The canon, yes the canon. It’s a cute little collection, a special A-list group of the best type of cool nerds – writers, playwrights and poets. These are big headliners and big names, so you are guaranteed to know a few at least, probably from GCSE or even PSHE lessons. Names like Shakespeare, John Keats, Wordsworth, John Donne, William Blake, and Charles Dickens. What do they all have in common? They are all white, dead men.
Okay, so we have a few female writers. The legends of Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen are so brilliant they are mythical. But honestly, notice the size difference in the lists, you have eyes. So why aren’t we acknowledging this? I mean come on. According to The Guardian in 2023: “Only 2% of GCSE students study a book written by a female author, according to research by campaigners who are urging exam boards to diversify their set text lists to curb the rise of misogynistic views.”
In a survey for Voice of 12 students about equal representation, all 12 said that women aren’t seen enough in English Literature syllabuses at GCSE and A-Level. Interestingly, eight of the 12 said they “didn’t notice” the lack of women until reading the question. This goes to show the need to increase female representation in English.
One student also added: “In A-level Literature and Language, most of the women in the novels are treated very poorly … they are all written as being different to men”. These powerful words represent the new generation of students, who think, as one student nicely said: “It needs to be updated because times have changed”. These wonderful students – other comments included “we deserve to be noticed more” and “most pieces are written from the perspective of a man without giving the woman a voice” – are the driving catalysts to make the canon a fully-fledged feminist one. It’s also so incredibly true, no matter in what phase of writing from medieval to contemporary English, that the female voice is still oppressed. A prime example is the fact that JK Rowling had to use a male pseudonym to publish in 1997. And that was quite literally the start year of Generation Z, so not that long ago.
This needs fixing. People wonder why young boys are rude and laugh during serious assemblies in lessons and school. It's the blind leading the blind. How can we educate future men on feminism when all they learn about in the English curriculum is men? Women in most GCSE literature are the typical literary stereotypes of women – passive, obedient, selfless, quiet. They usually only serve a few purposes – to thicken the amount of characters, to have babies, or to die as tragic waste. Rest in peace, Lady Macduff.
The Bechdel Test
Cartoonist Alison Bechdel came up with the famous 'Bechdel Test'
(Credit: KG Schneider)
This brings me to my next call out. What is with the Bechdel test? Coined by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, it has three criteria to pass. One, at least two women are featured within the piece. Two, these women have to talk to each other, at least twice. The final and most important rule is that these women have to talk about something not related to men – like yoga or how expensive Freddos are getting.
Something that is even more crazy is that, according to M-A Chronicle, “28% of English books pass the Bechdel Test, while 51% do not. 21% of books barely pass, with only a couple lines making it pass”. That is gross. Why should men get all the speech? Anything you can do, I can do better! Honestly, Betty Hutton got it right in Annie Get Your Gun. Like, for real.
Why can’t literature reflect real life on stage? If we were to reflect real life nowadays on stage, you’d be lucky to shut me up. God forbid I end up as Blanche Dubois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire because I would only need a few words to express the inner feminine rage against the “gaudy seed bearer” himself, Stanley Kowalski, and his mini Stanleys in the audience. I often find I want to shove a feminist boot up a misogynistic you-know-where. And if that offends you, I'm sorry but it shouldn’t. Everyone should be a feminist.
How does this apply to today’s society?
In America, the states of Texas, Florida, and Oregon have banned the holy grail of blunt feminist books: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Honestly, I'm usually a peaceful person, but if I lived in one of those three places, I'd be a bootlegger for books. Me and The Handmaid’s Tale would go out like Bonnie and Clyde, for real. Dead or alive.
Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale
(Credit: Mark Hill)The age rating for The Handmaid’s Tale is between 14 to 18. I read it at 15 and it was a brilliantly confusing book, with all that typical postmodernist dystopian fragmentation. It’s been banned from all schools and libraries in these states because it was displaying feminist rights, LGBT characters, and it was quite sexually graphic, Shock horror! If you really want to protect women, then instead of banning The Handmaid’s Tale, put more safety measures in place for vulnerable women who feel the need to hold keys in their hands walking home in the winter. Maybe those places don’t have the same ideals as the book and the rest of the developed world. Fine, play catch up later, but don’t limit people from learning about such fundamental factors of their identity.
In 2023, NPR reported that, while women once wrote less than 10% of the new books published in the US each year, they now publish more than 50% of them – and the average female author sells more books than the average male one. See, much better. And this is great because I can listen to both Shakespeare and Toni Morrison, rather than just Shakespeare and his over 100 sonnets. Who doesn’t like options and variety?
So, to conclude, people need to be more self-aware. Women writers, poets and playwrights, we will keep doing what we do best: slay and write. Everyone should read because it makes you as smart as Marylin Monroe who, fun fact, is estimated to have had a higher IQ than Einstein. Keep fighting, people, and make sure you have a cup of tea whilst reading; it’s the best.
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