The phenomenon of “The Female Gaze” starts and ends with justice for female representation – it no longer places focus on female curvature, with all its bouncing parts, or the just-so-passive personality of the supposed heroine.
For almost the entirety of the existence of “literature” itself, the voices of women were marginalized, and crucial female perspectives were removed from novels – even when sometimes the plot was centralised around women (for example, in Nabokov’s Lolita). The scarce number of female writers able to publish and spread their work were either underappreciated or shrouded, occasionally hidden under pseudonyms, due to the male-domination of literature, and their masculine narrative lenses.
No man will be able to convey the female experience, with all its emotions, traumas and rocky relationships built along the way. So, seeing the world through a woman’s eyes is irreplaceable. Therefore, books written by women for women are in themselves desired – much more than the inappropriately sexualised women in male-dominated literature – and here I will celebrate their existence.
Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar to create an elaborate, emotional portrayal of a woman’s struggle with mental health imbalances and identity issues, perhaps created by the constant grappling with hormones, pains and a seemingly never-ending battle with men for power in everyday life.
Then, there is Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, telling of sisterhood, ambition and representing a range of female experiences, from personal growth towards a strong career, to fulfilment in the somewhat traditional role of a mother, and wife, relating to a female audience in mass.
Following this with the dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, creates an alternative female perspective – one much more focussed upon exploring the continued oppression of women, and further commodification of them. This grants the female reader with an equally relatable point of view, addressing the more haunting and gruesome parts of the female experience.
In the more present day, we find novels such as Sally Rooney’s Normal People to create resonance with a female audience, with a modern exploration of romance, intimacy – both physical and emotional – and societal stress placed upon young women, female readers everywhere feel heard, and understood, especially regarding serious topics such as their sexuality and relationship without their prior gender’s sexualisation at the hands of male writers.
Women-written literature provides its feminine readers with a sense of community, validation and empowerment, reflecting the shared experience of womanhood that has been overlooked or wrongly portrayed for too, too long. Women need to write for women.
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