBLE ROAD.
A RAZOR-THIN PATH
BUT YOU MEET SOME GOOD PEOPLE,
A TERRIBLE PATH BUT YOU HEAR A TRUE WORD.
TURN BACK?
BECA– USE THE WRETCHED STARE AND SEE NOTHING?
O MIRA’S LORD IS NOBLE AND DARK,
AND SLANDERERS
RAKE ONLY THEMSELVES
OVER THE COALS
Mary Shelly
Mary experiments with remedies to bring back the departed when she loses most of her family. She fills a vial with her mother’s papers, her children’s hair, and a miniature model of her husband’s sailboat. Pours in some seawater and some garden buds. Shakes.
Toni Morisson
Queen Toni sees the kid they were, their parents, great-grandparents, and all the way back to the first human, cleaving from their flesh. She can see this ancestor’s original pain, which has been passed down like a splinter in the spleen through the centuries.’
Toni ferries her people’s unsettled ghosts across treacherous rivers with her imagination, creating calm blue boats for them to sail in. Before the huge migration, they build shelters to rest in.
Toni sits on her throne in velvet comfort. Her supplicants form a queue to donate rubies, roast duck, and wildflowers. However, one arrives empty-handed and instead tells Toni a joke. Everyone lets out a gasp. Toni finally lets out a huge, rumbling laugh, and delight floods the palace.
What comes as a surprise is a Nobel Prize acceptance speech by Toni Morrison.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
While the start was slow, there are various women writers who are now setting the tone for some masterpieces in literature. Writers like Arundhati Roy, J.K Rowling, NORA ROBERTS, MARY POPE OSBORNE are some of the acclaimed writers who are empowering the women today.
This women’s day let’s celebrate the ‘Women of Tomorrow‘ and pledge to always be supportive of each other and give more emphasis on our psychosocial well-being and mental health.
