Damned Scribbling Women.
Leigh and Elanor have resorted to podcasting not because we are literature experts, but because Elanor’s English teachers told us they couldn't think of enough ‘classic, vetted’ books written by women to justify replacing any of the white male authors on their exclusively white male-authored novels syllabus - which we all know is a lie, they just don’t want to read and teach books by women, particularly BIPOC women, and so we feel compelled to respond to that ignorant, racist, misogynist gaslighting. That’s why we’re doing this. Also, we are experts on our personal desires for people to have some common fucking sense. I mean really, dudes? You’ve searched and searched and can’t find any woman-authored classic novels? Really? Because here they fucking are and you know how we found them? We Jessica J.B. Fletcher-ed the shit out of that investigation: WE GOOGLED ‘AUTHORS WHO ARE WOMEN’.
Here's the State Standards for public school English/Lit classes in grades 9 through 12 in our home state:
“3.4.4. Analyze and evaluate the great literary works from a variety of cultures to determine contribution to the understanding of self, others, and the world.”
Now check out this major bullshit: Here’s the list of novels Elanor’s white male English teacher planned to teach for her 9th grade Honors English Lit class, a syllabus he declared was “Much more inclusive than in past years…we have been dedicated to creating a more diverse curriculum and we’re pleased with our progress.” (Like it’s solely white men’s purview to ‘include’ or ‘exclude’ or ‘invite’ people in all aspects of life because they are the Lords of the Universe and anything other than a white man is ‘diverse’ JFC)
The Epic of Gilgamesh by Some Mesopotamian Guy(s) in 2100 BC (Women depicted as: Mothers, Goddesses, or ‘Whores’)
Lord of the Flies by white man William Golding (No women depicted. The one male who exhibits traditionally ‘feminine’ traits is killed)
Romeo and Juliet by white man William Shakespeare (Women depicted as: Bumbling nurse, Iron-fisted mother, Love-struck teenager who kills herself)
Fahrenheit 451 by white man Ray Bradbury (Women depicted as: Mindless, cold wife who is killed, Manic Pixie Dream Girl who helps a man self-actualize then disappears, assumed dead)
Of Mice and Men by white man John Steinbeck (Women depicted as: Unnamed wife who is a ‘tart’ and a ‘whore’ whose desire for attention and fame ‘gets her’ killed in the haystack)
The Great Gatsby by white man F Scott Fitzgerald (Women depicted as: Meddling whore, masculine fraud, egotistical trophy wife)
This is years of progress? Okay, so did the original syllabus consist of a stack of Hustler Magazines and a copy of the Old Testament?
This class was supposed to be a general survey American Lit course and last I checked, women exist in America and know how to write books, as do men of color. This class is a mis-labeled specialty course that should have been called “Mediocre White Men Whining About Stupid Shit While Celebrating Rape Culture & Demonizing Women: An Exploration of How to Populate The World With More Brett Kavanaughs and Brock Turners.”
And which ‘educators’ looked at this syllabus and said, “Perfect! A whole semester celebrating rape culture, racism and toxic masculinity! Fire it up!” (In Elanor’s case, it was white dude teachers either over 50 or in their mid-30’s who wore wool pea coats and thin, striped scarves wound around their necks a bunch of times, a fashion choice made famous, ironically, by Kelly Clarkson’s 2003 video for the Girl Power Anthem Miss Independent and favored by David Foster Wallace-Worshipping White Dudes in MFA Writing classes across America.) Besides the fact it violates state standards and is missing some of the most important books in American Literature, any self-proclaimed ‘educator’ who doesn’t understand or care that this class list (300 hours of class and homework time studying this shit every year) contributes to girls internalizing the lie of the superiority of the white male life experience and the patriarchy, which contributes to women participating in their own dehumanization, shouldn’t be anywhere near a classroom.
And yet.
The madness continues, especially in Elanor’s 11th grade Honors English syllabus, about which her white male scarf-wearing teacher bemoaned on Back to School Night out loud, to a room full of moms of daughters “I had to take (White Male Author) off the list this year to make room for…” (the ONE woman he was forced to add) “It broke my heart, but it’s required, so…” Then Leigh flipped a table and Elanor threw her chocolate milk on the ground. Here’s the list:
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn (White Man who provided the name for this podcast with his sexist whining)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (White Man)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (White Man)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (White man show stole the best parts of this book from a woman who wrote it first and better)
Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway (White Man)
Transcendental Theory of: Ralph Waldo Emerson (White Man)
Henry David Thoreau (White Man)
Walt Whitman (White Man)
These lists tell our daughters that if women exist, it is only as defined by white men, and women are only useful as ‘whores’, mothers, sex-objects for said men, or place-holders whose sole purpose is to help a man self-actualize and then they die or are murdered.
These lists normalize the lie that only white men write classic literature & novels worth studying. They say, “Women don’t write books - and definitely not women who are Black, Indigenous, Asian-American, Latinx, any people of color, LGBTQ+ - those perspectives are worthless.”
These lists say that girls and male students of color are not truly American – that they do not deserve to explore and discuss, with a teacher, in class, books that reflect a perspective or life experience familiar or relatable or intriguing to them. They are not worthy. Look at your kids’ English class reading lists - it starts in Kindergarten.
As someone smarter than us once said, “The bar is already so low - but mediocre white men always find a way to limbo under it.”
The author Zadie Smith (White Teeth, Swingtime) expresses the myth of the White Male Canon Perfectly:
“There is an unfounded fear that changing school reading lists to be more inclusive would de-emphasize the work of historically significant white male authors. It's worth examining why the most talked-about literature is typically written by white men. The fact that a novel is universally renowned doesn’t prove that it is inherently superior. White men did not historically write better novels; they were simply historically given better access and appreciation for what they wrote.”
To sum up: White men in charge back in Ye Olde Days gave recognition to, and exalted books that they felt a connection to, books they recognized themselves in, and that reflected their perspective of the world - books by and about themselves: White guys. White dudes loving on white dudes. (Though ironically ignoring and demonizing gay authors. Huh.) And now, decades and decades and in some cases centuries later, these same books are still what white men insist are the only true ‘Classic Canon’. And the teachers at our schools pull this same shit out today and call it a syllabus, because they think we aren’t paying attention.
That is some next-level, top-shelf, Gas Lighting bullshit. Don’t let them lie to you. Don’t let them lie to our kids, because if they believe it, and grow up to perpetuate it, this shit will never, ever end.
For every Nathaniel Hawthorn, there is a Jesmyn Ward. An Alice Walker. A Doris Lessing, a Celeste Ng, an Elizabeth George Speare, a Virginia Wolfe, a Toni Morrison. For every F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is a Nella Larsen, a Zora Neale Hurston, a Zelda Fitzgerald. For every Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman there is a Sojourner Truth, a Francis E. W. Harper, a Margaret Fuller. For every John Steinbeck, there is a Sanora Babb, a Toni Morrison. There is Louise Erdrich, an Alice Walker, a Willa Cather. For every William Golding there is an Octavia Butler. A Shirley Jackson, a Maya Angelou. For Every Epic story there is a better one by Murasaki Shikibu. For every Shakespeare there is a Mary Zimmerman, a superior translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson. For every Ray Bradbury there is a Zadie Smith, a Janet Campbell Hale, a Ruth Ozeki, an Isabel Allende, a Jhumpa Lahiri, a Leslie Marmon Silko, a ZZ Packer, an Alice Munro, a Hanya Yanagihara, an Edith Wharton, a Maxine Hong Kingston, and on and on and on.
The list of better, beautiful, challenging books written by women - like all women’s capacity for greatness and power and vulnerability and humanity and value to the world, to this life - is endless. That is the truth.