Marilyn French, Novelist and Champion of Feminism, Dies at 79

Source: NYT

Marilyn French, a writer and feminist activist whose debut novel, “The Women’s Room,” propelled her into a leading role in the modern feminist movement, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 79 and lived in Manhattan.



The cause was heart failure, said her son, Robert.

With steely views about the treatment of woman and a gift for expressing them on the printed page, Ms. French transformed herself from an academic who quietly bristled at the expectations of married women in the post-World War II era to a leading, if controversial, opinionmaker on gender issues who decried the patriarchal society she saw around her. “My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of Western civilization, to make it a feminist world,” she once declared.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/arts/04french.html

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_French

The harsh vision of marriage in Marilyn French's The Women's Room looks cartoon-like today. But the first bestselling novel to emerge from 1970s feminism still strikes a chord.

You become older than the books that influence you, and it is as difficult not to patronise them as it is not to patronise your younger self. At the same time, it is impossible not to feel it was a better self that was once capable of being so horrified that it vowed to do better. But the turning-point experiences - Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Cathy Come Home, Bob Geldof and Live Aid - even when they are recent, seem to belong to a distant era.

Time leaches the spontaneity from our outrage. In the private world, no presentation of the ordinary life of ordinary people is likely to shock again in the way Marilyn French's novel, The Women's Room, did, that grim parable of the pain that attends the relations between women and men as they are worked out in marriage - specifically the "separate roles" marriage of the aspiring white middle class, in the couple of decades after the second world war. There is unlikely to be another so grandly accusatory.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/13/featuresreviews.guardianreview36

I read it with "The Female Eunuch" and "The Feminine Mystique" in the Seventies. The plot(s) may seem contrived, but at the time of its publication, they were real, reflecting the challenges of women having to fight for their right to autonomy without the yoke of their father or husband or children.

What a piece of work she was at the beginning of the story, remember? Hiding in the bathroom stall in her suit and girdle. That was an ultra-cool book, but you're right - the plot was somewhat contrived...

I believe that the novel was based on real characters, but I could be wrong. I seem to remember an article in some dumb magazine like Cosmo, where Susie the radical got a makeover (80's style) along with (I think) Ms. French.

and the other women writers of the time, who opened eyes and minds.

sigh, sorry she is gone.

I think I've re-read The Women's Room about 50 times. Might be due for another read. Also liked Bleeding Heart a lot, too.

I read that book way back. Great read and informative.