Woman Writer

In my Canadian Literature class, we've done a lot of reading about women writers. The struggles women have had to endure just to have a voice. My professor is from Germany, and he talked about how he will have mediocre young men come tell him they are applying over seas to Oxford while young women who are exceptional don't intend to apply. Usually they don't think they are good enough to get in, or they figure if they did, it wouldn't work out anyway.

Although women writers have become more acceptable, they are still the minority in academic, high-class, well respected literature. Sure, there are a lot of pop women authors but their target audience is either young adults or other women (romance novels). Women are thought to be too emotional and sentimental to really dig into a story.

In Margaret Atwood's essay, "On Being a 'Woman Writer': Paradoxes and Dilemmas," she gives several great examples of discrimination. In one, she mentions how a hard-hitting novel by a man is realistic, and a hard-hitting novel by a woman is "gutsy" "hard" "mean." She also discusses the way we look at a successful female writer. We view her as exceptional and view them as asexual. She claims a woman writer is only called a woman writer until she becomes successful--then she is just a writer.

As a woman writer, I want to believe things are better than when Atwood published this essay in 1976. She is a successful woman writer, so I am thankful to have role-models like her or Joyce Carol Oates who both reflect on being both a woman and writer. It boils down to identity. As Atwood says, "Woman and writer are separate categories; but in any individual woman writer, they are inseparable."

I have to write a paper about women writers. I don't even know where to begin. Booo to midterm papers.