Women Writers in the 21st Century
Before the 20th century, literature was primarily a man's world. Although there were a handful of women authors who became famous, the majority of books were written by men. This all changed with the turning of the 20th century. Women used their voices to express ideas and to tell stories from all matter of genre, from books which dictated etiquette, books which discussed politics, romance stories, historical novels, and thrillers. Now when a person walks down an aisle at the local bookstore, it is likely that their eyes will rest on as many titles with female authors as males. Surely, women have made an enormous amount of progress in integration and ungendering the literary world. However, there are still progressions which can be made. Women writers of the 21st century such as Sara Desson, Nora Roberts, and Ellen Hopkins will help change the way that women writers are viewed in the future until an author will be judged by the value of the work and not have that value subjected to the gendering of the author.
Even in the modern period, women are at a decided disadvantage in writing nonfiction texts than their male counterparts. A text written by a woman is still not as readily believed or accepted as factious as a text that is written by a man. Women writers are more accepted in books of fiction or in nonfictional works which have more "feminine" subjects, i.e. motherhood, cooking, and other domestic pursuits (Hamilton 1901,-page vi)....
If this seems untrue, take a look at the bookstore aisle featuring cookbooks and examine how many female authors there are in comparison to the male authors. Then go to another part of the store, such as historical nonfiction and examine how many males there are in comparison to females. Although women have made strides in nearly every field of study from mathematics and history to science and medicine, they are still psychologically marginalized by the larger population in society. To this end, whenever a nonfiction text is written by a woman, that volume will be more questioned than if it were written by a man. Some women have become so disheartened by the ways that they are marginalized in masculine fields that they choose literature as a more socially acceptable pursuit. Women writers like Andrea Barrett gave up their chosen field, in her case science, because of the pressures of the male domination in the field and the potential success she could have in the world of fiction (Johnson 2004,-page 1). As a rule, more people will investigate the text and try to disprove it than if the text had a male author.
Women have had more success in writing fiction than in nonfiction texts. Some of the most successful writers of the twentieth and twenty first century are women. In particular Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling comes to mind. This is a remarkable feat but also serves to underline the truism about the placement of women writers in the present moment. It is easier for…
