A feminist analysis

 

 

How to Suppress Women's Writing

by Joanna Russ

University of Texas Press

1983

 

Janet Frame is one of the women writers who have been subject to several of the common methods that are used to ignore, condemn or belittle the work of female authors:

1. Prohibitions 

Prevent women from access to the basic tools for writing.

2. Bad Faith 

Unconsciously create social systems that ignore or devalue women's writing.

3. Denial of Agency 

Deny that a woman wrote it.

4. Pollution of Agency 

Show that their art is immodest, not actually art, or shouldn't have been written about.

5. The Double Standard of Content 

Claim that one set of experiences is considered more valuable than another.

6. False Categorizing 

Incorrectly categorise women artists as the wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, or lovers of male artists.

7. Isolation 

Create a myth of isolated achievement that claims that only one work or short series of poems is considered great.

8. Anomalousness 

Assert that the woman in question is eccentric or atypical.

9. Lack of Models 

Reinforce a male author dominance in literary canons in order to cut off women writers' inspiration and role models.

10. Responses 

Force women to deny their female identity in order to be taken seriously.

11. Aesthetics 

Popularise aesthetic works that contain demeaning roles and characterisations of women.