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From The Times

June 9, 2007

Still not an equal partnership

As the Orange prizewinner is announced, Joanna Kavenna asks why men remain reluctant to read fiction by women

IN MY LATE TEENS, MORE than a decade ago, I read haphazardly through the classics, and discovered some favourite books: Albert Camus’ The Plague, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Between the Acts, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest,Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami.

In my naivety, I hardly noticed whether the authors or protagonists were men or women; I regarded these books as examinations of something that I thought of vaguely as the human condition. It was only gradually that I understood that there was something called “women’s writing” – that books by women were filed under the gender of their authors.

“Women’s writing” was once a reasonable shorthand, because the vast majority of writers were men, and women writers were a notable anomaly. Literature was essentially, numerically, male. The numbers have changed, but our labels and assumptions have not entirely. Hordes of women now graduate with arts degrees every year. Many aspire to write. According to research by Book Marketing Limited, women buy and read more fiction than men: 44 per cent of men compared to 77 per cent of women. Using the unscientific method of browsing through the contemporary fiction shelves of several bookshops, it seems that there are as many women novelists as men, as many female protagonists as male.

The number of women winning literary prizes has increased in recent years. In the 106-year history of the Nobel Prize for Literature only ten women have been crowned laureate; four of them in the past 15 years. Between 1948 and 1980 there were only five female Pulitzer-prizewinners; between 1980 and the present-day, there have been ten. Since the inception of the Booker Prize, nearly three decades ago, there have been 12 women winners. Until 2001, the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year had gone only once in 21 years to a woman; four out of the last five winners have been female.

Despite this evidence that there are serious women writers winning important literary awards, a recent survey by Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins, of Queen Mary, London University, suggests that women are still not the literary equal of men as far as general reading habits are concerned.

While women read books by both genders, Jardine and Watkins explain, men simply don’t read books by women. “Fiction by women remains ‘special interest’, with men finding it ‘much more difficult to “like” or “admire” a novel authored by a woman’ – for them ‘great’ writing was male writing.”

Jon Howells, of Waterstone’s, supported their conclusions: “Men . . . think that what women write doesn’t appeal to them.”

The broadcaster Muriel Gray, one of the judges for this year’s Orange Prize, suggested recently that the reason women authors fail to appeal across the genders is because that they focus on “small-scale domestic themes such as motherhood, boyfriend troubles and tiny family dramas”. We might equally say that Anna Karenina is a veritable catalogue of boyfriend troubles, that Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family all describe “tiny family dramas”.

Gray’s definition of motherhood as a “small-scale domestic theme” is particularly striking. Motherhood is a profoundly significant experience, not merely for millions of mothers, but for the whole species. Without mothers we are a dying race – no more great authors, no more prize committees. If an Orange Prize judge believes that motherhood is a trivial subject, things look bad for women.

One option for women who want to appeal across the sexes is gender disguise. If Jardine and Watkins et al are right, this doesn’t lose you any women readers but might win over a few men. Annie Proulx, one of the most successful authors of recent years, is a skilled male impersonator, having created the brilliantly troubled Quoyle in The Shipping News, Loyal in Postcards, and the oppressed cowboys of Brokeback Mountain. Iris Murdoch was studiously androgynous in fiction; her Booker-prizewinner The Sea, the Seastaged the dilemmas of the melancholy Charles Arrowby. The most recent Man Booker winner, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, is anchored in the story of a male judge.

This sort of exile and cunning is hardly ideal. It becomes boring to have to think about whether the stories you want to tell will be dismissed as “women's interest”.

A sense of frustration courses through the works of the underrated author Meg Wolitzer, whose books appear with splashy chick-lit covers, although she is one of the finest writers in America today. In The Wife, Wolitzer portrays a woman who denies herself a career as a novelist and becomes her husband's ghostwriter. She understands the unpalatable truths of literary reception, and opts out: “Everyone is still fascinated by the inner lives of men. Women are fascinated. Men win, hands down.”

It is hard to write freely, to write with real ambition, when you are stymied by such concerns, when you write knowing that half the race will be reluctant to read you, simply because of your sex. Yet much has changed in recent years; the circumstances for women who write are better than before. Perhaps it won’t be too long before the epithet “women writers” can be discarded altogether, and there will just be “writers”, expressing the manifold complexity of life on earth.

Click here to read a review of Joanna Kavenna's debut novel Inglorious

This article said, of course, a good many things that needed to be said--what bothered me most were all the utterly mad assertions made in the comments. My favorite was the idea that Jane Eyre "nested in" and "spoke from the conventions" of Bronte's time. That novel was an incendiary device thrown into Victorian literature, and to see it so misunderstood is amusing as well as, of course, rubbish.

Even more foolish is the way that some commenters want to drag genre fiction into the ring when what is being talked about here is literature--not chick lit, not mysteries, but whatever that mysterious thing is that we define as "good" literature (which also has far too much to do with a historical gender bias).

The fact is, I think, that women are better trained, through culture, to read and sympathize with the male viewpoint. Boys are not. This hasn't changed--a whole generation of little girls are growing up seeing a literary world through the eyes of Harry Potter.

Sophie, Houston, TX

J K Rowling is a woman, so are PD James, Ellis Peters and many others, they however do not write aga-sagas or chick-lit, they write cogent event led stories that do not deal with petty jealousies and middle-class hangups (or if they do they are the reasons for the events). They are more successful.

I have read some female authors and whilst some of them were intersting in their stories, their details were untutored and their reliance on long pointless descriptions of emotions were boring (it once took a character a page and half to say "Yes" to a question). It's not that women can't write well, but that most publishers prefer to pander to the 120-page angst ridden saga of domestic strife than a 600 page unput-downable good yarn when dealing with women. It can also be seen by what women prefer to watch (soaps) whilst men prefer movies.

Not sexist just different - et vive la difference.

Martin Wright, Birmingham,, England

I disagree that female authors per se, are unpopular. Patricia Cornwell, for instance sells very well, and her main character is female. It is more a problem of genre - I'm interested and entertained by a good detective story, I'm not interested in the angst of girl looking for a boyfriend and babies.

David Bannen, Oxford, UK

Anthony, Oakland, California -

I'm glad you enjoy Austen. But, no mention of the war? Have you read Mansfield Park? Persuasion? Pride and Prejudice?

Each of these turns on important details of the war: the militia being embodied & commissions easily available even to a penniless waster like Wickham, William Price's commission and Sir Thomas's worries about the situation in the Caribbean, the position of an ambitiout young officer in the RN in love with a baronet's daughter & his chance of success.

Certainly, Austen did not write like C.S.Forester. But to say she didn't mention the war (or slavery, or the position of the rural poor, or the misery of genteel poverty) is to ignore the evidence.

I'm glad you enjoy her novels. Next time you open one, please read it, not just turn the pages.

Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire

Boo Hoo, sob, sob. Why don't you take your whinge to the EOC (Everywoman's Opportunity Commission)? Never heard so much feminist drivel.

John MacKinnon, Lincoln, England

Unless men actively avoid reading books by women, simply because they are by women (which I don't think is the case, if so, its a shame for them) I don't see the big deal. (Really, does anyone pick up a novel, read the back, and say "This sounds interesting, I think I'll buy it," then look at the authors name, or the back inside cover and find out its by a woman and then put it back saying "never mind"!?

I know I dont, I'll fully admit I read more books by male authors, but its not because of some avoidance of books written by women, its just that men, as a whole, tend to write books that I enjoy more often.

Perhaps women just write more books that are geared towards a female audience, and hence less men buy them; thats not sexism, thats the opposite, thats everyone having the freedom to write, and read what they want, thats equality.

When women write books I'd enjoy, I pick them up, when they don't, I dont. its pretty simple.

Forrest, California, United States

Jane Austen, whom I really enjoy reading, managed to live and write her way through the period of the Napoleonic Wars without, to the best of my memory, ever once mentioning the Napoleonic Wars--to most men then and now, probably the most interesting and memorable aspect of the era.

Elvis Presley sang "A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action." Like it or not, it's what most guys tend to prefer in entertainment. Not long ago I was reading a review of a book about, among other things, popular British novels for boys and men a century ago about heroic cricket-players or other athletes, which quoted the comment of a feminist who served in WWI as a volunteer librarian in an English military hospital: "There was a certain sort of man who wouldn't read anything else."

What was true then is true now. My favorite books as a kid were about knights or other historical hardmen killing each other, or someone winning the big game. So--pardon the expression--just go ahead and shoot me.

Anthony , Oakland, California

I'm inclined to believe, based on my observations as a public librarian, that men's reluctance to read books by female authors begins in childhood. Boys in our society usually spend their early years with an absolute dearth of male role models. At least half of them do not live with their fathers. Few are able to spend much time with them. Their care givers and teachers are overwhelmingly female. All too often any form of reading is not seen as a "male" activity. When they do read, they want to read about guys doing "guy" things. Can one blame them, growing up as they do in an almost manless world? Unfortunately, those who make awards for children's and young adult literature, being mostly women, tend to pick books that boys would not care to read. Fewer and fewer males are learning to read anything at all, let alone learning to enjoy female authors.

D.L. Anderson, Crossett, U.S.A.

This is the one issue where I can actually see the both sides of the coin. I find it tiresome that when women write about “small-scale domestic themes such as motherhood, boyfriend troubles and tiny family dramas”, as Ms Gray so delightfully expresses, they are blamed for being shallow and fluffy and narrow-viewed. When men use those themes, they are considered to show great sensitivity and understanding for the pain and poetry of the everyday life.

Often, it is not men doing the labelling but us women ourselves. I also find it tiresome that some of my sex whine, endlessly, about how badly they are treated just simply because they are women. We see ourselves as prisoners of our gender rather than as human beings, individuals and writers of our own right.

As a human being and an individual, I write about things I find interesting and significant to myself. The readers of all sexes have the happy freedom to choose their reading materials according to those same guidelines.

Lisa, Oxford,

The men who think that Austen wrote 'chicklit' need to undertake that first, most demanding duty of a critic - read the text.

Yes, she wrote of what she knew, and she was a woman, so feminine details are always there. But what she wrote about, once you get past the surface, is universally human; stoicism v. romantic self-indulgence, the nature of duty, the nature of self-realisation. The theory that she ignored the social & political realities of her age does not survive even a cursory reading. Certainly she does not bang on like some writers, but in her quiet way she is a more philosphic writer than Eliot, & certainly than any of the Brontes.

In her own time she was read & admired by a wide reading public (both sexes, all ages) & this has not changed.

Chicklit? No - a small-scale genius, but one mentioned by her contemporary writing colleagues as fit to be set beside Shakespeare. Just literature, gentlemen. Try it, and see.

Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire

I well remember having to read dreary nineteenth century chick lit at school (Bronte, Austen et al). It's twenty years ago now, but the trauma is still fresh. They should have given us something by Tom Clancy or Lee Child. Would have done wonders for the boys' reading stats.

Heathcliffe, London,

This article appears to be entirely based on annecdotal evidence from some unheard of (female) researchers. If such a higher percentage of women read than men (77% to 44%) and men are still more popular authors it would suggest that women prefer books by men, not the other way round. Some of the best authors are female, are read universally and and are rightly celebrated. Are men better writers? Who knows, who cares? If, however, this article was an example of "female" writing the answer would be self explanatory.

Doug Bates, St. Albans,

I have to say that on the whole, I tend to read books written by men, and totally avoid the whole "chick lit" genre, as they are so badly written. What typically annoys me is the descriptions of people's clothes, their habits, that can go on for pages and pages. I was put off reading Jane Austen for years because of the endless descriptions of people's place in society etc. George Elliot is even worse.

There are, however, a few exceptions, such as Tony Morrison whose writing, even when descriptive is pure poetry.

Lisa, London,

Men tend to read book written by men because of the shared experience and viewpoint. Women tend to read books written by women for the same reason.
You might as well as why the English read more books by english authors than, say, Chinese authors.
Daft question realy.

Tom Syjes, hudderefield, uk

I'm happy to read anything so long as I never have to endure anything so bad again as the current holder of the Whitbread/Costa prize, "The Tenderness of Wolves". Unreadable, dire, laboured. Happens to be written by a female; this didn't strike me as a reason for celebration, as I tossed my copy aside with a vigour that would have pleased Groucho. That this book outpolled "Restless" by William Boyd in the same prize is very sad.

Graeme Archer, Hackney, London, UK

Why don't men read more 'literature' by women? Because, with a few notable exceptions (Amy Tan, Lisa See, Mary Wesley) women write weak, gushing, sentimental drivel. Why are women so obsessed with gender and how it always does them down - except, of course, when they use it to gain advantage? This is just another example of self-indulgent female bleating. Only women bleed.

KEVIN MCKENNA, Lucca, Italy

I am much more interested in novels written by women, myself. It has to do, no doubt, with a woman's shared point of view, but the main reason I don't read as many male novelists is that the majority have a distorted and disappointing understanding of women. I am just not convinced and interested by the female characters of most male authors. I require fascinating females, and for that I must turn to women authors.

Nothing personal, guys.

Ann @ Zen of Writing, NY, NY, USA

I don't think that 'women's fiction' is unappealing unless it happens to be British. The classics (Austin, Brontes, Eliot) always seem to take place in large drawing rooms, schools and country houses and the contemporaries venture to the office (Helen Fielding) the chocolate shop (Joanna Harris) and war time London (Andrea Levy) and whilst Small Island is a good book, it is a gem amongst a pile of chilcklit.

I can't think of a British female author to rival Donna Tartt, Margaret Atwood or Lionel Shriver. Then again, I can't think of a British male author capable of comparison to Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Gaddis, Steven Amidon, Carl Hiaasen, Tom Wolf, Paul Auster etc.

My argument is that the nub of this has nothing to do with gender, but most men (understandably in way) think that it has. What a pity to miss out then on the brilliant questioning of insctinctual motherhood in the thriller 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' because of this.

Alicia Anderson, London,

Is there nothing the 'wimmins' brigade cannot leave to the choice of the individual? If men do not read the output of women writers, it's not some male conspiracy. It's because they don't enjoy them. Is it to become obligatory for everyone to have 50% of the books they read written by women just to fill the quota? The very fact that such an article appears in a major newspaper, worryingly suggests that the PC brigade may well push for such a quota. It doesn't matter if it's the workplace, sports, clubs or, in this case, writing. If the evidence of free choice suggests that women are not as good as men at something, only a conspiracy can be considered the reason. If they cannot write novels that men find interesting, women should stop complaining that men won't buy them.

Bob Finbow, Haverhill, England

Lydia from Cambridge. You are mistaken if you think that we men are "so uninterested in what women have to say about life on earth". We ARE interested, but we wish that you could learn to say it more concisely!
(And judging by the tone of your post, you really need to get yourself on an anger management course before it consumes you!)

Anthony, London,

I read what I enjoy - doesn't everybody? If I tend to reject "women's writing" - I mean looking at the books in the shop, then putting them back on the shelf - that's because the writing isn't attractive, for one reason or another.
Boredom is one reason - "women's writing"-type books are (to a great extent) written FOR women, and deal with things we chaps aren't interested in. If you want to attract us, you've got to put
that sort of action into your work which isn't motivated entirely by the desire for love, marriage, "stable relationships", home and family, and so on.
We want - well - ADVENTURE, with (often) plenty of danger, the NEW, the STRANGE, the UNEXPECTED; things such as NATURAL OBSTACLES, or ENEMIES, or TERRIBLE DISASTERS, to be overcome by courage, obstinacy, force, ingenuity. but (and this is what I want to stress), we want to know that our Hero is the a lover of a woman who is, in the end, more important to him than mere achievements.

Priscus, Harrow , Middlesex., England, UK

I didn't consider Graham Greene lowbrow literature but then I'm a scientist so probably quite ignorant in cultural terms. I'm also a woman who generally prefers to read male writers not by conscious choice just by what's present in my bookcase.

gabrielle, london,

I must be regarded as a very amatuer reader, and no doubt
to most, a real peasant. But, get out of a city and both sexes tend to leave scatterings of mistakes, or just leave things out! [Playwrights often do]. Really, I feel neither sex has sufficient deep down knowledge in many cases. I left primary school aged 11 knowing how a 4 stroke motorcycle engine worked, 60 years ago. How many adults of either sex know? So many can't describe driving a car properly, surprising how it lets a story down.Hammond Innes knew!

DAVID VINTER, Louth, Lincs., uk.

I base my reading on subject, not author, although if i find an author I like I tend to stick with them, which is why I have a pile of books by Tess Gerritsen. I am more concerned that we have a special prize for womens literature, when if one were proposed for men it would get shouted down. Surely it cannot be because women cannot compete on a level playing field.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Whenever I browse the literary section in Waterstones I am always dismayed to see what I would call 'chic-lit' dominating the shelves. Lttle stories about twenty somethings struggling in relationships, dating, being pregnant, but always glugging down gallons of lattes in starbucks, invariably in London. Sorry, but as a 28 year old male, I am simply not interested in this narrow peep hole on a sub section of society. Did I say sorry? Well actually I'm not. Get over it. They say write about what you know. Is what 'we' know becoming a little bit dull, a little bit stale, a lttle bit shallow?

Shane, Guildford, uk

Lowbrow literature is very gendered. Soft porn romances for secretaries, spy thrillers for pizza delivery men, reflecting aspirations.

Middlebrow writing by women is full of feminist garbage. A man need only read a couple to get the flavour. Writing by men is much more varied.

When we move to high literature there simply aren't all that many women authors. Not zero; Jane Austen and the Brontes have a place in the canon, but not many. Write a decent novel and both sexes will read it.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

“Men simply don’t read books by women”. Really? Where are the statistics? A totally unscientific trawl through the bookcrossing lists shows plenty of men who read books by women (though they may not buy them – is that the difference?)

I can’t speak for men as a whole (believe it or not, we are all different) but over the last year I’ve read 23 books by (18) male authors, and 23 by (13) female authors. Not by design – my choices came from browsing the library shelves, raiding the bookshop special offers, personal recommendations, and ‘set books’ from a book group.

By all means discard the term ‘women writers’ as long as you also dispense with ‘male readers’!

Julian, Macclesfield, UK

Though there are exceptions (Dorothy Parker being one), as a man I rarely read literature written by women for pleasure. This isn't to disparage woman writers. I just don't find their choice in subject matter, the manner in which they unfold a story, and their prose style as interesting as - again, generally speaking - their male counterparts. It may be a matter of taste, or something to do with the neurological rift between the brain of your typical male / typical female. I don't know. Women writers just lack the punch, the pitch, the _courage_ of male writers. Whereas the best writers tend to wrestle against convention, to push out, innovate, conquer and claim new territory (think of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina), women tend to nest in, and speak from the conventions of their time (Jane Erye, Middlemarch, current chick-lit). Given the choice between these two realms, I will always choose the former.

Swede Holloway, New York, NY

it is indeed outrageous that we are still talking about women's writing as if it is still remarkable that women write at all, like Johnson and his dancing dog. All-female prizes remain necessary only because the literary mainstream still passes over works by women. The statistics quoted by Kavenna show some improvement thought it remains shocking that so few women have won major literary prizes such as the Nobel and the Pulitzer. I think men should be ashamed of themselves for being so uninterested in what women have to say about life on earth - it is still the case that the male perspective is regarded as representing 'humanity' as a whole whereas the female perspective is never accepted as universal in this way. We have a very long way to go before our society is truly civilised.

Lydia, Cambridge,

There is nothing small scale about domestic themes, nothing tiny about family dramas. This is the fabric of life.
Character development, psychology and the great generalities can be set against any background. These things are not automatically elevated in the work place, battlefield or courtroom.

ana salote, weston-s-mare, uk

Muriel Gray is wrong in defining women's writing so narrowly. I write historical fiction from the male viewpoint: Blood, guts, executions and all, no holds barred. Try writing a first person account of someone locked up in the Tower for a long miserable Summer, Autumn and Winter before being 'tried' and executed and see if it matches the 'small-scale domestic theme' Ms Gray visualises for us lady writers. Sorry, Ms Gray, writers are writers, no matter which gender they happen to belong to. And we write that which interests and absorbs us, no matter which time period or gender interests and absorbs us. I would suggest you look a little wider before making such sweeping assumptions.

Dorothy Davies, Ryde, IOW