“The Changing Face of Women in Fiction”

The Center for Education of Women invited mystery novelist Sara Paretsky to speak yesterday evening. I went to the event, intrigued by the advertisement: “Prepare to be inspired by a woman who has spent her life giving voice to ordinary people who ‘can’t speak for themselves, who feel powerless and voiceless in the larger world.’”

She shared a few facts and reflections about how womyn have been historically excluded and underrepresented in the world of crime novels – as writers, critics and characters. Among them:
- Female characters typically occupy the space as one of the four V’s: virgin, victim, villain, or vamp.
- Men out speak womyn in texts.
- Male authors are seven times more likely to have their books be reviewed.

Paretsky defined her career as an antithesis to these norms and shared some of her own struggles with asserting herself as a female crime novelist. Early in the lecture she offered this quote by Virginia Woolf from A Room of One’s Own:

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

To me, this was the most inspiring part of her lecture. Her work as a combative political act against male dominance and power crystallized. I think Woolf’s quote offers a unique, highly translatable (to many different fields) platform for feminist activism and agency. Womyn were (are) expected to be the invisible support, unpaid labor, and submissive lover servicing a male counterpart – it is that role that props up a culture favoring men, run by men. Removing oneself from that position is the beginning of huge social change.

By: Lexie Tourek

(Stock photo courtesy of sxc.hu)