TOW #18 "Can a Woman Be a 'Great American Novelist'?"

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/09/can_a_woman_be_a_great_american_novelist.html

This is an article from the online magazine Slate by Meghan O'Rourke. Published in 2010, the article explores an issue that has been and continues to be a troubling one in our society: the literary gender gap. The article begins by referencing a cultural debate that had sprung up at the time, centering around the novel Freedom, which had been recently released at the time, and its author Johnathan Franzen. O'Rourke then poses the question of whether the book would have received the same praise and attention had it been written by a female, and arguably, she writes, it would not. The article then goes on to describe how gender bias affects who we tend to attribute merit to. O'Rourke effectively uses the contemporary example to start the discussion, and then incorporates other examples of female and male authors and how their work is received. She also includes several anecdotes to show how gender bias is present in how women are viewed and treated in the literary world. For example, O'Rourke writes "to sit with female writers... is, inevitably, to trade war stories...There's the author who sent out a proposal about John Lennon and learned that editors worried readers might not believe a woman could write with authority about a musician" (O'Rourke 2). These personal and all-to-real stories demonstrate how ensconced bias is in our society and how it influences the way editors and publishers, the media, and the general public view female writers. O'Rourke also connects the issues she explores in this article to how the implementation of blind auditions improved the representation of female musicians in orchestras. This was something I found very interesting, as it was an issue described in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink which I read as my IRB last semester (http://rebekahapengblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/tow-14-irb-post.html). As O'Rourke shows, we tend to think highly of a man's ability quicker than we are of a woman's, whether it be in writing or in music or some other area entirely, and I already know from Gladwell that it is because our unconscious thinking can easily be influenced by prejudice and stereotypes. Ultimately, O'Rourke points out how gender bias is active in the way we view and treat books and their authors. Though not trumpeting a call to action, O'Rourke does imply that we should be aware of this and work on counteracting it.