barefootinthewoods:

anonymousghostwriter:

plainoljane:

littlemisslibrarian:

They describe it as “the top 100 books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man.”

I would be interested in seeing the top 100 books that have shaped the lives of individual women while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be women.

What would that list look like?

1. A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
2. Little Women - L M Alcott
3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
4. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
5. Pride and Prejudice - Austen
6. Jane Eyre - Bronte
7. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

A few from the top of my head.

It’s an odd suggestion — and, given that I’m male, it’s probably ill-informed — but I’d add Palahniuk’s* Invisible Monsters as not an example of a text that has shaped the lives of many women, but as one that reflects some contemporary issues females face in Western society, and does so brilliantly.

* I’m of the mindset that Palanhiuk’s prose, while seeming mostly masculine, actually has strong feminine underpinnings. I also thought his novel Fight Club was a work of romanticism. You probably disagree; I’m used to it.

* Wuthering Heights (More so than Jane Eyre for this British girl.)
* A Handmaid’s Tale. Quite frankly, you could list any book by Margaret Atwood here. My personal favorite being Alias Grace - but Handmaid’s Tale is more widespread.
* Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys. (Beats Jane Eyre hands down, but it would not exist without the other.)
* The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
* Tipping The Velvet - Sarah Waters
* Possession - A.S.Byatt
* Bridget Jones’s Diary (I don’t have to like it, I just acknowledge that it revealed more of (white middle class) British female mindset, and brought it into popular culture.
* Beloved - Toni Morrison
These are just off the top of my head.