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Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance to Rediscover and Read

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a fertile decade for African-American creatives of all kinds — writers, musicians, playwrights, and artists. Though like many movements it was male-dominated, many women rose to prominence. We explore some of those who made a lasting impact in Renaissance Women: 12 Female Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, some of whom will also appear in the following list. Here we present women poets of the Harlem Renaissance that have been somewhat or largely forgotten —but whose words and lives should continue to be celebrated. 

In her preface to Black Sister: Poetry by Black American Women, 1746 – 1980, Erlene Stetson wrote:

“Black women poets have made a unique contribution to the American literary tradition. This contribution is shaped by their experience both as blacks and as women, an experience whose pressure they have resisted and at the same time as they have recognized its strategic survival value in life and exploited its symbolic power in their art.”

In her introduction to Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, editor Maureen Honey elaborated

“Poetry was the preferred form of most Afro-American women writers during the 1920s. Well known in intellectual circles of their day and widely published, women poets achieved the respect of their peers and popularity with a middle-class audience.”

What happened to some of the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance era was what happened to many of the talents of that time. The Great Depression of the 1930s ended or curtailed the artistic aspirations of many African-Americans. Some were able to later pick up where they left off; others never could recapture the magic of the 1920s. Still, a number of the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance excelled in other fields, especially as educators, social activists, and editors. 

Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902 – 1981) was a multitalented poet, short story writer, visual artist, and journalist. Pride in African heritage and the influence of African dance and music were threads that ran through her work. In the mid-1920s, Her poetry and artwork were published in the The Crisis, NAACP’s journal, Opportunity magazine, and Alaine Locke’s New Negro. Some of her best-known poems included “Moon Tonight,” “Heritage,” “To Usward,” and “Fantasy.” Her published short stories included “Wedding Day” and “Tokens.”

During the Depression, she worked as an administrator on the New York City Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project (1935-1941), and dedicated herself to advancing the careers of young black artists. More about Gwendolyn B. Bennett at Biography.com.

Carrie Williams Clifford (1882 – 1958) was a fascinating figure from the civil rights movement of the early 1900s, as well as having been an accomplished poet. In her 1911 collection, Race Rhymes, she modestly stated:

“The author makes no claim to unusual poetic excellence or literary brilliance. She is seeking to call attention to a condition, which she, at least, considers serious. Knowing that this may often be done more impressively through rhyme that in an elegant prose, she has taken this method to accomplish this end … The theme of the group here presented — the uplift of humanity — is the loftiest that can animate the heart and pen of man … she sends these lines forth with the prayer that they may change some heart, or right some wrong.”

Her second collection, The Widening Light (1922), contained one of her best known and most poignant poems, “The Black Draftee from Dixie.” More about Carrie Williams Clifford at Poem Hunter.

Clarissa M. Scott Delaney (1901 – 1927) had the distinction of being born at Tuskegee Institute, where her father worked as a secretary to the African-American leader and educator Booker T. Washington. Before her untimely death at age twenty-six, she published poetry and articles in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. Professionally, she was a teacher at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. There she worked with Angelina Weld Grimké, another poet of the period; the two were good friends.

Delaney’s biography on Black Renaissance states: “During her brief writing life, she only had four poems published. She had a flair for language, good use of metaphors of nature, and she expressed her intensely felt emotions. She had an eye for unique detail, and she undoubtedly would have written more and her work would have matured had she lived longer.”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875 – 1935) was a multifaceted writer, poet, journalist, and teacher. She used her pen to advocate for the rights of women and African-Americans during the height of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, and beyond into the Depression era of the 1930s.

In her searingly honest essays, she wrote of the hardships of growing up mixed-race in Louisiana and explored the complex issues faced by women of color. She was also considered one of the premier poets of the Harlem Renaissance. More about Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, including links to several of her poems, on The Poetry Foundation.

Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist, and novelist. Her literary output included four novels, the best known of which was Plum Bun. but her tenure as the literary editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, was significant.

With a keen eye for talent, she introduced readers to Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and other notable authors and poets of the era. Considered one of the seven “midwives” of the Harlem Renaissance movement, she herself was an accomplished poet, here are 6 poems by Jessie Redmon Fauset to explore. And more about Jessie Fauset here on Literary Ladies Guide.

Angelina Weld Grimké (1880 – 1958) was an American journalist, essayist, playwright and poet whose work was extensively published in The Crisis, the influential journal of the NAACP, and other Harlem Renaissance anthologies. She was the great-niece of the abolitionist Grimké sisters, one of whom was also named Angelina.

Her play, Rachel (1920) was one of the first staged staged productions of a work by a woman of color. She lived a quiet life and her subtle love poems to women hint at a life not fully expressed. Angelina Weld Grimké considered hugely important to the growth of the Harlem Renaissance movement, yet her personal work and contributions are under-appreciated. More about Angelina Weld Grimké at Black History Now.

Ariel Williams Holloway (1905 – 1973) set out to be a concert pianist, having earned degrees in music from Fisk University and Oberlin College. Despite her formal training, she found that her professional aspiration was closed to African-American women. Instead, she taught music at the high school and college level around the South, and in 1939, became the first supervisor of music in the Mobile, Alabama public school system. She held this post until her death.

Though she was never a New Yorker, Williams had her poems published in Opportunity, and The Crisis, the leading journals of the Harlem Renaissance, between 1926 and 1935. Later, she published a volume of verse, Shape Them into Dreams (Exposition Press, 1955). “Northboun,’” a short poem written in dialect about the Great Migration, originally published in Opportunity in 1926, won an important prize and is considered her best-known work of poetry. More about Ariel Williams Holloway.

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966) was best known as a poet active during the Harlem Renaissance era, though she also was an avid musician, and teacher, and an anti-lynching activist. She was one of the first African-American female playwrights and produced four books of poetry.

Her poem “The Heart of a Woman” (1916) influenced Maya Angelou, whose 1981 memoir of the same name pays direct homage to this work by Johnson. Threads running through her work included family, motherhood, and navigating life in America as a woman of color. More about Georgia Douglas Johnson here on Literary Ladies Guide; and here are 10 Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Helene Johnson (1906 – 1995) was only 21 when her poem “Bottled” was published in Vanity Fair in 1927. It was considered innovative and unconventional. Like her cousin Dorothy West, she moved to Harlem in the 1920s and befriended other literary figures like Zora Neale Hurston.

Readers began to take notice when Johnson’s poem “Bottled” containing innovative slang and unconventional rhythms was published in Vanity Fair, in the May edition of 1927. A short poem called “Ah My Race” is also one of her best known. Her last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly, in 1935. Though she stopped publishing, she continued to write a poem a day for the rest of her long life. More about Helene Johnson here on Literary Ladies Guide; and here is a selection of her poems.

May Miller (1899 – 1995) was one of the most widely published female playwrights and poets of the Harlem Renaissance era, having published seven volumes of poetry. She began writing poetry at an early age, and though it was her first love, her accomplishments branched out widely. She was the first African-American student to attend Johns Hopkins University, and would subsequently become one of the pioneers in the field of sociology.

Miller augmented her work as a writer with a distinguished career as a teacher and lecturer in a number of prestigious institutions. Learn more about May Miller.

Effie Lee Newsome (1885–1979) was best known for her poetry for children. Her writings were widely published in the NAACP’s The Crisis, and the Urban League’s Opportunity. She was also the editor of the children’s column “Little Page” in the Crisis.

Her poetry encouraged younger readers to appreciate their worth and beauty — it has been written that her poetry was a forerunner of the 1960’s Black is Beautiful movement. Later in her career, she worked as a children’s librarian in Ohio, continuing to promote books and literature to young readers. More about Effie Lee Newsome on poets.org.

Esther Popel (1896–1958), writer, teacher, and activist, wrote poetry that didn’t shy away from bitterness as her words reflected on injustice, racial prejudice, and violence against black Americans. While a senior in high school, Popel self-published her first book of poetry, Thoughtless Thinks by a Thinkless Thaughter (1915). Like many of her contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance, she published in The Crisis and Opportunity, winning several awards for her work.

Having been well-educated herself, she lobbied for opportunities for women of color and served on the board of the National Association of College Women for two decades. See more about Esther Popel on My Poetic Side.

Anne Spencer (1882 – 1975) was born on a Virginia plantation. Though she endured a turbulent early life, she remained close to her mother, who saw to it that Anne received a good education. Once married, her mother took over Anne’s household responsibilities so that she could pursue a life of the mind and develop collegial relationships with the prominent intellects of the time. The eminent James Weldon Johnson became her mentor, and he saw to it that her poetry was published.

Anne, who was also a political activist, one of those bright-burning lights that was dimmed by the Depression. She was unable to publish after 1931 and her works were never in a stand-alone collection. But she lived to age ninety-three and never stopped writing. Today, her life and legacy have been preserved at the Anne Spencer Museum.

An excellent resource is Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Maureen Honey (Rutgers University Press, 1989). In it, you’ll find these and many other lesser-known writers of the era.

OTHER POETIC VOICES TO REDISCOVER

Anita Scott Coleman

Mae Virginia Cowdery

Edythe Mae Gordon

Gertrude Parthenia McBrown

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Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist

In 1893, a deputy sheriff knocked on Matilda Joslyn Gage’s door in Fayetteville, New York. He served her with a supreme writ, court papers summoning her to appear before a judge for breaking the law.

“All of the crimes which I was not guilty of rushed through my mind,” she wrote later, “but I failed to remember that I was a born criminal—a woman.” Her crime: registering to vote. The verdict: guilty as charged.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was born in 1826 in Cicero, New York, near Syracuse. She lived all her life in the Syracuse area but also spent time with her adult children who lived in Dakota Territory. Her home in Fayetteville, New York, is now a museum.

The following excerpt is from Angelica Shirley Carpenter’s biography Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist, published in September 2018 by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, lightly edited for publication here. Reprinted by permission. Sources may be found in the book.

The National Citizen and Ballot Box

In April 1878 Matilda Joslyn Gage bought an Ohio women’s suffrage newspaper, the Ballot Box. Moving it to Syracuse, she renamed it the National Citizen and Ballot Box. As editor and publisher, Matilda did most of the writing, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, as corresponding editors, wrote letters to what soon became the official newspaper of the National Woman Suffrage Association.

The monthly publication, “the cheapest paper in the country, $1 a year,” offered three and a half pages of news and a half page of advertisements. Matilda inherited two thousand subscribers.

The National Citizen published letters and firsthand accounts of women’s experiences. Editorials offered a feminist perspective on marriage customs, rape, labor laws, taxes, the status of women in foreign countries, and the church. Matilda wrote a column, “Women, Past and Present,” and covered conventions extensively, knowing that many of her readers could not afford to attend. She printed selections from the History of Woman Suffrage [a book she was writing with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with Susan B. Anthony as business manager for the project] as they were completed, asking readers to send in corrections.

Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1881 (photo courtesy of the Gage Foundation)

Suffering often from poor health, Matilda kept working on the History and wrote for other publications, too, including a newspaper in San Francisco. When six young girls were arrested for streetwalking in Fayetteville, she protested to the local newspaper. Two of the girls were just fifteen; the men who had hired them were “village respectables” who were not named in court or charged.

As usual, Matilda’s opinion was more liberal than that of her colleagues. She viewed prostitution as an economic rather than a moral issue, the product of unjust labor laws and the lack of education for women.

“Women of every class, condition, rank and name, will find this paper their friend, it matters not how wretched, degraded, fallen they may be,” she said on the front page of each issue of the National Citizen and Ballot Box.

In her paper she described a mother of ten who was jailed for stealing food for her children, and a man who got a shorter sentence for beating his wife than he would have received for beating a horse (six months for a wife, two years for a horse). She reported on women living collectively and starting cooperative businesses, and she advocated for boarding houses for working women. Leaders of the women’s movement who fought to open universities and professions to women took less interest than Matilda in the rights of female factory workers, but The National Citizen fought for these women, too. 

Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist on Amazon

The paper was not completely serious. One article told of a Russian sect which required husbands to confess sins to wives once a week.

“Would not that require the whole week?” Matilda asked.

Matilda, like other feminists, was often called a man-hater. The Vineland Times, a New Jersey paper, criticized the National Citizen: “It is too aggressive, and too bitter against men.”

“As to ‘aggressiveness,’” Matilda responded, “bless your soul, that is the way to carry on a warfare.”

The paper gave Matilda a new forum in which to promote the Native American society she admired. In May 1878 the United States was trying to force citizenship on Native people, who were fighting it.

“Our Indians are in reality foreign powers,” Matilda wrote, “though living among us. With them our country not only has treaty obligations, but pays them, or professes to, annual sums in consideration of such treaties. . . . Compelling them to become citizens would be like the forcible annexation of Cuba, Mexico, or Canada to our government, and as unjust.”

In July Matilda traveled to Rochester, New York, for the thirtieth anniversary celebration of the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention. The convention call said that the meeting would be “largely devoted to reminiscences.” Rochester, known as “The Flower City,” provided beautiful floral decorations for the meeting in the Unitarian church on Fitzhugh Street. Some blossoms drooped in record high temperatures as old friends greeted each other happily, with damp hugs. Fans fluttered and cooling liquids were offered as people gathered under “twining wreaths, running through the low, wire lattice, about the platform, and in hanging clusters of vines from the chandeliers.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke of progress made in the women’s movement and goals still to be achieved. Letters and telegrams from across the country and from Europe, were read aloud. Lucretia Mott expressed joy at the number of young women sitting on the platform for the first time.

“Though in her eighty-sixth year,” the History of Woman Suffrage later described Mott, “her enthusiasm for the cause for which she had so long labored seemed still unabated, and her eye sparkled with humor as of yore while giving some amusing reminiscences of encounters with opponents in the early days.”

Mott yielded the podium to Matilda, watching eagerly as her former protégée proposed a series of resolutions. Three of these, written by Matilda herself, became particularly controversial:

Resolved, That as the duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons self-sacrifice and obedience taught women by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to her own highest interests, but through her have also dwarfed and degraded the race.

Resolved, That the fundamental principle of the Protestant reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment in the interpretation of scripture, heretofore conceded to and exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman, and in her most vital interests she should no longer trust authority, but be guided by her own reason.

Resolved, That it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman, cultivating the emotions at the expense of her reason, playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties forever in abeyance to that which is to come, that she, and the children she has trained, have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.

Then Matilda, along with everyone in the hot, crowded church, listened sadly as Lucretia Mott gave what all knew would be her last speech. Her family had tried to stop her from attending the convention, worried that the trip from Philadelphia, in extreme heat, would prove too much for her. But she had insisted on coming, traveling with a friend, and staying in Rochester with her husband’s nephew, a doctor.

The doctor, fearing that she would be exhausted, called for her to stop before she had finished her closing remarks. Climbing down from the platform, Mott continued speaking as she walked down the aisle, swinging her bonnet by one string, as she often did, and shaking hands on either side. The audience rose simultaneously, out of respect for her.

“Good-by, dear Lucretia!” Frederick Douglass called, speaking for all of them.

After the convention, Matilda’s resolutions created a second kind of heat wave in newspapers and pulpits around the country.

“There was never a clearer illustration,” said The New York World, “of the evil tendencies of the Woman’s Rights movement than in the resolutions adopted at the Rochester convention.”

“Too hazardous,” proclaimed the Rev. A.H. Strong, president of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Rochester. “Bad women would vote.”

“Well, what of it?” Matilda responded, in a National Citizen and Ballot Box editorial, “Have they not equal right with bad men to self-government?”

After three years, paid advertisements to the newspaper decreased. For a time, Matilda subsidized it with her own money, but she could not afford to keep it going. Her last editorial, in October 1881, was called “The End, Not Yet”: “To those who fancy we are near the end of the battle, or that the reformer’s path is strewn with roses, we say them nay. The thick of the fight has just begun; the hottest part of the warfare is yet to come, and those who enter it must be willing to give up father, mother, and comforts for its sake. Neither shall we who carry on the fight, reap the great reward. We are battling for the good of those who shall come after us; they, not ourselves, shall enter into the harvest.”

Angelica Shirley Carpenter has master’s degrees from the University of Illinois in education and library science. Curator emerita of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University, Fresno, she lives in Fresno. She has published five previous books about authors: Frances Hodgson Burnett (two books), Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, and L. Frank Baum, who was Matilda’s son-in-law. A past president of the International Wizard of Oz Club, she is active in the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Find out more about her at angelicacarpenter.com.

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Ann Petry

Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was the first African-American woman to produce a book (The Street) whose sales topped one million. Ultimately it would sell a million and a half copies. Born Ann Lane, she was raised in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Encounters with the pervasive racism that permeated American life in their time were relatively rare — though not entirely absent — in the sheltered life that the Lanes provided for Ann and her siblings. She was a fourth-generation native of Connecticut, and was the daughter of practical, ambitious parents. Her father, Peter Clark Lane, was a pharmacist; her mother, Bertha James Lane, was a podiatrist. For other role models she had an extended family of strong professional women

Though a high school teacher encouraged her to write, Ann went to pharmacy college and received a degree. This was in the early 1930s, when a practical profession was a blessing during the Great Depression. She followed in her father’s footsteps to become a pharmacist in the family drugstore. She was always an avid reader who was particularly taken with Louisa May Alcott’s fictional heroine Jo March as a role model for her writerly aspirations.

A move to Harlem

In 1938, she married George Petry, and the couple moved to Harlem. There she began a writing career in earnest, working as a journalist, columnist, and editor. She took writing courses at Columbia University and drawing and painting courses at Harlem Art Center. She also participated in Harlem’s American Negro Theatre, performing onstage as Tillie Petunia in Abram Hill’s play On Striver’s Row.

Ann was active in social issues as well. She ran an after school program at an elementary school in Harlem, and was an organizer for Negro Women Inc. These experiences opened Ann’s eyes to the challenges facing working class women, whose lives were far more vulnerable than what she had experienced in her genteel upbringing. Witnessing class, race, and economic struggles firsthand was what informed her fiction. 

She wrote many short stories for magazines and journals and periodicals, but it was “On Saturday, the Sirens at Noon” —  a story that was published in a 1943 issue of The Crisis that proved a major turning point. She received notification after the story appeared  to enter the competition for the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. She submitted the first few chapters of the book she’d been working on, The Street, and was awarded the fellowship, which came with a handsome cash award.

See more about The Street (1946)

The Street

The Street was published in 1946, and became an overnight sensation. The New York Times called it “a skillfully written and forceful first novel.’’ Its significance was as a novel that explored black women’s experience through the intersection of race, gender, and class.”

Despite its commercial and overall critical success, The Street was not without its detractors. Some African-American critics, including James W. Ivey of The Crisis, objected to Petry’s one-sided portrayal of Harlem as a “seething cesspool of sluts, pimps, juvenile delinquents …” and deemed it “worthless as a picture of Harlem though interesting as a revelation of Mrs. Petry.”

Ann Petry published seven other books, but none was as successful as The Street.

Pointed reflections of black America

Ann Petry’s life was less fraught than that of the characters she wrote about. She was sensitive to the oppression and disadvantages caused by racial bias, and these themes were reflected in her fiction. In an essay, Ann said of her work: “When I write for children, I write about survivors. When I write for adults, I write about the walking wounded.” Ann Petry by Hilary Holladay (1996), encapsulates what she sought to express as a writer of fiction:

“Ann Petry’s fiction deals with prejudices of race, sex, and class, and with the ways in which the American dream of success and plentitude haunts, and finally mocks, those people who fail to achieve it. She writes in rhythmic, deceptively simple prose, frequently underscoring the unsettled, disrupted nature of human relations via setting and environmental detail.

Petry calls her characters “the walking wounded” and her use of naturalism, especially in The Street and Country Place, provides them with realistically portrayed, yet fundamentally unstable, ground on which to make their hobbling way. In 1950, Petry suggested why people want to read fiction that addresses difficult social issues:

Possibly the reading public, and here I include myself, is like the man who kept butting his head against a stone wall and when asked for an explanation said that he went in for this strange practice because it felt so good when he stopped. Perhaps there is a streak of masochism in all of us; or perhaps we feel guilty because of the shortcomings of society and our sense of guilt is partially assuaged when we are accused, in the printed pages of a novel, of having done those things that we ought not to have done — and of having left undone those things we ought to have done.

Because racism and sexism and their consequences remain integral to life in America, Petry’s characterizations of these prejudices in her fiction continue to inspire feelings of masochisms and guilt. Although she did the bulk of her writing midcentury, her novels and stories articulate the same pain and outrage expressed by contemporary chroniclers of sexism and racism.

Petry’s works are thus more timeless — and timely — than one might like them to be. Petry herself has said of The Street, “It just saddens my heart so that if you added crack, it would be the same story today. It’s just so painful and frightening.”

The Street Reissued in 1992

In 1992, The Street was re-released by its original publisher, Houghton Mifflin. Ann Petry fame rose once again, now age 84. She was profiled in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other publications. The Street was recognized as an important contribution to African-American literature.

The Hartford Courant, a newspaper relatively close to Ann’s home of Old Saybrook, Connecticut home, quoted Margo Perkins, a teacher of African-American literature at Trinity College on the impact of The Street: “It is one of the first novels to talk about black women’s experience in terms of the intersection of race, class and gender, and it paralleled Richard Wright’s work, which very much focused on black men. It has been reclaimed in the last several years as a very important novel.”

Reviewing the 1992 edition of The Street, the L.A. Times review remarked, “Lutie Johnson is an incandescent spirit trapped in circumstances that constantly conspire to douse her potential. White women view her as a threat and men of every race appraise her as a possible conquest. Whenever she allows herself to be naive enough to forget the rules of the game–that is, that an impoverished black woman alone is considered prey — she is violently reminded of her situation.”

You might also like: 6 Interesting Facts About Ann Petry

Teaching and continuing to write

Sudden fame after The Street’s success proved overwhelming. Petry and her husband left New York City to return to Old Saybrook, purchased a house, and raised their only daughter there. The town where she was grew up remained her home base for the rest of her days, even as she taught and lectured far and wide.

The Street was quickly followed in 1947 with Country Place, a story taking place in the familiar setting of a drugstore. The Narrows (1953) is a novel of an interracial romance.

After this, a few children’s books were produced: The Drugstore Cat (1949), Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955), and Tituba of Salem Village (1963). She continued to write short stories and even went to Hollywood for a brief sojourn to work on a movie script. Petry published The Narrows in 1953, and finally, a short story collection, Miss Muriel and Other Stories, in 1971.

Later years

Though none of her subsequent works sold in the sheer volume of The Street, nor achieved its notoriety, Ann Petry remained a respected voice, received a number of honorary degrees, and was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. Her work has lately begun to be revisited and studied. Petry died in Old Saybrook in 1997.

Ann Petry page on Amazon

More about Ann Petry on this site

Ann Petry Talks of Race Problems
6 Interesting Facts About Ann Petry
Quotes from The Street by Ann Petry

Major Works (fiction)

The Street  (1946)
Country Place  (1947)
The Narrows (1953)
Miss Muriel and Other Stories  (1971)

Other Works (for younger readers)

Tituba of Salem Village
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
The Drugstore Cat

Biographies about Ann Petry

The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry by Keith Clark (2013)
At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry (2008)

More information

Ann Petry on Wikipedia
Ann Petry: The Hutchins Center for African &

African American Research at Harvard
Ann Petry in the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame
Meet Lutie Johnson on PBS’s American Masters

Articles, News, Etc.

Ann Petry: Brief Life of a Celebrity-Averse Novelist , Harvard Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2014
Letters Illuminate Life of African American Novelist Ann Petry

Research/archives

Ann Petry Papers at Radcliffe College – Schlesinger Library

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10 Classic Indian Women Authors

The most fascinating part of this exploration of classic Indian women authors is that their writings reflected a feminist bent. Given the strong patriarchal culture that still prevails in India and the fact that most of these women started their creative lives in the mid-twentieth century, one can only marvel at the courage and strength of their writings.

Since India has twenty-two recognized languages, this compilation is by no means comprehensive. For the sake of convenience, the authors have been listed in chronological order of their birth years.

Malati Bedekar (1905 – 2001) was among the most prominent of feminist writers of her time in Marathi, who also wrote under the pen name of Vibhavari Shirurkar. Her collection of short stories (Kalyanche Nishwas) and a novel (Hindolyawar) written in the early 1930s dealt with themes too bold for society of those times and created a huge storm over the identity of the unknown author. A few years before her marriage to a writer, Vishram Bedekar, she revealed her true identity. Her books in translation are still listed under her pen name on Amazon.

Ismat Chughtai (1915 – 1991) was an Urdu writer who wrote both short stories and novels opting for literary realism. She started writing in the 1930s, and her themes included middle-class morality, female sexuality with a feminist perspective, and class conflict, often involving shades of Marxist thought.

Her short story “Lihaaf” (“The Quilt”) was a pioneer in the theme of touching upon sexuality, till then a tabooed subject in modern Indian literature. The story ventured into the subject of female homosexuality, which attracted a court trial. The author had to make an appearance and defend herself against charges of “obscenity.” Ismat was a recipient of both literary and national awards and her works were turned into well-known films too. Find English translations of Chughtai’s works on Amazon.

M.K. Indira (1917 – 1994) was a distinguished Kannada writer whose education did not go beyond the primary level. In her literary career of twenty-two years, she wrote forty-eight novels, fifteen collections of short stories, one biography, a film appreciation book, and an unfinished autobiography.

Five of her novels were turned into films, of which Phaniyamma, on the life of a child widow, turned into the greatest hit. It won its English translator, Tejaswini Niranjana, many literary awards. Many of Indira’s titles are available on Amazon, but the only one that seems to be in English translation is the aforementioned The Young Widow.

Amrita Pritam (1919 – 2005) was the first eminent Punjabi writer, novelist and poet of twentieth-century India. While her early novels were left-leaning and anti-imperialist, from 1960 her writings became more feminist in nature. During this time, her works were translated into English, Japanese, Mandarin, French and Danish. Many of her novels were turned into films and she won many literary awards including India’s highest, the Jnanpith, in 1982. You’ll find some English translations of Pritam’s work listed on Amazon.

 

M.K. Binodini Devi (1922 – 2011) was a novelist, short story writer, essayist, lyricist and script writer, who wrote in Meiti, a Tibeto-Burmese language spoken in the state of Manipur. Born into a royal family, she was the first woman graduate from her state.

Binodini was considered a pioneer of the non-doctrinaire thinking of Manipur, deeply rooted in the state’s region with little focus on conventional modernism. Besides film scripts, her works comprised dance ballets on environmental issue. She was also elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manipur. Binodini Devi received many literary and national awards in her time.

Kamala Markandaya (1924 – 2004) wrote in English about the struggles of Indians caught between the conflicting Indian and Western values of their times. Starting as a journalist, her first novel, Nectar in a Sieve, remains her most acclaimed one. In 1948, she opted to move to England and later married a Britisher. She published many more novels from there, and referred to herself as an Indian expatriate. Amazon has a full slate of Markankaya’s works translated into English.

Mahasweta Devi (1926 – 2016) wrote in Bengali and became a voice of the downtrodden, dispossessed and ignored population of India. Her seminal work, Hajar Churashir Maa, became an acclaimed film, as did many of her other works. She was the recipient of innumerable literary and national awards and even the Ramon Magsasay Award for “compassionate crusade through art and activism to claim for tribal peoples, a just and honourable place in India’s national life.” Amazon offers a number of Devi’s works in English translations.

Raghavan Chudamani (1931 – 2010) wrote in Tamil and also short stories in English, in addition to translating other Indian authors into Tamil. On account of a physical disability, she was homeschooled. She was the recipient of a state award from the Tamilnadu government as also literary awards. Amazon has only one novel of hers, Yamini, in translation.

Kamala Das (1934 – 2009) was a leading Malayalam author as also an Indian English poet. She also wrote under her pen name, Madhavi Kutty and is best known for her short stories and her very explicit autobiography, My Story. Her poems have been considered on par with Anne Sexton and she won many literary awards in her lifetime, besides being shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984.

Indira Goswami (1942 – 2011) who wrote in Assamese under her pen name, Mamoni Raisom Goswami, was known for going beyond the borders of her own state in her writings. She received many literary awards including India’s highest, the Jnanpith and also won the Prince Claude Award from the government of Netherlands. Her novel, Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker, was anthologized in the Masterpieces of Indian Literature and also made into a film, Adajya, that garnered several national and international awards. Amazon offers a number of Goswami’s works in English translation.

Melanie P. Kumar is a  Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.

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Quotes from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

One of the earliest works of feminist philosophical literature, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects was written by Mary Wollstonecraft and published in 1792. Mary Wollstonecraft (not to be confused with her literary daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) argues in Vindication for the educational equality of men and women. She argued that men and women are both born with the ability to reason, and therefore power and influential status should be equally available to all.

Wollstonecraft believed that regardless of wealth and social status, males and females should have the same educational opportunities. She sought radical reform of the 18th-century education system, believing that a society where females are offered the same opportunities as males would bring only beneficial change to the future of humanity.

More than two hundred years later, the struggle for gender equality continues, making this a great time for bold feminist thought! Here’s a selection of empowering and radical quotes from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to stay inspired to keep fighting the good fight!

“Soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste are almost synonymous with the epithets of weakness…I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue.”

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”

“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”

“I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

“But women are very differently situated with respect to each other – for they are all rivals (…) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye.”

“Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.”

“The man who can be contented to live with a pretty and useful companion who has no mind has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined pleasures; he has never felt the calm and refreshing satisfaction. . . .of being loved by someone who could understand him.”

Public domain eBook of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 

“For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.”

“And, perhaps, in the education of both sexes, the most difficult task is so to adjust instruction as not to narrow the understanding, whilst the heart is warmed by the generous juices of spring . . . nor to dry up the feelings by employing the mind in investigations remote from life.”

“All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience.”

“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”

“Yet women, whose minds are not enlarged by cultivation, or in whom the natural selfishness of sensibility hasn’t been expanded by reflection, are very unfit to manage a family, because they always stretch their power and use tyranny to maintain a superiority that rests on nothing but the arbitrary distinction of fortune.”

“It is easier to list modes of behaviour that are required or forbidden than to set reason to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful knowledge and strengthened by being used, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance without the aid of formal rules.”

“Taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear.”

“Happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the men who loved them; I mean, who love the individual, not the sex.”

“And having no fear of the devil before my eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex.”

“It is far better to be often deceived than never to trust; to be disappointed in love, than never to love.”

“Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart; or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.”

“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.”

“So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the LADY could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.”

“It appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground.”

“Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.”

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10 Thought-Provoking Classic Short Stories by Women Authors

A short story is a fantastic way to get a sense of an author’s voice. In some ways, it can be more challenging to create a compelling narrative in a short form than within the span of a novel. Building suspense and getting the reader to care about the characters are true marks of craftsmanship. Here are ten thought-provoking classic short stories by women authors. You’ll be able to read some of them (those in the public domain) right here on this site; others are part of these authors’ short story collections.

Sometimes there’s a fine line between when a short story shades into a novella, as is the case with The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but we’ve got that covered as well. Make sure to explore our recommendations for Must-Read Novellas by Classic Women Authors.

“The Giant Wistaria” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1891)

In Jillian McKeown’s analysis of “The Giant Wistaria” (1891), she introduces this chilling short ghost story by classic feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

It’s shocking once you’ve finished “The Giant Wistaria” to realize that it was published in 1891, when it seems as if it were written not so long ago. The story takes place during two time periods, the 1700s and the 1800s. The former century begins with an English family and we’re dropped into the middle of the most scandalous of family dramas — their daughter has just given birth out of wedlock, and the parents are fleeing to England to escape any disgrace to their family name. 

Read the full text of “The Giant Wistaria” here.

“Désirée’s Baby” by Kate Chopin (1893) 

“Désirée’s Baby” is an 1893 short story by Kate Chopin. This American author, now a fixture in feminist studies, is best known for the classic novella The Awakening. In this brief short story, she explores the hypocrisy, racism, and sexism in upper-crust Creole Louisiana. “Désirée’s Baby” weaves in themes that would come to define her works, including women’s struggle for equality, suppressed emotion, and the vagaries of identity. 

First published in the January 1893 issue of Vogue magazine as “The Father of Désirée’s Baby,” it was included in Bayou Folk, a short story collection by Chopin published the following year. You can read the full text of the story here.

“Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament” by Willa Cather (1905)

“Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament” is a short story by Willa Cather, first published in McClure’s Magazine in 1905. An analysis of “Paul’s Case” by Sarah Wyman on this site begins:

You probably know someone who reminds you of Paul, someone who does not seem to fit in with others in society. Paul’s mannerisms are tense and nervous. He appears antisocial with his classmates, confrontational with his teachers, and emotionally estranged from his family. Read the full text of “Paul’s Case” here.

“Bliss” by Katherine Mansfield (1918)

Bliss (1918) is a short story by Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923), the New Zealand-born British author recognized for revolutionizing the modern English short story form. Bliss is one of the works that put her on the literary map. Bertha Young, the main character, is a happy yet somewhat naïve young wife. The story takes place during a dinner party she hosts with her husband Harry.

One of the story’s themes is the classic one self-knowledge. But it was more of a rarity to explore queer themes in early twentieth-century literature. Read the full text of “Bliss” here.

“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston (1926)

In the introduction to his analysis of “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, Jason Horn states that the scope of this brief piece reaches farther than most novels. Within this small space, Hurston addresses a number of themes, such as the trials of femininity, which she explores with compelling and efficient symbolism. It is nuanced and eloquently compact as Hurston maximizes each word, object, character, and plot point to create an impassioned and enlightening narrative.

This is woven together with an ecocritical/ecofeminist perspective that links the feminine realm with the natural realm, which is then contrasted with the human realm.  

“Flowering Judas” by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)

Sarah Wyman’s analysis of “Flowering Judas” by Katherine Anne Porter begins: Taking a cue from Judas who revealed Christ’s identity to his persecutors with a kiss, “Flowering Judas” revolves around the theme of betrayal. Laura, an adventurous young woman from the southwest U.S. has an identity crisis, questioning her own values and her involvement in the Mexican revolution of 1910 – 1920. 

Characteristic of Porter’s heroines, Laura is one for whom personal choices have serious political implications.  Her inauthentic denial of self and her complicity in another character’s death lead her to rethink her own status as savior or betrayer.

“Tell Me a Riddle” by Tillie Olsen (1961)

Tell Me a Riddle, a collection of four short stories by Tillie Olsen was published after a long gap in this American writer’s oeuvre. The book opens with “I Stand Here Ironing,” a first-person, autobiographical narrative of the frustration of motherhood, isolation, and poverty.

The last piece in the collection, “Tell Me a Riddle,” is arguably Olsen’s best-known work. It’s the story of a working-class couple that also poignantly explores the author’s favored themes of poverty and gender. The slender short story received much critical acclaim. “Tell Me a Riddle” was adapted into a 1980 movie starring Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova. It’s part of the aforementioned short story collection and other collections of Olsen’s short works.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1949)

“The Lottery” is Shirley Jackson‘s best-known short story; it could be argued that it’s her most iconic classic — even more so than The Haunting of Hill House or We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Before it was published as part of a book, The New Yorker ran it as a stand-alone short story.

The story of a fictional small town that engages in a ghastly annual ritual won rave reviews from editors and critics; not so much from readers. It was the most controversial story ever published by the magazine. Readers not only canceled subscriptions but sent hate mail to the author. Here’s an original 1949 review of “The Lottery.”

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor (1953)

 “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is one of the best-known short works by this author of modern Southern gothic. Jillian McKeown begins her analysis of the story: 

I knew very little about Flannery O’Connor when this collection of short stories was recommended to me.  I knew that O’Connor was Irish Catholic, and that the stories were written in the mid-20th century. Needless to say, as I finished the first story, which is also the namesake for my particular edition, I was completely taken aback. “The person who suggested that I read this should have warned me!” I thought. Like so many of the other stories in this article, it’s thrilling to read a gem so subversive that it still shocks nearly 70 years later.

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin (1973)

Once again, our short story expert Sarah Wyman shares an insightful analysis, this time of  “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin: The story presents us with a utopia that turns out to include an imperfect, even nightmarish dystopia. The tension between these two heaven-and-hell extremes could be summed up in a pull between the impulse to leave in the title and the joyous arrival of the festival that sets the stage.

A carefree community that seems pleasing and just, turns out to be structured on injustice and ultimately untenable for some of its citizens. Le Guin considers the story an allegory of U.S. culture at the time of the Vietnam War. 

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“Désirée’s Baby” — a Short Story by Kate Chopin (1893)

“Désirée’s Baby” is an 1893 short story by Kate Chopin. As its theme, the bold and unconventional American author best know for the classic novella The Awakening explores the hypocrisy, racism, and sexism in upper crust Creole Louisiana. First published in the January 1893 issue of Vogue magazine as “The Father of Désirée’s Baby,” it was included in Bayou Folk, a short story collection by Chopin published the following year. 

In this fairly brief short story, Chopin explored themes that ran through her works, including women’s struggle for equality and the vagaries of identity. Abandoned as a baby, Désirée is the adopted daughter of Monsieur and Madame Valmondé, wealthy French Creoles. When she reaches young womanhood she marries Armand, the son of another wealthy French Creole family.

When the couple have a baby, it’s apparent that he’s mixed race, with the coloring of what was then called a “quadroon” — a person that is one-quarter black. Because Désirée’s parentage is not known, Armand assumes that she’s part black and rejects both her and his baby son, compelling them to leave the estate. She does so, taking the baby, and walks off into the bayou. It’s not clear whether she has run off, or takes her own life and that of her baby. 

Armand soon discovers in a letter from his mother to his father that it is actually he who is part black, but it’s too late. With the hypocrisy revealed, his identity shaken, he has forever lost his wife and child.

Full text of “Désirée’s Baby”

As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmondé drove over to L’Abri to see Désirée and the baby.

It made her laugh to think of Désirée with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Désirée was little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmondé had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.

The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for “Dada.” That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Maïs kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame Valmondé abandoned every speculation but the one that Désirée had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere—the idol of Valmondé.

It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.

Monsieur Valmondé grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl’s obscure origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.

Madame Valmondé had not seen Désirée and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L’Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny’s rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master’s easy-going and indulgent lifetime.

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Full text of The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin

The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.

Madame Valmondé bent her portly figure over Désirée and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.

“This is not the baby!” she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at Valmondé in those days.

“I knew you would be astonished,” laughed Désirée, “at the way he has grown. The little cochon de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and finger-nails —real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn’t it true, Zandrine?”

The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, “Mais si, Madame.”

“And the way he cries,” went on Désirée, “is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche’s cabin.”

Madame Valmondé had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine, whose face was burned to gaze across the fields.

“Yes, the child has grown, has changed;” said Madame Valmondé, slowly, as she replaced it beside its mother. “What does Armand say?”

Désirée’s face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.

“Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not — that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn’t true. I know he says that to please me. And mamma,” she added, drawing Madame Valmondé’s head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, “he hasn’t punished one of them — not one of them — since baby is born. Even Négrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work — he only, laughed, and said Négrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I’m so happy; it frightens me.”

What Désirée said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son, had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Désirée so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand’s dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.

When the baby was about three months old, Désirée awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband’s manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Désirée was miserable enough to die.

She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche’s little quadroon boys—half naked too—stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers. Désirée’s eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. “Ah!” It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face.

She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.

She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of fright.

Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and began to search among some papers which covered it.

“Armand,” she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not notice. “Armand,” she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards him. “Armand,” she panted once more, clutching his arm, “look at our child. What does it mean? tell me.”

He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. “Tell me what it means!” she cried despairingly.

“It means,” he answered lightly, “that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.”

Learn more about Kate Chopin

A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to deny it. “It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair,” seizing his wrist. “Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,” she laughed hysterically.

“As white as La Blanche’s,” he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their child.

When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmondé.

“My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God’s sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live.”

The answer that came was as brief:

“My own Désirée: Come home to Valmondé; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child.”

When the letter reached Désirée she went with it to her husband’s study, and laid it open upon the desk before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there.

In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words. He said nothing. “Shall I go, Armand?” she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense.

“Yes, go.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“Yes, I want you to go.”

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife’s soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.

She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he would call her back.

“Good-by, Armand,” she moaned.

He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.

Désirée went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse’s arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under the live-oak branches.

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking cotton.

Bayou Folk on Amazon

Désirée had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun’s rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmondé. She walked across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.

Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L’Abri. In the centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hall-way that commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze.

A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was laid upon the pyre, which had already been fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet and satin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare quality.

The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings that Désirée had sent to him during the days of their espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer from which he took them. But it was not Désirée’s; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband’s love:

“But, above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.”

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs: An Introduction

In 1857, Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813 – March 7, 1897) was completing a manuscript for a fictionalized account of her life as a slave, and of her struggle to free herself and her children. After all she’d been through, no publisher would take the book on. After repeated rejections, Harriet decided to publish the book herself, an impressive feat for any woman of that era, let alone one that had spent years as a fugitive slave. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, was published in 1861.

Though Incidents is autobiography, it reads like a novel, with a narrator named Linda Brent. But Jacobs wanted to make sure that readers understood that the book was wholly based on her own experiences. In the Preface to the book she wrote:

“Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short of the facts. I have concealed the names of places, and given persons fictitious names. I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate towards others to pursue this course …”

What compelled Jacobs to write the book

Jacobs sums up her motivation to write Incidents in her author’s Preface:

“I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two million women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse …

I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations. May the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people!”

Runaway slave advertisement for Harriet

A brief summary of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is encapsulated in the 1987 Harvard University Press edition:

Harriet A. Jacobs was born a slave in North Carolina in 1813 and became a fugitive in the 1830s She recorded her triumphant struggle for freedom in an autobiography that was published pseudonymously in 1861.

As Linda Brent the book’s heroine and narrator, Jacobs recounts the history of her family: a remarkable grandmother who hid her from her master for seven years; a brother who escaped and spoke out for abolition; her two children, whom she rescued and sent north.

She recalls the degradation of slavery and the special sexual oppression she found as a slave woman: the master who was determined to make her his concubine, his jealous wife, the future congressman who fathered her children but broke his promise to set them free, and sympathetic whites: a slave mistress who sheltered her; the northern woman who employed her, helped her avoid capture, and eventually bought her freedom; the abolitionist-feminism friend who encouraged her to write her autobiography; and Lydia Maria Child, the well-known writer who donated her services as an editor.

Incidents is the major antebellum autobiography of a black woman. With Frederick Douglass’s account of his life, it is one of the two archetypes in the genre of the slave narrative.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl on Amazon

The original editor’s note

Lydia Maria Child wrote in her introduction to Incidents:

“I believe those who know her will not be disposed to doubt her veracity, though some incidents in the story are more romantic than fiction. At her request, I have revised her manuscript; but such changes as I have made have been mainly for purposes of condensation and orderly arrangement. I have not added any thing to the incidents, or changed the import of her very pertinent remarks. With trifling exceptions, both the ideas and the language are her own.”

The frankness of Jacobs’ description of the sexual abuse and rape of female slaves were rare indeed for that time period, and Mrs. Child frames it diplomatically:

“I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects; and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn.”

A contemporary introduction

Here, a portion from the introduction to the 1987 edition (Harvard University Press) by Jean Fagan Yellin:

“Like all slave narratives, Incidents was shaped by the empowering impulse that created the American Renaissance. Jacobs’ book expressed democratic ideals and embodied a dual critique of nineteenth-century America: it challenged the institution of chattel slavery with its supporting ideology of white racism, as well as traditional patriarchal institutions and ideologies.

Jacobs’ achievement was the transformation of herself into a literary subject throughout the creation of her narrator, Linda Brent. This narrator tells a double tale, dramatizing the triumph of her efforts to prevent her master from raping her, to arrange for her children’s rescue from him, to hide, to escaped and finally to achieve freedom; and simultaneously presenting her failure to adhere to sexual standards in which she believed.

Unmarried, she entered into a sexual liaison, became pregnant, was condemned by her grandmother, and suffered terrible guilt. She writes that still, in middle age, she feels her youthful distress. But she also questions the condemnation of her behavior, reaching toward an alternative judgment, she suggested that the sexual standards mandated for free women were not relevant to women held in slavery

Further, by balancing her grandmother’s rejection with her daughter’s acceptance, she shows black women overcoming the divisive sexual ideology of the white patriarchy and establishing unit across the generations.”

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin on Amazon

More about Harriet Ann Jacobs

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl on Goodreads
Harriet Ann Jacobs: The First Silence Breaker

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is surely the most iconic of the British author’s novels. During the British author’s lifetime, critics frequently dismissed her work because it was popular with the public, readable, and riveting. That view has since been revised.

As Rebecca celebrates its eightieth birthday in 2018, and moves onward, it has never been out of print. When it was first published, it was an immediate bestseller, immediately selling more than a million copies in hardcover. It has been reprinted countless times, and translated into a number of languages.

In 1940, just two years after its publication, it was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Appropriately creepy and intense, yet oddly romantic, the screen version starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier captured the emotional tenor of the book. But it left out one key detail (which we won’t go into here), which makes the book a must-read before you even consider seeing the film. At least two fine mini-series have been made from the novel since — but the novel is still best!

Inspired by Jane Eyre

Du Maurier was something of an expert on the Brontë family. So the hypothesis that Rebecca was inspired by Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre rings true. The gothic atmosphere of a castle-like estate and a brooding, secretive husband with a troubled first marriage are elements that the two books have in common. But they diverge in important ways.

The character of Jane Eyre is feisty and independent, but the nameless narrator in Rebecca is shy and diffident. The story is cleverly told in the first person by this shy and awkward young bride of the older, mysterious Maxim de Winter. He is, like the other inhabitants of Manderley castle, haunted by the shadow by her husband’s deceased first wife, Rebecca.

You might also like: Rebecca — 1940 Movie 

Mixed reviews give way to praise

Though the book initially received many accolades upon initial publication, many reviews, like the one in the The Times of London Literary Supplement in August of 1938:

“‘Rebecca’ is a lowbrow story with a middlebrow finish. As such it squares with a formula for novel-writing that yields handsome results several times in the year. If one chooses to read the book in a critical fashion – but only a tiresome reviewer is likely to do that – it becomes an obligation to take off one’s hat to Miss du Maurier for the skill and assurance with which she sustains a highly improbable fiction. Whatever else she may lack, it is not the story-teller’s flow of fancy. All things considered, this is an ingenious, exciting and engagingly romantic tale.”

Other reviewers dismissed it as “women’s fiction,” or mere gothic romance. But with the benefit of decades of perspective, Rebecca is acknowledged as a masterpiece psychological thriller.  In a 2017 article in The Telegraph, Tammy Cohen encapsulated why du Maurier has been such an influence on those who came after her. On Rebecca, she writes:

“Only on re-reading some years later did I pick up on the subtler joys of the book: the compelling, dreamlike writing, the brooding sense of place, the growing menace which creeps up on you so slowly it’s like looking up from an engrossing book to find the sky outside has darkened and the radiator long since grown cold … in many ways Daphne du Maurier was the architect of modern domestic noir.”

From its iconic first line — “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” — to its last suspenseful twist, Rebecca has kept readers riveted for decades. It’s a window into the best and worst of human nature, and a complex portrait of love and jealousy, leaving the reader to wonder: what would we do, and how would we feel in the nameless narrator’s place?

Following is a deservedly kind review from the time of the book’s publication that is careful not to give anything away:

A 1938 review of Rebecca

A review of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, originally published in The Lincoln (NE) Daily Star, December 1938: Jane Eyre will be the first and inevitable comparison of those who read this thick, rich, fast, and lively melodrama of a heroine whose name is never given, who considers herself unattractive, but who never becomes more definite about that beauty or lack of it, of sensational incidents that cumulate in two climaxes without the slightest letdown, and which chafes the imagination with hints for well over 300 pages, but never comes through with facts.

Illness of the vulgar Mrs. Van Hopper left the self-conscious, shy, diffident, and lonely child who was her companion temporarily adrift in Monte Carlo. She was amazed when Maxim de Winter, twice her age, carrying a tragic history in the recent death of his wife Rebecca, fleeing from the memories of the beautiful Manderley, asked her to marry him. The girl, perhaps in love with dreams of the noted Cornwall estate and the romance surrounding de Winter, unhappy in distasteful surroundings, is married to him, returns to Manderley with him.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier on Amazon

Miss du Maurier writes of her people with a lavish hand, and they come to life beneath her gestures. Dead some months, the most potent person at Manderley is Rebecca, kept alive by the demon who is Mrs. Danvers, as excruciatingly a wicked soul as you’ll find anywhere, and by de Winter in his remoteness and repressions.

The girl whom Mrs. Danvers, as housekeeper, scarcely recognizes as Mrs. De Winter, but rather as an interloper and intruder, can not cope with the hideous forces at work in the Manderley that was to have been so pleasant, where she would walk in the garden with her husband and plan a new future within old walls.

Rebecca ruled from her grave, ruled through the things and the persons she has left behind. She was more real to the newcomer’s enemies, and those who would be her friends, than the lonely girl who lived with them.

It’s the sort of book in which anything might happen, and anything does, even murder. There are scenes of sharp play of wits, of high tragedy, of intense reconciliation, of fervidly restrained drama.

Du Maurier’s Rebecca: A Worthy “Eyre” Apparent

More about Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Daphne du Maurier’s inspiration for Rebecca

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Quotes from The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin (1850 – 1904) is one of the first American novels to focus on the struggle against societal expectations for women in their roles as wives and mothers. It was met with mixed reactions to this somewhat taboo subject matter. The novella follows the story of Edna Pontellier, a woman with unfulfilled sexual desires who questions the sanctity of motherhood. The theme of marital infidelity is approached from the unique perspective of the wife.

The Awakening was widely banned, and even fell out of print for several decades before being rediscovered in the 1970s. It’s now considered a classic of feminist fiction. In her analysis of this novella on this site, Sarah Wyman writes that it “came under immediate attack when published and was banned from bookstores and libraries. The author died virtually forgotten, yet The Awakening has been rediscovered and holds a secure and prominent position as a watershed text in U.S. literature and feminist studies.”

You can read the full text of The Awakening on this site. Following are a collection of quotes from The Awakening by Kate Chopin:

“The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

“He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”

You might also like: Willa Cather’s Review of The Awakening

“A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her — the light which, showing the way, forbids it.”

“Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.”

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts — absolute gifts — which have not been acquired by one’s effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

“I don’t mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much — so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.”

“There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.”

“She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves.”

“One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think – try to determine what character of a woman I am, for, candidly, I do not know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t convince myself that I am. I must think about it.”

“And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.”

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”

The Awakening by Kate Chopin on Amazon

“She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.”

“She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to look upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.”

“It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be.”

“She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope.”

Kate Chopin on her writing life: On Certain Brisk, Bright Days

“Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.”

“It is bizarre to treat all differences as oppositions,”

“There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.

“It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.”

“She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day.”

“Don’t stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.”

“And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”

“She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic.”

“Then the candor of the woman’s whole existence, which every one might read, and which formed so striking a contrast to her own habitual reserve—this might have furnished a link. Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.”

“She was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her like life was passing her by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.”

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.”

“She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.”

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