In the Beginning…

      Women in literature is a relatively new concept. A hundred years ago, Women weren’t in the things that we read in a classroom and it was a brand new concept to incorporate them into the literature we are so commonly reading today. To look at Women and the struggles that they went through, we must start where we can pinpoint a start in the rise of women in literature.

    

        During the first part of the 18th century, women’s writing was scarce, their writing was very private mostly consisting of letters, diaries, journals, and religious tracts, while most of women’s works were mainly published only in newspapers. After the revolutionary war, women’s education was drastically reformed and women were becoming more confident in their writing. Women writers were not very common in this era, but women like Mercy Otis Warren (first American women playwright), Phillis Wheatly (first African American women poet), Judith Sargent Murray (first feminist women of letters) and Susan Rowson (the first American Novelist) introduced the idea of women writing as a profession and encouraged women to be the best they can be. These four women shaped the way women were viewed in a literary audience. In this era, these writers encouraged young women to be educated and “to aspire” and to have ambition to succeed with “avidity application” and study and become the best you can be. And this is where it all began.

Mercy Otis Warren

Phillis Wheatly

Judith Sargent Murray

      

   

Susan Rowson

              To look at the how women effected literature, we must first look at the struggles that women went through to be recognized and be strong at a group. The events and the movement throughout women in history can be separated into three different parts called waves. These waves represent events that occurred in the past centuries that have shaped how women had progressed throughout the decades and fought for equal rights. In the first wave from the late 1700s and the early 1900s, women writers focused on the inequalities of the sexes. During this time activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment

Susan B Anthony

Victoria Woodhull

       

             The second wave feminism was in the early 1960s-late 1970s it focused on the building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories put forth action with the American Civil Rights movement.

 

Simone de Beauvoir

       

Elaine Showalter

Lastly the third wave feminism (early 1990s-present): resisting the perceived essentialist ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism. Third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile feminism with the concerns of the black community and the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform". Women’s writing has not only shaped the way that America has come to have equality with all genders and races, but it changed the way women were viewed and have contributed many great works in literature and changed the way readers read and understand literature. 

Alice Walker