Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

by Anne Helen Petersen

Franzen’s understanding of the ideal author is also rooted in the century-old model of authorship put forth by Kraus and his fellow European intellectuals: that the work was not for financial gain, but pure and exalted triumph of the mind, and thus should not be tainted by concerns of capital. To be worried about financial success, or readership numbers, is to declare yourself midcult, if not worse. But women’s relation to writing has long been shaped by different forces: for many, if not most, part of the joy of writing was how its profits enabled, and continue to enable, women to determine their own destiny—untethered to a man. Writing, in other words, as a form of metaphorical and financial independence.

Yes. This.