What happens when we leave out female authors in our classroom discussions?
17-year-old South African student Paballo Peege shares why schools need to include works by female writers in their English curriculums. (Courtesy of Paballo Peege)
17-year-old South African student Paballo Peege explains why schools need to include works by female writers in their English curriculums.
It wasn’t until my last year of high school that I had an English teacher assign a book by a female author (our class read “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood). We had studied some female poets before then but never any female playwrights or novelists. Instead, White male authors like William Golding, Daniel Keyes and J.D. Salinger dominated our reading lists.
Their works reflected male and Eurocentric perspectives and often supported misogynistic views of women. The gender imbalance in our literary curriculum sent us the message that there were no female authors worth reading. Many of my classmates didn’t know where to start when it came to reading more novels by women because it was never something that seemed like a concern since our curriculum never made it a priority.
I never fully felt the imbalance of my school’s White male-dominated literary curriculum because outside of the classroom, I immersed myself in the works of female writers. The words of authors like Toni Morrison in “The Bluest Eye,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in “Americanah” and Mieko Kawakami in “Heaven” kept me company through many school holidays. But this can’t be said for the rest of my peers. Not all students are avid readers and their only encounter with literature may be the novels the syllabus requested. And because the default was always White male authors, their experiences were the only ones our school affirmed.
“The gender imbalance in our literary curriculum sent us the message that there were no female authors worth reading.”
There’s been a great effort to decolonise the education system in South Africa after Apartheid with student movements like Rhodes Must Fall, but we need to do more. Our schools need to recognise that reading lists play a role in deconstructing and introducing narratives to ensure we never leave out women’s views from the conversation. When our classes only read books that centre around a Eurocentric male experience, it caters to just a small demographic of the diverse range of students in my school and leaves women’s experiences and voices unheard and invalidated. It also allows preconceived misogynistic options to go unchallenged.
Because our teachers have only assigned classics that centred the male experience, Margaret Atwood’s novel sparked conversations we never had previously. We started discussing female autonomy and how Offred’s story mirrored our current world and ideas of freedom involving women and their rights. These conversations allowed the other girls and me in my class to share our thoughts because we could connect with the themes in the novel. In turn, my male classmates were able to empathize and better understand the female experience and have a deeper appreciation for Atwood’s work.
I love novels like “The Great Gatsby” and “1987” and believe these classics and many others written by men have their brilliance and importance. But they misrepresent female characters by having their primary trait revolve around impressing the male protagonist. They also suggest that the beauty of a woman is her strongest (if not only) asset. It is why I failed to connect with many of the reading materials assigned to me by my syllabus; these stories ignored the female experience. It is important for students, especially young women, to have exposure and access to stories where women are the main characters and their experiences have a value that does not serve as a plot device for a male narrative.
“Every student stands to gain when our teachers assign stories that not only validate the female experience but also highlight women and our realities throughout history.”
Diversity in curriculums does not need to be perfect. But it needs to include works by female authors and show that they contain just as much depth and skill as literature by men. As a result, more people can detach from the notion that writing is for one type of voice and instead see that it holds a multitude of perspectives that show us experiences diverse from our own. If schools want to foster critical thinking, they should include more novels and plays by female writers from the myriad of brilliant works already available.
Last year during my summer holidays, I wanted to read more classic literature and stumbled upon “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is a short story about a young woman’s descent into psychosis. Reading about the narrator Jane’s experiences with postpartum depression and how doctors dismissed her mental health as a uterine illness was captivating. It was the first time I read classical literature that dissected gender relations and feminism from a woman’s perspective. I wasn’t even sure stories like that existed at that time. As strange as it sounds, reading about a woman having an existential crisis and dealing with the anxiety that comes with feeling trapped rather than a story from a patriarchal perspective was validating. It was something I related to.
I want every student to be able to read more stories like these that explore female autonomy written from our point of view. I want us to discuss and dissect the writing styles of female authors as intently as we discuss the works of male authors. Every student stands to gain when our teachers assign stories that not only validate the female experience but also highlight women and our realities throughout history.
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