Gamerpyrope

youreabitweird:

officialjeffgoldblum:

most classic novels are classics because they were written by old white men for other white men. so, like, don’t ever feel bad for not reading them

I can go on forever but… looks like someone made an ignorant post. There are many famous classics written by female authors and these are just a few. Not that a book written by an “old white dude” makes it any less valid. But try to actually think before writing uninformed bullshit online okay goodbye.

something has been bothering me about this comment and I’ve realized a few things:

• All of these female writers are white. Of course there is Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker but there are precious little classic books written by non-white females, especially considering the mass of white male authors.
• Mary Shelly’s works were first published anonymously.
• Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Bronte, and Anne Bronte used pen names that were purposefully masculine or androgynous.

• “Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because — without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine" – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.” -Charlotte Bronte (“Biographical Notice of Ellis And Acton Bell”, from the preface to the 1910 edition of Wuthering Heights.)

• Jane Austen used a pen name as well. In 2007 British author David Lassman wrote an article called “Rejecting Jane” in which he described how he slightly altered text from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and submitted it, under a pen name, to several major publishing companies. Only one recognized the fraud, and the rest rejected the work. 
• Margaret Mitchell (she used the pen name “Peggy” or “Peg”) was hired as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, despite no encouragement from her family or society to pursue a career in journalism.
  

  There had been some skepticism on the Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy came to work as a reporter. Debutantes slept late in those days and didn’t go in for jobs. -Medora Field (Wolfe, M.R., Daughters of Canaan: a saga of southern women, p. 149)

• Female writers have faced and overcame years of sexism, and non-white authoresses had to experience overwhelming racism on top of it. I understand what you are trying to say, but these novels you’ve mentioned are not the rules; they are the exceptions. Please recognize the struggles female writers have and will experience.