Her words, His Legacy.
Men are always quick to be celebrated for their writing, but more often than not, their work has been inspired or shaped by the women around them. These women rarely receive recognition for their writing, even though their ideas have shaped modern literary culture. There are many ways that female writers and intellectuals have been overshadowed throughout history
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald’s relationship was surrounded by admiration and intrigue in the 1920s Jazz Age. After F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The First Side of Paradise, launched him into fame, he married American socialite Zelda Sayre, who had only agreed to marry him once it was published. Zelda was also a writer, publishing Save Me the Waltz in 1932 and contributing to several literary publications. In an article for the New York Tribune, she commented on her husband drawing inspiration from her diary for his novel The Beautiful and the Damned: “It seems to me that on one page I recognised a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage… in fact Mr. Fitzgerald (I believe that is how he spells his name) seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.” Although it was written humorously to promote her husband’s new book, it still raises concerns of his alleged plagiarism. This satire is acting as a quiet rebellion to reclaim her work, but not posing a threat to Fitzgerald’s career. Zelda was denied ownership of her most intimate thoughts and was forced to experience her husband gaining public renown for them.
Not all examples of this are as obvious as this one, Simone De Beauvoir and her lifelong partner, Jean-Paul Sartre were a philosophical power couple, with Beauvoir is commonly cited as one of the founders of modern feminism, publishing The Second Sex in 1949 and revolutionising feminism in the process. Despite this, it has been argued that her philosophical ideas are a mere offshoot of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy. Beauvoir was also considered an existentialist but focused much more on gender than Sartre. She received backlash for her ‘radical’ ideas of female sexuality that were shocking for the people of the late 1940’s. The backlash resulted in The Second Sex being banned from the Catholic church for being too explicit. The catholic church is no stranger to banning books for being ‘heretical’, but this is an exact reflection of what Beauviour was attempting to argue with her concept of the ‘other’. The majority of works in the Librorum Prohibitorum were stated to be a direct threat to the faith, however it seems unlikely that addressing unequal gender relations is equally as threatening as works by thinkers like Sartre which imagine a world void of any God. Through reading The Second Sex myself, I found that the only real ‘heretical’ statement is that religion has the ability to oppress women, not that there is no god. It may go against some teachings, but it doesn’t explicitly deny God like Sartre’s work does. Clearly, social structures have also played a part in snubbing women’s intellectual expression in favour of male voices.
Unlike Beauvoir, the Brontë sisters experienced dismissal not because of a male counterpart, but because it was assumed that women could not write serious literature. All three Brontë sisters started their writing careers under male pseudonyms: Acton Bell (Anne), Currer Bell (Charlotte), and Ellis Bell (Emily). They used these masculine names to publish their first works, as publishing a serious novel as a woman left them open to critique, not because of their writing, but because of their gender. When Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were first published, they were both successes praised for being bold and powerful. However, when issues arose surrounding their pen names with their publisher George Murray Smith in 1848, Charlotte and Anne travelled to London to confront him and thus revealed themselves as women. Their writing was then deemed too coarse and unfeminine for female writers. The Bronte sisters would not have been popular writers today if they resorted to fitting into the standard for what female authors are ‘supposed’ to write; by publishing gritty, strong novels they broke the mold for what a woman was expected to do.
In the late 21st and late 20th century this phenomenon is seen much less, many female writers are taking full ownership of their writing and gaining full credit. The author Sylvia Plath has been a celebrated writer and poet ever since her poetry collection The Colossus was released in 1960, although her writing career began long before this though, writing for the Mademoiselle Magazine. Her life was shrouded by struggles with mental health and her eventual suicide, but this did not hold her career back, she remained a popular figure after her death and remains an icon amongst young female writers, carrying a legacy which will remain indefinitely. This strong cultural shift towards female autonomy in writing is finally being embraced and celebrated by readers and critics alike, after centuries of women fighting for their voice.
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