In celebration of Women’s History Month, I thought of compiling a list of my favorite feminist or female-centric novels. It’s a collection of works that make it to my repeat reading list because they either give voices to forgotten female lives or provide inspiration to my own.
The first two books in the series are both feminist takes on famous classical literature — where the author picks up the hood to find stories of the women behind the events. Pat Barker takes on Homer’s Illiad and tells the stories of women in the Greek war camps that sat outside Troy waging war against the walled city for ten years. Chitra Divakaruni takes on the Indian epic Mahabharata and presents the saga from the eyes of Draupadi, the Pandava queen.
Good Evening, Mrs. Craven makes it to the list because of its relevance to current events and the importance of remembering what war does to women and children. Finally, I close the list by sneaking in two classics, The Awakening and Anne of Green Gables that influenced my feminist journey.
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
The great originals of western literature are all about men and their battles. Of kingdoms destroyed, massacred soldiers and their weeping mothers and wives. Odes are written to the bravery of the hero — whether it be Achilles, Odysseus, or Hector. Women are left to suffer or are demonized — think Helen, Cassandra, or Clytemnestra. Many barely make it to the pages of the classics.
What of them and their stories?
“We’re going to survive–our songs, our stories. They’ll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them. We’ll be in their dreams–and in their worst nightmares too.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls
In the tradition of Euripides’ The Trojan Women, Pat Barker gives voice to the women that have been so unfairly treated in classical literature.
The novel is narrated by Briseis. She was a queen who was captured by Achilles during the Trojan war (the one they fought for ten years over the kidnapping of Helen) and made into his sex-slave. Through her, we journey into the Greek camps outside Troy and hear stories of disease and despair.
While Homer’s battlefield is all guts and glory, Barker’s Trojan War is false bravado, desperation, fatigue and a siege built on the shoulders of captured slaves. Barker provides an insight into what possibly motivated this army to annihilate an entire kingdom over a woman.
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakurni
Photo by Rachana Mehra from Pexels
Divakaruni takes on Indian epic Mahabharata, and weaves an imaginative novel around it’s most maligned & suffering female character, Draupadi. A story so powerful that it has transcended thousands of years, the Mahabharata is a timeless epic. Relevant and revered, every Indian is as familiar with its broad construct as the western world is with the Bible.
Divakaruni doesn’t change the story, nor does she provide an alternative ending, but instead she offers a fresh new perspective. For those unfamiliar with the epic, Draupadi was the wife of the five Pandava brothers, the rulers of Hastinapur (believed to be erstwhile Delhi). She joins the central cast of characters in Mahabharata, when Arjun, the dashing Pandava prince, wins her as his bride in a Swayamvara, a modern-day The Bachelorette if you will.
Marrying into a royal family already in exile and then being asked to bed Arjun’s four brothers is not exactly the marriage most princesses dream of. Divakaruni’s attempts to tell readers hidden stories behind these events and to give voices to the women of Mahabharata.
“The power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won’t get you what you want.” His words perplexed me. Wasn’t power singular and simple? In the world that I knew, men just happened to have more of it. (I hoped to change this.)”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions
Divakaruni’s Draupadi is rebellious princess, a tomboy craving for her father, Drupad’s, attention. She is determined to leave a mark on this world. Draupadi’s tries hard to fight the social structures around her. But from very early on in her life, she has to bow down to higher values — like protecting one’s family honor and choosing for the greater good of the kingdom. Banerjee expertly weaves the original stories from Mahabharata, while adding her own spin to events.
For a more detailed review go here: https://shadesofwords.com/the-palace-of-illusions/
Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter Downes
I hesitated a little before putting this one on the list; only because it’s so relevant and timely. News headlines are consumed with a war of scale on the European mainland which the world had thought had been left in the past. The unfortunate thing about war is no matter where it happens, who it happens to the consequences are often felt by the ones least interested in being part of it.
The author, Mollie Panter-Downes was a columnist for The New Yorker during the Second World War. Over the years she contributed war reports in the form of Letters from London and several short stories. Good Evening, Mrs. Craven is the compilation of these stories. The focus on these stories is not on the battlefields, the soldiers, or the war machine itself, but the effect of war on the home front in England. These are the stories of women who may not be sitting in trenches in the line of fire but are still acutely aware of the danger the war brings — both emotional and physical.
“Before the war cut her life so sharply in two, she had cherished her possessions jealously. … Now that she had discovered the important truth that her flesh was as brittle as theirs and far more precious, the safety of china cupids had become irrelevant.”
― Mollie Panter-Downes, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
The collection is a mix of the comical and the tragic, of the optimistic and the hopeless. These short, sharp stories give us a window into what would have been the condition of hundreds of civilians as the second World War swept by.
For more details on the collection of stories go here !
Note: I typically don’t promote publishers, but it is only appropriate that I give a shout to Persephone Books, a UK based publication that came into business to explicitly to publish neglected fiction and non-fiction female writers from early to mid twentieth century. I highly recommend checking out their titles.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Awakening is the story of Edna Pontellier, a terribly bored housewife. She has unquestioningly followed the path defined for her gender. She married young, went on to have two beautiful children and at the ripe young age of twenty-eight, she discovered that she does not have anything to live for.
That is until she meets Robert LeBraun, the handsome and kind son of their lodge owner at Grand Isle. With this infatuation comes a series of awakenings about her life, marriage, and physical desires. These realization make her want to push against boundaries of being a woman in nineteenth-century respectable society.
The first pivotal realization is when she goes swimming by herself and ends up goes farther than intended. She is both scared and exhilarated. This is the “spreading out her wings” moment when she discovers that she can do something by herself and for herself.
“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening
The Awakening continues to be relevant today. Women all over the world are realizing every day that there are not committed to living life in a certain way.
Chopin herself was an outlier in late 19th century genteel society. She was widowed at 32. She ran her husband’s business, took care of her children and was known as an outrageous flirt. I wonder how much of her was in Edna and how she coped with the challenges of being a single mom?
Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery
I put this on the list realizing this is an entirely unoriginal take, but I swear by this childhood favorite. As a nine-year-old I was taken in by the coming-of-age story of a pre-teen girl orphaned girl who just wants to be loved, be awesome at school and have a good hair day. Sure, she was a girl from a farming village in the idyllic Prince Edward Island across many oceans and at least a century away, but her problems did not seem that different from mine.
“Matthew Cuthbert, who’s that?” she ejaculated. “Where is the boy?”
“There wasn’t any boy,” said Matthew wretchedly. “There was only her.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
In the fictional village of Avonlea somewhere in Canada, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables, ask an adoption agency to send them a boy hoping he helps them around the farm. When Mathew reaches the station to pick the boy, he finds a scrawny, redheaded girl waiting for him. Anne of Green Gables is the story of how this passionate, curious, intelligent eleven-year-old gets adopted and builds her life.
I don’t believe that Montgomery intended to write a feminist novel. That she ended up creating an interesting, independent, opinionated, ambitious heroine was perhaps a reflection of her personal history, rather than any intentional messaging.
“Which would you rather be if you had the choice — divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
For me the most feminist thing about Anne is that her strength comes from being herself. Even though she is constantly told to reign in her imagination, or not speak so much or just be like the other girls, she continues to be herself. She speaks her minds, walks rooftops for a wager, studies hard to beat the teasing boys in her class and is unapologetically ambitious.
I have gone back to Anne of Green Gables and other books in the series, for the optimism they provide. Anne builds her life by being and believing in herself, surrounding herself with people who love and value her, having hope, and always, always dreaming. I always find that inspiring.
So, I want to hear what would you add to this?
