Key feminist texts for me to read and leave lying about the house for dd?

[HRHQueenElizabethII]

Spurred on by musings from another thread: I've read almost no feminist writings, and was one of those women in my early 20s who rejected the term; through not understanding it.

I've been extraordinarily lucky - I've had strong female role models, but find myself more feminist than them, and have married a man who's clearly a "natural" feminist - though he hasn't read the literature either. But so much of what I read and see makes me want to buy some key texts, past and current, so that dd will have access to them as she grows up, and so understand the contexts and conditions which will influence the choices she makes in the future, and those made by people she comes into contact with.

Anyone fancy giving me a reading list?

The feminism intuited by the 'first wave' failed to include liberation for women of colour.

Intuition is always experienced in culturally-specific circumstances and the idea of its universality is problematic.

There were a lot of big words there for a two-year-old I think.

Having said that I think Robespierre's caution about the transformative powers of feminist literature are important.

I have confessed on mumsnet before to my dislike of Atwood, but I'd say definitely that I have had more success persuading young women to question patriarchy when teaching them to read 'resistant' books by men, or when teaching them to read patriarchal books 'against the grain' than I ever have when I've taught 'issue-based' stuff.

The power of reading first-wave stuff in or near its moment was of course real, but we will need to teach our daughters to read positive stories about women and to read 'against the grain' given the realities of a world where women among our number can post the kinds of horrors that we've read here this weekend.

Works of literary criticism are not of value beyond and above the book itself are they? Are they?

yes, I vividly remember the moment I encountered Marxist feminism and all my evident truths were called into question..

I wonder, Robes, whether most people who self-define as feminists might bridle at the idea of 'evident' in any context, since it is a word which has had a peculiar power over us for centuries. That word might be getting in the way of an interesting discussion iyswim.

Um - no. I thought I'd not worded that well - I meant that they add value/benefit/understanding to the work itself.

(Sorry: I'm asking, really, about non-fiction. Fictional literature by women articulating the poisonous consequences of moving in a male dominated world I have always been v much shaped by.)

100x ABSOLUTELY they are.

For eg The Madwoman in the Attic changed my life - yes dull and boring looking back, but at the time it embodied (enlibrated?) an entirely unfamiliar and incredibly exciting project of looking for the 'secrets' of female experience hidden in the text.

Yes, that's a good point. Lots of issue-based literature not always of the highest order either. Though there are exceptions.

Well, HRH. You've got a lot of reading to do. I don't read feminist non-fiction any more. Not sure why.

The Beauty Myth is great.

I don't understand. Does it mean then that a work of criticism on a book is deemed more worthy and important than the book itself? Even if the book is a good one? Explain more please. I can't understand that at all.

An essay on Middlemarch is not more important or to be valued more highly than Middlemarch itself.

have I just not go this?

Sibh - which resistant texts by men do you have in mind? it's an interesting observation.

No, no, 100x, not at all - just that the crit can bring something else to the book that the reader may not have thought about, and so it is of value, ergo feminist lit/crit also valuable even if the empirical basis seems "evident".

God, I'm really inarticulate tonight, and I'm actually making such an utterly banal point you should maybe just disregard it!

Oh and Robes - yes I see what you mean now. I am probably largely talking about fiction, which I always prefer.

Onebat, my interests mean that I'm tending to think about Irish fiction where men write back against the really stultifying roles available for men since independence.

John McGahern's Amongst Women - a really powerful examination of emotional abuse.
Colm Tóibín's The Heather Blazing which is a rather wonderful book about a high court judge having to reconsider the voices he has ignored or excluded.

I'll think of more ...

you've just not got this 100x

They are two entirely different orders of being.

In terms of political worth, an essay on a text is almost always more honest about its political motivations than the text itself and therefore potentially more erm consciousness-raising.

It's also rarely limited to the text which it critiques, but pulls in all sorts of other things (in particular critical theories).

Ah I see HRH. Thank you for explaining, I understand what you mean - think it's me tbh, not you.

Rebecca West, Antonia White and Doris Lessing.

Not quite what you're looking for, onebat, but...Nora Barnacle thought Joyce didn't know anything about women; but the final chapter of Ulysses has been read in a lot of different ways.

Ditto OBM, thank you. It's them there god dang politics again innit interfering with a good book and trying to make it have a purpose?

I think we also need to consider how the feminist lit crit also opened up new ways of seeing (fmailiar) texts.

The point is that what these critics described ultimately influenced a generation (or more) of readers and writers.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is superb & suitable for teenagers.

I second Backlash by Susan Faludi.

Oooh - has anyone said The Beauty Myth? Definitely giving that to my daughters if I have any!

100x, I think I find fiction massively more illuminating that non-fiction when it comes to reflecting on what it is to be a woman.

In the realm of non-fiction, I suppose I'm influenced by having read a lot on Marxist lines (and nothing on feminist lines). The critical stance that Marxism teaches is that all our self-perceptions, all distributions of power, etc etc are not to be viewed as eternal or ex nihilo, but as teporary and conditioned. This holds true for the examination of class, race, gender, sexuality, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. So I couldn't help but see feminist concerns as a special case of a more geeral approach. Hence my questions.

how about shere hite on female sexuality? i found pretty mind blowing as a teenager, what women were apparently meant to find sexually satisfying, as portrayed in popular culture, as opposed to reporting from the women themselves
i would imagine even more relevant today sadly

i also loved andrea dworkin
mad woman she is
but what a writer

Sorry chaps, I cocked up my formatting there.

It sucks being a newbie.