Post by account_disabled on Jan 1, 2024 13:06:43 GMT 5.5
Being an author today : what does it really mean? Strange that a man should write such a post and ask himself this question. However, the idea came to me from a comment by Tenar on my article on the Bechdel test . Does an author really only write stories for female readers? With this post I would like to try to dispel the myth of women as authors of novels for women only . Ok, I don't read many books by female authors, although I follow some of them with great interest and I'm slowly reading all their works. But we will return to this later. First let's talk about women and the prejudices about the works they can write . You all know that many authors published under pen names, precisely to hide that they were women.
Authors who signed themselves with a pseudonym History is full of authors who published books signing with a pseudonym or using full names and then a surname. Here are some. Louisa May Alcott : she signed Little Women with her real name, but at that time, we are in the mid-19th century, female authors were not held in high regard, so Alcott signed other works, in the Gothic thriller genre, with the name AM Barnard. Mary Ann Evans : perhaps better known by her male name George Eliot. She wanted to distance herself Special Data from the female novelists of the time and ensure that her works were taken seriously. Charlotte Brontë : the author of Jane Eyre , who initially signed her books with the male name of Currer Bell, again due to the prejudices of the time. Karen Blixen : Danish author ( Out of Africa ), who signed her works with the male name of Isak Dinesen.
Perhaps Blixen used her pseudonym because she came from a well-known family. Nora Roberts : author of romance novels, wanted to devote herself to crime literature and chose the male pseudonym JD Robb to reach new groups of readers, as she wrote on her website. Are we really sure this is the reason? Joanne Rowling : she signs her Harry Potter with the name of JK Rowling, precisely because of the prejudice against female authors who write fantasy. Does a woman only write stories for women? Male pseudonyms for publishing , due to prejudice. Now, I can very well understand that in the 19th century there were prejudices about women and that there was a tendency to think that an author only wrote about "women's issues", as Tenar wrote in the comment on the post on the Bechdel test. But that they still exist in the 21st century is absurd.
Authors who signed themselves with a pseudonym History is full of authors who published books signing with a pseudonym or using full names and then a surname. Here are some. Louisa May Alcott : she signed Little Women with her real name, but at that time, we are in the mid-19th century, female authors were not held in high regard, so Alcott signed other works, in the Gothic thriller genre, with the name AM Barnard. Mary Ann Evans : perhaps better known by her male name George Eliot. She wanted to distance herself Special Data from the female novelists of the time and ensure that her works were taken seriously. Charlotte Brontë : the author of Jane Eyre , who initially signed her books with the male name of Currer Bell, again due to the prejudices of the time. Karen Blixen : Danish author ( Out of Africa ), who signed her works with the male name of Isak Dinesen.
Perhaps Blixen used her pseudonym because she came from a well-known family. Nora Roberts : author of romance novels, wanted to devote herself to crime literature and chose the male pseudonym JD Robb to reach new groups of readers, as she wrote on her website. Are we really sure this is the reason? Joanne Rowling : she signs her Harry Potter with the name of JK Rowling, precisely because of the prejudice against female authors who write fantasy. Does a woman only write stories for women? Male pseudonyms for publishing , due to prejudice. Now, I can very well understand that in the 19th century there were prejudices about women and that there was a tendency to think that an author only wrote about "women's issues", as Tenar wrote in the comment on the post on the Bechdel test. But that they still exist in the 21st century is absurd.