Brain Pain discussion

Our reading project for 2016 will be about female protagonists through the ages. I’ve selected some well-known archetypal characters, as well as some lesser known protagonists. Many of these books are classics that you’ve read before, but please consider rereading them in the context of this project.

There is a half and half mix of female and male writers. Part of the project will be to examine how female protagonists are presented by male and female authors. How have women been presented in literature? How have these characters influenced later fiction? How have these characters influenced the perception of women in the real world?

The most obvious question for the male-authored books is, “Is the character convincing as a female? Or does he miss the mark?”

For the female-authored books, we might ask, “Is the character convincing by contemporary standards? Or does she seem a literary product of her time?”

And cetera, and so on…

I’d be happy to take your suggestions to add more books to the schedule. The criterion is simply this:

The primary protagonist must be female.


Here is what I’ve selected so far. For each book, I included the name of the female protagonist.

The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf – 1915 - Rachel Vinrace

Lysistrata and Other Plays – Aristophanes – 411 BC – Lysistrata, Athenian woman

The Trojan Women (The Women of Troy) – Euripides – 415 BC – Hecabe, widow of King Priam; Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen

Medea and Other Plays (Medea)– Euripides – 431 BC – Medea, wife of Jason

Antigone / Oedipus the King / Electra (Antigone) – Sophocles – 441 BC – Antigone, daughter of Oedipus

Emma – Jane Austen – 1815 – Emma Woodhouse

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë – 1847 – Jane Eyre

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – 1856 – Emma Bovary

Beauty and Sadness – Yasunari Kawabata – 1961 – Otoko Ueno, artist, and Keiko, her protégée and lover

The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison – 1970 - Pecola Breedlove

The Broom of the System – David Foster Wallace – 1987 - Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman

Eva Luna – Isabel Allende – 1987 – Eva Luna

Cat's Eye – Margaret Atwood – 1988 - Elaine Risley, artist

The Body Artist – Don DeLillo – 2001 – Lauren Hartke, artist

The Blazing World – Siri Hustvedt – 2014 - Harriet Burden, artist


In addition to these books, we will be reading Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day , and William T. Vollmann’s The Rainbow Stories. I will post a schedule for 2016 once the reading list has been finalized.

The first book, The Voyage Out, will begin on January 4, 2016.

I would like to suggest Angela Carter's THE BLOODY CHAMBER and Other STORIES--it's a award-winning retelling of some well known fairy tales with different emphasis/endings-- told by female protagonists

I am extremely excited about this project and would like to suggest:

The Handmaid's Tale
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Their Eyes Were Watching God

I would like to suggest Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

Fantastic idea, Jim. I want to read more women writers next year, so this project of yours suits me really well. So I'd like to suggest some writers that I already know and some that I intend to get to know:

Juana Inés de la Cruz: A Mexican poet of the Baroque school. She was a nun who struggled with learning limitations upon women. I think her poetry and her controversial letters could be enriching as read through the lens of women's studies.

Teresa of Ávila: She was a Spanish nun who wrote her own life (The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself). Her work, filled with mysticism, influenced by the knighthood stories she read as a child and the religious writings she read as a nun, her work is regarded as one of the best in hispanic literature. What I like, more than her memoirs, is her poetry, which is exquisite and wherein she encourages her own soul to overcome dark times as well as her nun mates not to be upset by male chauvinism.

Furthermore, some other books come to my mind wherein a strong female main character is present, such as:
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman — Stephan Zweig
The Governess and Other Stories — Stephan Zweig
Letter from an Unknown Woman — Stephan Zweig
The Scarlet Letter — N. Hawthorne
Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy
Nana — Émile Zola

And these are some of the books that I intend to read this year (and I think the main characters are women, but since I haven't read them I'm not completely sure about some), such as:
Middlemarch — George Eliot
Mrs. Dalloway — Virginia Woolf
A Wreath of Roses — Elizabeth Taylor
Villette — Charlotte Brontë
The Portrait of a Lady — Henry James
Phèdre — Jean Racine
Esther — Jean Racine

Reading Woolf's complete works has been in my schedule since I read her for the very first time, so I'll try to get The Voyage Out some time soon.

I'm really excited about this reading project!

Angela Carter's WISE CHILDREN or NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS would be worth doing, too.

I'm excited about joining in this year, Jim and love your choices (although many of the other suggestions are also terrific).

Great suggestions everyone!

The Scarlet Letter is a great choice for this project. Phèdre also sounds like a good fit. And maybe some Angela Carter.

I'll continue looking through these over the next few days.

I'd like to throw in the brilliant but largely ignored Christine Brooke-Rose's Amalgamemnon.

I always enjoy revisiting the Toga set -- Aristophanes, Euripedes, Sophocles. Been meaning to read Bovary, and have read some of the others (the deLillo at least) recently enough to have them still in memory.

Bloody Chamber is very good. Amalgamemnon looks excellent - surprised I never heard of it.

A suggestion of my own would be Rikki Ducornet. I recently read The Complete Butcher's Tales and Netsuke. Seems to fit in with the general 2016 theme.

Sheer perversity might make me suggest Cock & Bull, but I've never actually read it (and Will Self is a bit uneven).

BLEAK HOUSE, anyone?

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon addresses mental health issues and criminality disparities between the sexes in the 1800s.

Great list... Especially the Greek tragedies which can foment loads of discussions about the representation of women in society. Since Electra is on the list, I would suggest addingEugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.

at the risk of overloading on Greeks, Euripides' earlier play Andromache has Hermione, Menelaus and Helen's daughter, trying to murder poor enslaved Andromache.
I've not yet read it, but it sounds like a real knock-out.

How about Small Island by Andrea Levy

or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Anne wrote: "How about Small Island by Andrea Levy

or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath"

I thought about The Bell Jar when I was compiling the list. Esther certainly deserves a place in this project. Thanks for the reminder!

Wonderful theme! Perhaps also Kristin Lavransdatter?

Jen wrote: "Wonderful theme! Perhaps also Kristin Lavransdatter?"

A bit long

Mkfs wrote: "I always enjoy revisiting the Toga set -- Aristophanes, Euripedes, Sophocles. Been meaning to read Bovary, and have read some of the others (the deLillo at least) recently enough to have them still..."

Rikki Ducournet would be an excellent choice, she has a marvelous way with language.

Dorris Lessing is always interesting whether she is writing about cats or politics.

I always thought that Jay McInerney did an outstanding job of writing from the female point of view.

Jenny wrote: "Mkfs wrote: "I always enjoy revisiting the Toga set -- Aristophanes, Euripedes, Sophocles. Been meaning to read Bovary, and have read some of the others (the deLillo at least) recently enough to ha..."

The Stain would work well with this project.

Perhaps the 17th Century The Blazing World would be a good idea too. I don't know to what extent it's relevant to the newer book of the same title.

I'm not sure Beauty and Sadness will fit. While it surely has important principal female characters, if I remember, it is told first person and is very much from the perspective of a male protagonist with a very selfish perspective, to whom the female principals are rather mysterious. (However, I didn't read to the end, so maybe my impression is flawed).

I'll think more.

A novel titled Esther was mentioned above, but how about the biblical Book of Esther? Or some other Bible book with a central female protagonist? Or maybe an apocryphal Bible book that's not read much... not that I'm knowledgeable about that, but maybe some research will unearth something...

Some things that might turn out to be good options (I've read some, but not most, so my idea of who is the protagonist in some cases may be in error?)

My Phantom Husband
The Brave African Huntress
The Last Samurai
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
Callirhoe
what purpose did i serve in your life
Something by Christine Brooke-Rose (I read Life, End of and kinda liked it, but wouldn't specifically endorse that one)
Zazie in the Metro
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
The Saga of the People of Laxardal

Zadignose wrote: "A novel titled Esther was mentioned above, but how about the biblical Book of Esther? Or some other Bible book with a central female protagonist? Or maybe an apocryphal Bible book that's not m..."

That's an interesting idea. The Old Testament ones would be Ruth and Esther; of these two, Esther looks more promising.

There's an apocryphal Gospel according to Mary Magdelene in the New Testament. Looks like it was an attempt to blame Peter for silencing women in the church, though this was all Paul.

Not sure if there's an account of Joanna outside of the gospel of Luke, but that would be a good story.

Hey, what about a Salome?

There's also the Book of Susanna [the apocryphal Daniel 13]

Okay, no more bible suggestions please. We're looking for novels, not short stories written by omnipotent entities....