From The Digital Reader:
In August author Catherine Nichols went public with her account of sending her novel manuscript to literary agents under a male pseudonym. A writing sample sent to 50 agents in her own name resulted in only two manuscript requests. Seventeen out of 50 agents requested the same materials from “George Leyer”.
Were the agents exhibiting a subconscious gender bias that assumes the superiority of male authors? Or were they responding to the practicalities of a reviewing culture and audience that can overlook or even reject women’s literature?
Women’s fiction is reviewed less often than men’s in major publications. Even though women buy two-thirds of all books sold in the UK, they are much less likely to be reviewing books in male-dominated literary magazines.
And some audiences, such as young boys, are presumed to be entirely unwilling to read books written by women. J.K. Rowling’s publisher felt that an obviously female name like “Joanne” would dissuade boys from reading the debut Harry Potter novel.
. . . .
Most discussions of contemporary women writers who have adopted male pseudonyms or initials to mask their sex draw connections between these writers and a long line of literary women, such as the Bronte sisters and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), who have published under assumed names.
What is less recognised is that the cultural reasons behind women writers concealing their names have shifted dramatically since the nineteenth century.
Today female names vanish to avoid industry and reader perceptions of what women’s fiction is like. Historically, in the British tradition, female names were hidden because of the perceived inappropriateness of women writing novels. To understand this difference, it is important to know that the very act of reading novels was heavily policed for girls and women in the nineteenth century.
In The Woman Reader, Kate Flint shows how girls’ and women’s reading, especially of material deemed frivolous or escapist, was a subject of great public concern and debate. Any novel reading that might detract from a woman’s role as a wife and mother within the home was perceived as a threat to the very foundation of society.
Likewise, women authors challenged expectations of women’s domestic and maternal roles. Budding writer Charlotte Brontë received the following comments in a discouraging letter from English poet laureate Robert Southey in 1837:
Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
Link to the rest at The Digital Reader
No mention of George Sand here on TPV or in the OP? Sad… 🙁
Here is the thread when the original article by Catherine Nichols was mentioned. The comments in the thread are most revealing.
What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2015/08/what-i-learned-sending-my-novel-out-under-a-male-name/
BTW, “George Leyer” is a great pen name. Since that’s not the actual pen name she used, everyone should feel free to use that pen name. I’ve certainly added it to my list of potential pen names.
Re J.K.Rowling – if the main character had been Hermione, I suspect the Harry Potter books would not have been as successful, pseudonym or no.
Nevertheless, the perceived gender of the author also influences the reader’s response to a new, unknown author. The sad fact is that readers in genres seen as ‘female’ – e.g. Romance – respond better to female authors, while those seen as ‘male’ – e.g. science fiction – do the exact opposite. Perhaps because female authors are seen as ‘soft’.
Or not ‘serious’ enough.
There have been exceptions in science fiction – Ursula K.LeGuin and Margaret Atwood immediately spring to mind – but I follow the example of C.J.Cherryh and use a gender neutral author name.
It would be nice to declare myself a female author, but as an Indie, it’s hard enough to be noticed in my genre without alienating potential readers as well. Pragmatism vs principle. :/
I also write under a woman’s name. I sold a ton of books writing under a woman’s name…
Ain’t that cultural AND phallocrat appropriation ?
I really couldn’t care less. I’m a writer. I write.
“And some audiences, such as young boys, are presumed to be entirely unwilling to read books written by women.”
Because boys are a bunch of doody-heads who think all girls have cooties?
Or because boys have learned the hard way that most female writers offer little of interest to them?
Hiding the name “Joanne” behind the initial J might have kept boys from being discouraged from reading the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, but in short order everyone knew who — and what — J.K. is and it didn’t stop boys from reading the subsequent books. It’s not that they won’t read books by women, but that they have learned to be wary.
And who’s fault is that?
“And who’s fault is that?”
Society’s, for teaching boys that girls/women are not relatable to them and have nothing of interest to offer them other than appeasement of their base appetites, and that anything girly/female is inherently inferior and should be avoided by any self-respecting boy.
Certainly not female authors for not specifically catering their books to what they assume the lowest-common-denominator version of boys would want to read.
If you don’t think parents/teachers/librarians don’t influence this, check out this very discouraging blog from Shannon Hale about one of her school visits: http://shannonhale.tumblr.com/post/112152808785/no-boys-allowed-school-visits-as-a-woman-writer
Or maybe they just don’t enjoy reading the same things, is it so terrible to think that boys and girls are different and could like different things.
Personally, I think it’s great.
But if you just assume that all boys and all girls like different things, and celebrate how “great” that is, then any boys who like anything other than the accepted “boy” things will very quickly learn to keep quiet about it, and not pursue those interests. The same goes for girls (though to a lesser extent, since masculinity carries higher prestige, so a girl who likes “boy” things is not judged as harshly as vice versa). No one would be harmed, and many people would be helped, by ditching that assumption.
Not “all boys” and “all girls”, but enough boys like different things than enough girls that it’s a reasonable generalization. (Obviously, I’m never getting a job at Google.)
Eh. Still a generalization we’d be better off without, since as I said no one’s life would be significantly diminished without it, but a number of lives are significantly diminished by nurturing it. Read the link above to Shannon Hale’s blog post and see if you don’t feel for that little boy who was ashamed to ask for a copy of The Princess in Black.
What we have gotten thanks to those who willfully ignore that generalization is generation after generation of young men who do not read books at all after being forced by teachers to read books that bore them to tears. Most of those teachers are women, of course, and some of them — as has been documented by posts here at The Passive Voice — literally* hate the boys in their charge, and many more view the boys as girls who refuse to behave properly (until properly
druggedmedicated, of course).*And I mean literally, not figuratively.
I can testify to this personally. I was identified early as a reader, but I wasn’t reading the right things. Conan and GI Joe weren’t good enough I guess. So my teachers, 100% female from the classroom through the library and main office, foisted all manner of ‘appropriate’ bullcrap on me.
Oh how they bemoaned my lack of interest in real books. Morons.
I definitely agree that reading and literature are often taught in ways that make children hate them, but it doesn’t seem logical to blame this on women, especially women as a whole–if anything the literary canon that so many schoolchildren are unready to have shoved down their throats is overwhelmingly written and promoted by men. If the elementary to high-school teachers who get stuck with the actual shoving are more female than male, that’s probably because sub-university-level teaching has long been one of the few professions open to women.
I haven’t seen any posts here by teachers who literally hate boys, but I’d be willing to look at any specific examples you wish to point out. The closest my own experience comes is teachers who hate children, especially outspoken, boisterous children, in general–as an outspoken, boisterous little girl, I myself ran afoul of several of the kind of teachers you’d probably describe as hating boys, when really what they hate is the kind of behavior that is perhaps more common in, but by no means limited to, boys.
The ideal is to let kids be into what they are into without shame or judgment. But that’s not what happens. The issue is the shaming of boys who like boy things. Pathologizing their interests and behaviors as being societal ills. The results have been dire.
The boy who likes princess books is encouraged to do so by teachers. They probably love it. See it as a real win for their politically driven ideology. But he’s a kid, so he’s shy about standing out, because most boys aren’t into that stuff. That happens.
But that kid isn’t oppressed like most the other boys in his class who are shamed by authorities for being into the typical male power fantasy type stories and could give a rip about princesses.
Those boys are often seen as being a negative expression of society, something that needs to be fixed. If they could just fix society, then all boys would be into princess books.
It’s unscientific and misandrist, but sadly it’s a common point of view.
It doesn’t matter how much you try to re-engineer them, boys will tend towards big strong dudes, sword fights and finger guns. Denying this denies the truckloads of research done on the biological basis of behavior, and instead defers to politically driven diatribes on masculinity.
And the proof is in the pudding, decades of women running lower education and boys still tend towards certain things, so do girls. This trend is true across all societies as well, no matter how free or draconian. In fact the freer and more equal a society, the more the interests of boys and girls diverge. Freedom to choose, boys and girls tend to choose differently.
And in the end, what’s wrong with boys wanting to be big strong heroes who get the girl, saves their family, etc…? That’s exactly what we want them to aspire to be. Heroes. Active. Do gooders. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a princess either, whether it be the sword fighting kind or the one who gets saved.
I honestly don’t think anyone except straw men set up by gender essentialists would claim that “If they could just fix society, then all boys would be into princess books.” More like, some kids (mostly girls, but who cares?) would like princess books, some kids (mostly boys, but who cares?) would like superhero books, some would like both, and no child would ever be shamed or made to feel like less of a boy or less of a girl for what they like.
“Freedom to choose, boys and girls tend to choose differently.” True…but I don’t understand why anyone who’s so confident of that fact needs to trumpet it so constantly, when the princess-loving girls and superhero-loving boys shouldn’t need the extra encouragement to like what they naturally like, but the trumpeting does hurt and suppress the princess-loving boys and superhero-loving girls. In other words, if X doesn’t make a difference to the majority, but hurts a significant minority, then if we can stop doing X without unreasonable effort, maybe we should.
There’s no disagreement. I’m not sure what you are talking about there. Let kids be into whatever, no biggie.
The point I’m making is that it’s not at all handled that way in reality and this is having a measurable and obvious negative impact on the educational performance of young boys.
I wish that first sentence was a strawman, but it’s mainstream social science. Behavior is entirely learned, and boy typical behavior is bad and needs to be unlearned. All of which is debunked, easily, by real science, but politics are strong in education departments.
I talk about this stuff with homeschool parents quite a bit, who ditched the public system over the politics I’m pointing out. I’m not inventing this wholesale. It’s backed up by stats and experience related from friends and family.
But by all means, look into it yourself. I could be overstating. I don’t think so, but hey, I’m wrong all the time.
I’m not entirely sure where you derived those notions of how things work these days from, but I think your anger is misplaced. To say the least.
Fact: there are topics that boys tend to want to read about more than girls do, and vice-versa. Most boys would rather not read books about other boys talking about feelings and whatnot, while most girls would rather not read about other girls making things go boom.
Now, the authors are probably not to blame–the publishers probably are, due to poor marketing. But somehow I doubt that it’s “the patriarchy.”
Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation.
To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
Say what?