a year of women writers

//366 days, lots o' books//check out my full reading list (updated as I go) below, as well as a full list of recommended albums//for my main blog, see @itsfromanotherera

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Uppercase planner November illustration~

[yoww2016]

Entry #041: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Yet again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted updates here on the reading I’ve been doing. But unlike the last pause in May/June, this time I haven't stopped reading the books--I’ve focused more on the reading than updating the blog. Which, in principle, is the better alternative, but I’d also like to be able to have these entries to look back on! So I’m sort of back, although now these entries will have been for books I read a while ago, meaning that the analysis will be more so superficial. Or maybe it will show the things that have stuck with me the most over the passage of a couple months?

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a seminal work, one that set the tone for proto-feminist/first-wave feminist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. This also means, however, that in comparison to the sorts of discussions Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and Germaine Greer were having in the middle of the 20th century (let alone the intersectional feminist discussions we try have today), Wollstonecraft concedes a lot of women’s rights away as she puts certain behaviors down to “human nature.” She seems much more forgiving of patriarchal structures, but still asks the reader to challenge the way they perceive society and the world they live in. 

The short, I-read-this-three-months-ago-and-can’t-remember-many-specifics summary of it is: it was difficult to read in parts, as she can tend to go into painful details on points that may seem irrelevant to the postmodern sensibility. But it’s very important to be comfortable knowing about the works of even the earliest feminists--even if their perspectives are entirely different from my own--in order to establish a clear foundation of where the movement has come from historically. 

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Ah! why do women, I write with affectionate solicitude, condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers, different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorize between man and man?

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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Besides, the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will, by managing her family and practicing various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband...

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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In the present state of society it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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...a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

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Entry #040: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

I’ve fallen into the habit of prioritizing reading the books on my list instead of thinking about them and writing these posts, which means that I actually finished this book around a month ago, or so. Generally speaking, that’s not really a problem, but then when I go to write about it, I have forgotten so many of the transient thoughts that occur to me just when I’ve finished the book, and which are hard to capture again at a much later date. Nonetheless, this book made a great impression upon me (as I’m sure it has done for every person that opens it up) so I will hardly have a difficult time discussing how important of a work it is.

It’s unbelievable to me the I hadn’t picked it up before this, considering that I would think of it as being one of the most seminal American works of literature that I have ever read. Not only for the content, but the way it is presented. She has such a way with words as to make even prose seem like poetry, with every word essential, concise and clear. That quality is what has stood out to me as the differentiation between the good and the great authors on this list so far; there haven’t really been any “bad” books per se, but rather ones where the author’s style of writing didn’t resonate with me as much as others. 

The story is one of immense trauma, and the overcoming of that trauma, but it is not so simple as that--our protagonist cannot simply live as if her life is not marked by the horrible experiences of her childhood. But she makes them a part of herself, using them instead of letting them use her. That’s why even when the end of the book arrives and there has been no triumphant conclusion, the reader feels as though the protagonist is powerful, capable, and will live her life intentionally. In that sense, it is a much more realistically triumphant conclusion, believable even if we didn’t already know it was based on the author’s life.

[yoww2016]

The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenes and Joe Louises. Owens and the Brown Bomber were great heroes in our world, but what school official in the whitegoddom of Little Rock had the right to decide that those two men must be our only heroes? Who decided that for Henry Reed to become a scientist he had to work like George Washington Carver, as a bootblack, to buy a lousy microscope? Bailey was obviously always going to be too small to be an athlete, so which concrete angel glued to what country seat had decided that if my brother wanted to become a lawyer he had to first pay penance for his skin by picking cotton and hoeing corn and studying correspondence books at night for twenty years?

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (1969)

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I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (1969)

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The 'boys'? Those cement faces and eyes of hate that burned the clothes off you if they happened to see you lounging on the main street downtown on Saturday. Boys? It seemed that youth had never happened to them. Boys? No, rather men who were covered with graves' dust and age without beauty or learning. The ugliness and rottenness of old abominations.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (1969)

[yoww2016]

Entry #039: Rebecca (1938)

Just like I had gone through an Agatha Christie phase in junior high, I had similarly gone through something of a Daphne du Maurier phase around the same time as well. It was nowhere near as expansive and in-depth as my obsession with the Queen of Crime, but I read a good sampling of the most famous du Maurier offerings (Jamaica Inn, Don’t Look Now). Yet I never made it around to Rebecca, perhaps her most famous work, known both as a novel and as the popular film which was inspired by the book. I’ve never watched the movie for fear of spoiling my surprise in reading the book, so I figured now was the time to finally read it.

It’s part horror, part mystery, part romance, and part pre-WWII period piece, and it all combines for a great and enjoyable read that I sped through with eagerness. As with all mysteries, it’s difficult to talk about without spoiling important plot points, but I can definitely say that it was more than worth reading, and I only wished that I had done it earlier. The characterization of the main protagonist, who is feeling overshadowed by the memory of her husband’s recently dead ex-wife (Rebecca), is precise and believable. You can see her psyche change the longer she is in the large English country home that she shares with her new husband and their army of servants, and trace her maturing as she becomes her own person in the wake of the memories that everyone has of Rebecca, who seemed to be the perfect person. How can she stand up to everyone’s rose-colored memories of a person who no longer even exists?

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Somewhere, at the back of my mind, there was a frightened furtive seed of curiosity that grew slowly and stealthily, for all my denial of it, and I knew all the doubt and the anxiety of the child who has been told, 'these things are not discussed, they are forbidden.'

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (1938)