20 Classics Every Woman Should Read
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Some books are popular for a season, and some stay on for decades. You read them over and over again, till your much-thumbed, dog-eared, tattered copy becomes as much a part of you as your name.
Here's Vagabomb's list of 20 Classics every woman should read.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
What it's about: Published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is an entry in the secret journal of an unnamed woman who has been advised to be on a country rest cure because she can't enjoy life and the 'joys' of motherhood. Her doctor and husband forbid her to write, and instruct her to live a life of complete passivity, leading to the creation of this journal. The short story depicts her chilling descent into psychosis, leading to a breakdown, when she starts to create another reality in the yellow wallpaper of her prison.
Why you should read it: Written because “ it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, ” Gilman narrates the story with perfect psychological accuracy, and it stands out because it is an autobiographical account of the author's own struggle with mental illness, and was instrumental in changing contemporary attitudes to women's physical as well as mental health.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
What it's about: Sylvia Plath's only novel, written a month before Plath killed herself, The Bell Jar is an intensely emotional novel about Esther Greenwood, a woman who lives with the depairing belief that women can never have it all. Believed to be semi-autobiographical, the book also deals with Esther's and in some ways, Plath's downward spiral into a depression that made her take her own life.
Why you should read it: Published in 1963, 52 years ago, and it is disturbing how relevant the book still is. Plath draws the reader into Esther's slowly progressing insanity so deftly, that it becomes real and personal for every reader. A haunting read, and one that sticks with you for quite a while even after you've put it down, The Bell Jar validates a woman's right to feel anger, confront it, and mould it into literature.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
What it's about: Thirty-seven year old Humbert Humbert falls in love with 12 year old Lolita Haze, his landlady's daughter. Marrying Charlotte, his landlady, just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers in his quest for what he believes is love. Growing out of him, Lolita looks for attention elsewhere, prompting Humbert to carry her off on a cross-country trip, all for, once again, what he believes is love.
Why you should read it: An extremely controversial book, Lolita deals with child abuse unapologetically, and is rightfully, at times, difficult to read. What makes Nabokov such a genius is how quietly he leaves behind a trail of cues suggesting Humbert is not a trustworthy narrator, and how the victim of child abuse is always that - a victim, and is never to blame.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
What it's about: Offred, a Handmaid, lives in the Republic of Gilead, in the home of the Commander. Once a day, she is allowed to go out to walk to food markets, where signs are written in pictures, because women are no longer allowed to read. Once a month, she must lie on her back, so that the Commander can get her pregnant. This is the life of Offred, who remembers the life she led earlier, with her husband Luke, with her daughter, with her job, with her own independence.
Why you should read it: Offred's life used to be exactly like the life you lead right now. Offred's life becomes what is a reality for a lot of women right now as well. With no ownership of her body, The Handmaid's Tale is a disquieting look into a dystopian society where women are either slaves used only for procreation, or are mere status symbols.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
What it's about: Science student Victor Frankenstein is obsessed with the cause of life and death, and how to bring about life onto something already dead. Assembling a human being with stolen body parts, he succeeds in bringing it to life, but recoils in horror at how hideous the creature is. The innocent creature, learning nothing but cruelty and tortured by isolation, turns to evil and begins a tale of revenge against the one who made him this way—his creator, Frankenstein.
Why you should read it: One stormy night, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron decided to write a horror story each. That night, Mary Shelley invented science fiction, and created an instant bestseller.Frankenstein remains a gothic thriller, a tale of passionate romance, and a cautionary story of what happens when one decides to tamper with Nature.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
What it's about: Centred on Edna Pontellier, who feels stifled in her marriage and in her role as a matriarch, she looks for and finds physical love in an illicit love affair outside her marriage.
Why you should read it: Published in 1899, Chopin takes a subject that was considered taboo, and shocked readers with such an honest depiction of female sexuality and desire. Few writers have been able to duplicate the perceptive eye Chopin casts on a woman involved in marital infidelity and treating it with the kind of candour that her writing reflects.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
What it's about: One of the most popular novels of all time, Pride and Prejudice tells us the story of the proud Fitzwillam Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet, as they draw out their spunky, and yet rocky courtship within a coterie of parlour intrigues.
Why you should read it: Austen's masterpiece on societal standards, romance, misunderstandings, male and female relationships—all dripping with wit—has never gone out of print, and with good reason.
Jane Eyre By Charlotte Brontë
What it's about: A young orphaned girl takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with the master of the house, Mr Rochester, and discovers his dark secret.
Why you should read it: Jane Eyre has everything you'd want in a novel—love, suspense, a mad woman in the attic, as well as a woman who speaks her mind. Jane doesn't marry the object of her desire until she knows for sure that they'll be equals in marriage, and in her search for a life richer than what traditional Victorian society offers, she speaks her mind, and emerges intact in her spirit and integrity.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
What it's about: Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, grows up in Jamaica, and is then forced into an arranged marriage to the cold and proud Rochester. Renaming her 'Bertha,' Rochester locks her up in the attic, who slowly descends into madness, torn from her home in the Caribbean and subjected to an alien culture.
Why you should read it: Rhys uses multiple narrators to tell the story, and weaves her story into Jane Eyre's. Talking about the unequal power between men and women in a marriage, Rhys makes a feminist statement as well as a postcolonial one, when Rochester's rejection of Antoinette's Creole heritage is shown to be critical to her mental breakdown. Rhys portrays a society that is galvanised by hate and twists relations to extents that can literally turn a sensual young woman into the “madwoman in the attic.”
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
What it's about: Using the backdrop of the end of The Civil War, Little Women tells the story of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Alcott became a hit with this book, and it is still a much loved novel for readers, being one of the first books to actually depict female role models with goals—both professional and personal.
Why you should read it: Basing Little Women on her own childhood with her three sisters, Alcott created a book for everyone to relate to. Stuck in that place between childhood and 'womanhood,' each of the March sisters goes through something that takes them from Little to Women, and with them, us.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
What it's about: Sixteen year old Janie is caught kissing Johnny Taylor, an incident that set in motion her marriage to an old man with 60 acres of land. Janie suffers two more marriages to completely different men, all while searching for love, before she finally meets the man she will love, who offers no riches, but a simple packet of flowering seeds.
Why you should read it: One of the greatest novels of the 20th century, Hurston's prose is so rich, that even though it's a novel of its time, it becomes a novel for all time. A novel which is about love, culture, tradition, politics is a novel about something that we can all identify with—to be human.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
What it's about: Anna Karenina is a classic tale of ill-fated love, of the doomed affair between the unhappily married Anna Karenina and the handsome Count Vronsky, with a sub-plot exploring the relationship between a wealthy landowner named Konstantin Levin and Princess Kitty.
Why you should read it: A classic for the ages, Anna Karenina depicts clearly society's double standards for men and women, where women are shunned for having extramarital affairs, while there is no such repercussion for men. Exploring themes that revolve around Russia's feudal system, politics, religion, gender, morality and social class, there is plenty for everyone in this 1000-odd pages novel.
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
What it's about: The story follows the lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula, from his earlier novel The Rainbow. While Gudrun conducts a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist, Ursula falls in love with Rupert Birkin, an intellectual.
Why you should read it: Lawrence draws his characters based on real life characters, with Gudrun based on Katherne Mansfield, Ursula based on his own wife Frieda, Gerald on John Middleton Murry, and Rupert on himself. With most of his work facing criticism because of the inherent sexual content, this one was no different, and his treatment of homosexuality and homoeroticism shows his dexterity with the language, which explains why he is still popular even today.
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
What it's about: Anna Wulf, author of a very successful novel, keeps four separate notebooks—“a black notebook which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which I make stories out of my experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary,”—and interweaves these notebooks in with a separate fictional account of Anna and her story.
Why you should read it: Published in 1962, The Golden Notebook went completely against the trope of the period, which would be to showcase mentally ill women, and went on to bring together a woman's mind and body.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
What it's about: Emma Rouault married Charles Bovary with dreams of the life she's read about in magazines and and novels. Charles turns out to be a boring country doctor, and the life she leads now has none of the excitement Emma had hoped for. Unwilling to compromise, she takes on a lover, leading her life into a web of despair.
Why you should read it: Published in 1857, Flaubert shocked readers with its content to the point that Madame Bovary was put on trial for obscenity by public prosecutors, which did nothing but add to the novel's notoriety. It became a bestseller when it was publisehd, and remains one till date. The language is so beautifully sculpted, that Nabokov went as far as to say that “stylistically, it is prose doing what poetry is supposed to do.”
Beloved by Toni Morrison
What it's about: Sethe, a slave who escaped to Ohio 18 years ago, is still not free. Haunted by memories of Sweet Home, the farm where terrible things happened, the ghosts of which she carries with her, including the memory of her baby—who dies with just a single word on her tombstone—Beloved.
Why you should read it: Morrison won the Pulitzer for Beloved in 1988, and the 2006 New York Times survey also called it the best novel of the last 25 years—and with good reason. A moving tale about the trauma of slavery,Beloved tears at you, making you confront the pain Sethe feels.
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
What it's about: Narrated by Ruthie, it is the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille grow up in the fictional town of Fingerbone in Idaho. Raised by a series of relatives before their aunt Sylvie takes them on full time, it is a touching coming of age novel that deals with the larger idea of housekeeping, not in the sense of mantaining a house, but as keeping house for one's soul.
Why you should read it: Published in 1980, it is a modern classic, and earned Robinson a Pulitzer nomination. Described by Doris Lessing as a novel not “one be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight,” we can't help but agree.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
What it's about: Found in the attic of the house she spent two years of her life in hiding, The Diary of a Young Girl documents the moving, and at times amusing, experiences she had in that house. Cut off from the entire world, facing hunger, boredom, closed living quarters, and the always looming threat of being found by the Gestapo—this book is a testament to the horrors of war and the unwavering optimism of the human spirit.
Why you should read it: The less said about this book the better, because this is one book you most definitely have to read to fully understand Frank's commentary on human nature, courage, frailty, and makes you truly want to wep for the young girl whose spirit was cut short by her truly tragic circumstances.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
What it's about: Set in 17th century Boston, this is a story about Hester Prynne, who conceived a daughter as a result of an affair, and is sentenced to wear the letter 'A' in scarlet on her dress at all times. Disgraced in public and ostracized by society, Hester draws upon her inner strength and ends as one of the first true heroines of American literature.
Why you should read it: Considered one of the greatest American novels,The Scarlet Letter covers themes of guilt, and redemption from sin. Once a banned book, this is a book every woman needs to read for the simple reason that it teaches you about the temporality of life, and how everything you could need is always within you.
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
What it's about: Published in 1929, this is Woolf's book length essay talking about the predicament of every female artist.
Why you should read it: One of the greatest writers of all time, Woolf talks about the importance and need for an actual physical and psychological space for women so they can create the art they want to, how they want to.
You should have read all of these by now, so re-read them one more time and really think about what each of them meant to you. And if you haven't, get on it right away.
Tell us how these books made you feel in the comments below!
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