A Multi-faceted Thing
Hannah Dawson (ed.), The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing
Penguin Classics, 705pp, £25.00, ISBN 9780241432860
reviewed by Jennifer Thomson
It seems the perfect time to be a feminist. We’re everywhere — in the boardroom with Sheryl Sandberg, leaning in to our corporate power; shaking our tail feather on stage with Beyonce; speaking with Emma Watson at the UN, immaculately coiffed and styled. Feminism is no longer the dreaded ‘f-word’; no longer the butt of bad jokes about unshaved armpits and never getting a man — it is positively to be celebrated. Enter any high street store that aims itself even vaguely at the discerning female customer and you are inundated with offers — tote bags that declare the owner ‘Feminist AF’; children’s books on Frida Kahlo and Amelia Earhart; Christmas jumpers that invite the wearer and those around them to ‘Sleigh the patriarchy’. It is so happy this feminism; so colourful and fluffy and so positively delighted with itself. There are no problems here, no issues that can’t be solved without a little retail therapy and some positive thinking.
If this contemporary feminism often feels empty and bewildering, Hannah Dawson’s edited collection The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing is a timely reminder that it was not always this way. Dawson has curated a tour de force of feminist thinking, spanning over four centuries and multiple continents, and drawing impressively across genre. Playwrights sit alongside political theorists, followed by poetry or fiction. Feminism appears as a vibrant, multi-faceted thing, changing and evolving but ever-present across the centuries.
The word feminist doesn’t actually appear in any of these selections until page 145, first used in a speech given by Emmeline Pankhurst in the US in 1913. Indeed, many of the contributions make no direct reference to feminism, or to any specifically social or political understanding of the word. Although many of the selections are from political speeches or manifestoes (Silvia Federici’s ‘Wages Against Housework’ and the Combahee River Collective Statement feature, alongside turn of the century tracts from Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra Kollontai), the arts and literature are equally well represented. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ comes before Goldman; Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ sits next to Betty Friedan; Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ comes after an Audre Lorde essay. This collection is not only interested in feminism as a political ideology, but feminism as a creative and artistic force.
Indeed, one of the themes running throughout the collection is of the imaginative power of feminism, and the strong links between feminist thought and fantasy/science fiction. The opening contribution is from Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’, where the narrator creates a female-only city, drawing on famous women from literature and the Classics. Pieces from Ursula Le Guin and Donna Harraway signal the strong power of imagination within feminist thinking. Although they don’t feature, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale would all sit comfortably here.
It’s a cliché of course, but what strikes the reader most is the palpable anger that rings across so many of these selections. Whether Plath exhorting ‘Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through’ or a 16th-century tract written under the pseudonym Jane Anger crying ‘Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women?’, anger echoes like a rallying cry. In an excerpt from ‘Professions for Women’, Virginia Woolf writes of The Angel in the House who urges women to ‘Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.’ Woolf realises that she has to kill this figure in order to function as a writer — ‘I turned upon her and caught her by the throat.’ Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M Manifesto opens with the rather matter of fact statement that ‘Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.’ In slightly less inflammatory language, contemporary theorist Sara Ahmed points out that ‘Becoming a feminist can be an alienation from happiness.’
The anger of so much of this writing was refreshing, a reminder that through the centuries women have had, and continue to have, so much to be angry about. Woolf wrote of the Angel in the House a hundred years ago, but she is equally applicable now to the woman who is told to smile by a strange man in the street or laughs off inappropriate comments from a colleague. This book is an important reminder that feminism doesn’t need tote bags or novelty jumpers. It doesn’t need to be happy and sparkly all the time. Instead, it needs the imaginative, powerful, collective scream into the void that a collection like this provides.
If this contemporary feminism often feels empty and bewildering, Hannah Dawson’s edited collection The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing is a timely reminder that it was not always this way. Dawson has curated a tour de force of feminist thinking, spanning over four centuries and multiple continents, and drawing impressively across genre. Playwrights sit alongside political theorists, followed by poetry or fiction. Feminism appears as a vibrant, multi-faceted thing, changing and evolving but ever-present across the centuries.
The word feminist doesn’t actually appear in any of these selections until page 145, first used in a speech given by Emmeline Pankhurst in the US in 1913. Indeed, many of the contributions make no direct reference to feminism, or to any specifically social or political understanding of the word. Although many of the selections are from political speeches or manifestoes (Silvia Federici’s ‘Wages Against Housework’ and the Combahee River Collective Statement feature, alongside turn of the century tracts from Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra Kollontai), the arts and literature are equally well represented. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ comes before Goldman; Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ sits next to Betty Friedan; Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ comes after an Audre Lorde essay. This collection is not only interested in feminism as a political ideology, but feminism as a creative and artistic force.
Indeed, one of the themes running throughout the collection is of the imaginative power of feminism, and the strong links between feminist thought and fantasy/science fiction. The opening contribution is from Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’, where the narrator creates a female-only city, drawing on famous women from literature and the Classics. Pieces from Ursula Le Guin and Donna Harraway signal the strong power of imagination within feminist thinking. Although they don’t feature, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale would all sit comfortably here.
It’s a cliché of course, but what strikes the reader most is the palpable anger that rings across so many of these selections. Whether Plath exhorting ‘Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through’ or a 16th-century tract written under the pseudonym Jane Anger crying ‘Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women?’, anger echoes like a rallying cry. In an excerpt from ‘Professions for Women’, Virginia Woolf writes of The Angel in the House who urges women to ‘Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.’ Woolf realises that she has to kill this figure in order to function as a writer — ‘I turned upon her and caught her by the throat.’ Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M Manifesto opens with the rather matter of fact statement that ‘Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.’ In slightly less inflammatory language, contemporary theorist Sara Ahmed points out that ‘Becoming a feminist can be an alienation from happiness.’
The anger of so much of this writing was refreshing, a reminder that through the centuries women have had, and continue to have, so much to be angry about. Woolf wrote of the Angel in the House a hundred years ago, but she is equally applicable now to the woman who is told to smile by a strange man in the street or laughs off inappropriate comments from a colleague. This book is an important reminder that feminism doesn’t need tote bags or novelty jumpers. It doesn’t need to be happy and sparkly all the time. Instead, it needs the imaginative, powerful, collective scream into the void that a collection like this provides.