The instructor, a big D.H. fan and inspiration for my choice of topic being a big fat misogynist himself, loathed it. Slashed it all over with red ink and gave me an A. Almost killed him.

For instance, what you and I would now consider a particular form of misogyny was a significant feature of the postwar Beat generation of poets and novelists and other artists. As with Lawrence and the Bloomsberries, the curiosity is that a number of the best writers or strongest cultural figures of that generation were women, and yet the women, even if they were the most talented of the bunch, played into and up to the culture defined by the male "heavies" - perhaps because they perceived no alternative? (There being none?)

Typically, the Beat men, like Lawrence, would claim that their love of women, their celebration of women - or at least of sex - was revolutionary defiance of bourgeois propriety, and of course it was. But it was also essentialist patriarchal bullsnot of another, much older kind.

Worth noting that those guys, when hetero, did tend to latch on to exceptionally strong women. Frieda Lawrence was one hell of a liberated woman.

There is, actually, an interesting social-historical investigation to be done through this lens. When I think back on classic writers and misogyny, it strikes me that the worst literary misogyny begins in the late C18 / early C19, at a time when larger numbers of women were becoming literate. C20 male literature is often viciously misogynistic - to me, Ernest Hemingway is absolutely the worst sexual paranoiac of the major writers in English - and interestingly, just at a time when significant numbers of the best writers happen to be ... women.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

There always have been great women writers, of course, and there have been periods when that did not seem to bother the men. La Rochefoucauld was perfectly happy to collaborate with Mme de Lafayette, eg - to the extent of putting his name on a good deal of what she wrote! - but seriously, he took her seriously, and so did the world of the time.

Through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, there are many examples of great thinkers and artists collaborating with privileged, talented women, and while class is definitely the factor that keeps the numbers of women down, sex or sex-paranoia seldom seems to be.

How much of Shakespeare, eg, would anyone call misogynistic?

The more you think of it, the more and more misogyny looks like a modern (ie: C19+) disease, and the more and more it seems to have to do with the slow but steady liberation of large numbers of women.

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: skdadl ]

Very interesting to characterize misogyny as modern. . .

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Originally posted by Yst:
Joseph Conrad is a great writer, but he certainly treats women as just so much frivolous human cattle in the grand scheme of things.

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[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: Makwa ]

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Francine Prose in Harper's Magazine, Jun98, p61.. SCENT OF A WOMAN'S INK

"If Norman Mailer didn't exist, we might have had to invent the man who could utter, in Advertisements for Myself, history's most heartfelt, expansive confession of gynobibliophobia:
'I have a terrible confession to make-- I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them. Indeed I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale. At the risk of making a dozen devoted enemies for life, I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of the women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquille in mannequin's whimsy, or else bright and stillborn. Since I've never been able to read Virginia Woolf, and am sometimes willing to believe that it can conceivably be my fault, this verdict may be taken fairly as the twisted tongue of a soured taste, at least by those readers who do not share with me the ground of departure - that a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.'
Few critics have so boldly advanced this testicular definition of talent. More often, a male writer's true opinion must be extracted from the terms he uses to describe his female colleagues, from Walpole's calling Mary Wollstonecraft a "hyena in petticoats" ...

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In response to his notorious androcentric comments, a young woman attending a panel on modern American literature that featured 'Norm', asked from the audience: "For years and years I've been wondering, Mr. Mailer, when you dip your balls in ink, what color ink is it?"

[ 11 January 2006: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

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Originally posted by Makwa:
Conrad, despite his faults, shone a light on a place too terrible for most Europeans to consider.

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In my view, Conrad had NO FAULTS at all.

I am a touch annoyed at the person above who said Conrad is a guy's writer. Conrad is one of MY writers, FCS!

And besides: he was Polish.

fern hill, I think it would be fair at least to nominate Hemingway in this category. He was unquestionably a great writer (some of the time), and his influence on all C20 writing after him was huge. (His influence on all copy editors after him has been huge. )

I still remember the night I first read The Sun Also Rises, which is, in strictly formal terms, very close to Aristotelian perfection.

I started reading it in the evening and just couldn't stop. I read all night. The next morning I phoned the smartest feminist I knew, and all I had to tell her was what I had just done. "Come over right away," she said, and we spent the rest of the day crying and cursing.

Why was I so upset? Lady Brett. I had long suspected that that was what the men I knew fantasized about women, and there it was, on the page. The perfect woman: and she is ... a cool guy.

I knew it! I knew it! That's what the guys want! A cool guy!

And the cool guy in the novel ... has a war wound.

Like, how much more explicit does hetero fear of women have to get? I ask you?

But it is done beautifully - I give him that. The novel is a work of architecture. And all of his wives were great women.

Mailer. But then he's not much of a writer is he?

OK, Hemingway, for The short something life of Francis McComber.

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Originally posted by Tehanu:
I've yet to meet a woman who liked Catcher in the Rye.

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Now that's been taken care of.

Continue with what you were doing.

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

I nominate Candace Bushel for best misogynistic writer - Sex and the City, 4 Blondes and Trading Up. Not many redeemable female characters in her books.

I really enjoy Bret Easton Ellis and in fact, he's one of my favorite writers.

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: Stargazer ]

"Voltaire said the composition of a tragedy requires testicles. . .Lord knows what Joanne Baillie does—I suppose she borrows them"

Despite the favour of writers like Byron and Sir Walter Raleigh, she soon sank into obscurity.

What is the criteria in this question? Do you win if you are more of a misogynist than you are a better writer? If you're a minor misgynist and a superb writer, does that win? At any rate, to find the real winner is unfortunately ignobly difficult.

It's easy to mention the usual suspects—Hemingway, Joyce, Chandler—but really, they were only channelers of a misogynist time. Any, especially men, who can stand up and condemn these authors for misogyny seem to be taking a mighty chance that they themselve won't get caught out in fifty years, no matter how progressive you think you are.

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I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today.

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I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of the women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquille in mannequin's whimsy, or else bright and stillborn.

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Originally posted by fern hill:
Thanks Ken Burch, but we have mentioned Mailer, but thanks.

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Originally posted by Yst:
Joseph Conrad is a great writer, but he certainly treats women as just so much frivolous human cattle in the grand scheme of things. He's not so much actively misogynist, however, as massively, constantly androcentric. One always gets the impression that women are at best irrelevant to the deep and serious affairs and affections of men. Which is not to say that the deep and serious affairs of men are very often commendable in his writing. But for better or for worse, they are the source of all meaning in his world, if not necessarily the source of moral good.

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I disagree. Conrad reflects the value of the times, which were sexist. He was also an extreme racist, if one is to judge just by the title of the Nigger of the Narcissus. Yes, Conrad's women function as charachters in the Victorian roles set aside for women, and Conrad obviously doesn't question these roles, but his women are not shallow charachter and have agency -- that is when he is not writing about sailing, something in which not many (more than people think actually) women participated in.

This is what I percieve based on an complete survey of his writing. Serious female charachterizations can be found in Victory, Nostromo and the Secret Agent.

So, it is true to say that his writing reflects the ideas of the times but not to say that his female charracters were not functional as primary characters, or as you put it "are at best irrelevant to the deep and serious affairs and affections of men."

A good way to think about this kind of thing is to say to yourself, can this story exist without character X? If all the female caharcters in a story do not contribute functionally then they are likely pastiche.

I can't imagine the Secret Agent or Victory existing as novels without their female charachters activities in the story.

The truly great writer who is guilty of this accuasation is Graham Greene (peace be upon him.)

[ 10 January 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Makwa:
Hm. Don't mean to be a prick but I'm prolly halfway there but - Conrad was not, as most male colonial adventurers of his age, concerned with the issues of the 'fairer sex' but he was unusually transformed by his witness of the massive murder and enslavement of the wonderful people of the 'Belgian' Congo. Fault him for his lack of insight on some issues perhaps, but give it leave for his brave and insightful exposure of some of the worst human rights abuses to date. To dismiss one of the great lights of human rights literature for a lack of some senstivity which was typical for his age would be to hate all great literary thinkers like Dickens or Twain. Conrad, despite his faults, shone a light on a place too terrible for most Europeans to consider. Ed to add: thanx Skdl for a very fine romp through the literary thickets - your knowledge and skill is again terribly appreciated.

[ 09 January 2006: Message edited by: Makwa ]

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I think people read to much into The Heart of Darkness. He told the truth, and that was something. He was more interested, I think, in the personal moral dilemma (Lord Jim), not the grand themes.

I think he was neutral on the issue of imperialism, politically.

Read the short story Typhoon. It is about a Typhoon.

[ 10 January 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 10 January 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]