Is literature a male space?

Updated: Jul 11, 2023

One of the things that caught my attention in high school Literature classes was that I had never read a single book by female novel writers. Both from the 17th and 18th centuries and from the 20th century. Today is not different.

Could it be that, intellectually, women would be inferior to men? Although there are still many people who believe this, I totally disagree. The problem lies more in the social role historically reserved for women than in genetics. If you agree with me, read on to understand why literature was and remains for a long time a Men's Club.

BBC Brazil has published the report – The women writers who had to use male pseudonyms – and now they will be read with their real names. It even seems like transmission of thought because I was really wanting to make the inaugural post of this blog showing the difficulties that many women faced in their times to be accepted as writers.

Two Georges, the British and the French

The British female writer Mary Ann Evans adopted the name George Eliot to be taken seriously as a novelist. Launched in 1874, her novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is considered one of the best works in English Literature. The writer Virginia Woolf even called it "one of the few English books made for big people.”

Sue Lancer, the female researcher professor of English, comparative Literature and studies on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Brandeis University, in the United States, says that a literary critic newspaper at the time had two reviews of the book. The first, for George Eliot, was complimentary. The second, for Mary Ann Evans, was quite negative.

“Western history is one of male authority. That is why women started to use ambiguous or directly masculine names. They were trying to authorize themselves.”

The French female writer Amantine Dupin, one of the most prolific authors of her day, was known as George Sand. She wrote tales of love and class differences, criticizing social norms. She also wrote political texts and plays, which she staged in a private theatre. Amantine caused controversy in Paris by wearing men's clothing, smoking in public and having frequent love affairs – things forbidden to a woman at the time.

Sandra Vasconcelos, full female professor of English and comparative literature at the University of São Paulo (USP) says that, at that time, a woman who had intellectual activity was committing an enormous transgression.

The women who dared to publish using their own names received a lot of criticism because they were extrapolating the role assigned to them. Most of them used a pseudonym to avoid publicly exposing themselves.

Written by a lady

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the role of women as primarily mother and wife within the bourgeois family crystallized. The wife was responsible for the domestic world, from the door to the house. Many of them did not even have access to formal education. Moreover, every woman who had any sort of ambition beyond that was a point outside the curve.

On the cover of the novel Pride and Prejudice, the first book by the English writer Jane Austen, was written: "A novel. In three parts. Written by a lady." Her later books were credited to the "same author" as the earlier ones.

Publishing anonymously became less common in the 19th century. Writing became a profession and novels became more respected as a genre. This made it even more difficult for women to sign fiction books.

The feeling of freedom was also a factor that led women writers to publish under pseudonyms. These women faced many social limitations and expectations about the way they should write and the subjects about which they could speak.

If there were any questionable sexual elements in the novels, or deemed inappropriate for a society woman, they would be judged. The pseudonym was also a way to protect her personal life.

In Brazil, it was not different

In Brazil, many writers have also used the pseudonym or anonymous book resource for the same reasons, according to Constância Lima Duarte, female professor of Brazilian literature at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

The novel Úrsula (1859), considered by some historians as the first abolitionist novel in Brazilian Literature, was written by Maria Firmina dos Reis and signed only "a woman born in Maranhão".

During 1887, in Bahia*, the book As Mulheres: Um protesto por uma mãe (The women: A protest by a mother) denounces the small labor market that was reserved for women, the absurd salary difference between men and women and the excessive valorization of the functions reserved for men.

The female author hid so well that no one found out later who this writer might have been. "It's a hugely important book, but she hid it so well that no one found out later who this writer might have been."