On change

As Claire Messud pointed out when discussing her latest novel, an angry woman is still an uncomfortable, destabilizing figure. Nobody likes it when she comes to the party. Historically, women who speak up get slapped down, with a vocabulary intended to keep them quiet. A man is emphatic, a woman is shrill. A man is determined, a woman is obsessed, hysterical, maybe even insane. If you don’t want the status quo to change – if you are an agent or an editor or an author who’s been well served by the paper covering what it covers – it’s easier to...