The Requisite Feminist Perspective in Literature and Life
Maintaining It for the Sake of Everyone
I’m a man. A man married to a woman. My wife and I believe in equal rights, freedoms, representation, treatment, and justice for everyone. That essentially qualifies us to be considered feminists. I say “essentially” because, to be a feminist, in the fullest sense, is to more than believe in such an ideal: one must consciously live, speak, think, and act in support of feminism.
In its most simplified definition, feminism means equality, equal freedoms and rights and justice for women and men alike. The problem is meeting and keeping that ideal on individual and societal levels has been anything but simple. Endeavors that go all the way back to the origins of human civilization have yet, as of 2026, to produce a lasting state and lifestyle in which such universal equality could exist without question or interruption.
Between now and whenever various persons, politicians, institutions, and cultures decided women and men were to be deemed or treated as unequal, there have been many educational endeavors, peaceful protests, propaganda, proclamations, outright pleas, and vacillations between progress made and progress lost to differing social, political, and personal views as to how any man or woman should be valued and treated.
It would seem substantial progress has been made on the matter, at least in the United States, through Suffrage and Civil Rights movements, and elsewhere, but the truth is the ideal of universal equality has not been fulfilled, and, though more people identify as feminists today, a lasting solution continues to evade us.
Why? To understand why inequality among the sexes still plagues society in visible and invisible ways, we need to consider the underlying institutional and individual reasons contributing to this imbalance, things such as:
genuine or deliberate misunderstandings of what feminism means and what its goals are
why people still say and do things to perpetuate inequality
social and cultural perceptions
beliefs, practices, and restrictions
double standards held for men and women
political perspectives and representation, or lack thereof
governmental laws and rights, or lack thereof
individual human thoughts, words, and behaviors
media treatment and portrayals of women
stereotyping
miseducation, propaganda, lack of education
fear, denigration, and under-representation among women
marginalization and objectification of women
perceived and real patriarchal patterns kept alive
presumptions and complacency
There are more reasons than are listed above, but this essay is not meant to be an exhaustive piece, just something to help people on their way to learn more about this most important topic we don’t hear enough of in the literary world unless we enroll in feminist theory and criticism, gender studies, civil rights, or justice courses.
Anytime is always the right time to learn about and commit to feminism. The sooner you learn, truly understand, and resolve to uphold and act upon the fundamentals of feminism is when you become fully human, someone sincerely sharing constructively and progressively in the struggle of others, doing so in order to prevent the perpetuation of inequality.
Until you reach that awakening day, you might be unwittingly working against feminism and humanity and, in various ways, you might be helping to preserve this problem of inequality through your words, or your actions, your tendencies or approaches in life.
Apparently too many people, including those who should know, have no awareness or intent to act upon these truths, and there are other persons who reject feminism’s call for equality. How do I know? More than a few personal conversations I’ve had over my life with various persons (men and women) made it frighteningly apparent to me that too many people misunderstand and therefore mischaracterize and malign feminism.
Some persons hold fast to the misconception that feminism means promoting women over men, or women despising or eradicating men, both of those notions being woefully wrong, and things people who are not feminists might say, because, if they understood it, they’d know such suggestions have been, among opponents of equality, deliberate and historic mischaracterizations, and sometimes propaganda knowingly spread to perpetuate inequality and the suppression and subjugation of women.
How does any of this pertain to the literary world? Let’s approach this in two parts: some historical examples of women authors struggling to gain equal footing, and then contemporary contexts and concerns.
Classic literary history is populated with examples of women grappling with perceptions and practices of inequality. 19th century English novelist George Eliot was really Mary Ann Evans, but she chose the name in order to be taken more seriously as a writer when people believed the author to be a man.
Mary Ann Evens was far from the only female author electing not to use her name. Under notably different circumstances (including losing a newborn child before she was published) another Mary—Mary Shelley—wife of English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and daughter of well-known parents (feminist advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin) chose not to have her name on the earliest edition of Frankenstein, though Percy encouraged her to include it. She declined. People initially presumed her husband penned the manuscript. Centuries later there would be tests to distinguish and verify Mary’s authorship versus Percy’s edits.
Mary’s celebrity, marital situation, gender, and age (18 years when writing Frankenstein, 20 when it was first published) eventually became considerations in the novel’s public and critical reception. Later, in 1831, a second revised edition of Frankenstein included a new preface written by Mary affirming her authorship.
There’s a third Mary worth mentioning here: Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women and an advocate for the education of women, one who understood, through her own experiences, women needed to be able to have the same educational opportunities as men in order to have any hope of achieving personal and social equality in a world too tilted beneficially towards men. Her work helped to inspire future suffragists and advocates for equality.
We can find another historic example in the three Bronte sisters, Anne, Charlotte, and Emily. They adopted aliases out of fears of sexist prejudice, believing what they wrote would not be deemed as feminine at that time. So they published under male names, as Charlotte explained in her “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” (something included in Wuthering Heights’ preface, 1850 edition):
“Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.” (source)
Many decades later, women poets and writers, including Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston still had to confront racial prejudice on top of sexism. The list hardly ends there.
As of 2026, women poets and writers continue to face and speak out against issues of inequality, exclusion, unequal consideration and representation, being taken less than seriously, and being marginalized. It’s a situation that should move us more toward empathy and resolution, but apathy and animosity have not gone away, and imbalanced and divisive thinking somehow persists.
To limit and end discrimination, we must become more sensitive to how intended or unintended words, actions, labels, descriptions, and insinuations might reinforce stereotypical and historic patterns of suppression and subjugation.
To do that, as writers and people, we should consider each word, every term and phrase, along with their present contexts and their past ramifications and detrimental dimensions. We should take into consideration perspectives other than our own, especially when we are men thinking of speaking or writing about women. We must try to hear it through their ears, see it through their eyes, feel it through their senses and their minds.
That is the considerate and requisite empathy that should accompany us as writers and human beings. In absence of that mindfulness and empathy, words earnestly believed to bear no negative impact may register in stunning ways among those persons who do see and hear and feel something uncongenial or injurious.
This is why we must never give into sheer instinct as writers or speakers: we should evaluate potential expressions and receptions and gain a more complete understanding and command of our communications.
Then we would be less likely to perpetuate inequality and marginalization and stereotypical thinking. And then, beginning with ourselves, we would be doing more of our part, as individuals and as more as members of a society interested in the truly common good, to bring more balance and fairness and justice into literature and the rest of the world.
But we will need to go further than that. We will need to be done with ageism, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia, and any other unjust mode of partiality that keeps the world steeped in intolerance and delusional divisions of supremacy and subservience.
As writers, we can review our words, descriptions, themes, dialogue, characterizations, plots, messages, and the rest, questioning ourselves and our choices along with what we did not say or what we failed to say.
We can and should examine our own works through the ears, eyes, and minds of others. I believe that would inform our work and enrich it with empathy and empower it to communicate with and be understood and appreciated by more people.
When writing or speaking, we can inquire among ourselves, asking questions such as...
Am I unwittingly or willingly expressing something historically and/or presently recognized as stereotypical, marginalizing, diminishing, disparaging, or oppressive?
Are there better, less sexist, and more objective ways I can describe things, compare things, or make my points?
If I’m comparing something, am I doing so judiciously and in fitting contexts?
Have I applied more cool reasoning than unchecked emotion in my efforts?
Have I tried to experience my words and works through the eyes of others?
Have I been more considerate than presumptive?
Can I be more compassionate?
Is there anything I’ve neglected to consider?
Why do I maintain or enforce the perspectives I wish to communicate?
What are my true goals, and are they—or could they be more—constructive and noble?
Questioning our thoughts and methods and efforts can be incredibly enlightening, helping us to more easily recognize it has always been in everyone’s interest to know better, be better, speak better, write better, and do better whenever we have the means, the motive, and the chance to live more toward that reachable betterment benefiting everyone.
Anyone deciding against that betterment incurs their fair portion of responsibility for delaying the progress humanity needs before it can dream of attempting to resolve its educational, environmental, economical, and many other predicaments. Why waste time like that?
Why not work in our own ways in the genuine spirit of togetherness on these fundamental matters of feminism and universal equality? We might not always agree on how to achieve such progress, and I know I lack the wisdom to prescribe any clearer path ahead than the proactively contemplative one I’m generally suggesting in this essay, but surely we can recognize how timely and important it is for us, today, to ensure human progress continues to be made on a daily basis and for the ultimate sake of everyone, women and men alike.
Thank you very much for considering these words and thoughts.
Robert
Some Links
for Further Exploration & Learning
From Academy of American Poets
Feminist Poems: https://poets.org/anthology/feminist-poems
From Poetry Foundation
Feminist Theory: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/feminist-theory
Poetry and Feminism: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/146073/poetry-and-feminism
Poetry and Racial Justice and Equality: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/155298/poetry-and-racial-justice-and-equality
From Project Gutenberg
Wuthering Heights preface “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell”: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/771
Frankenstein (1831 edition): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42324
A Vindication of the Rights of Women: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420
From Wikipedia
Feminism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Feminist Literary Criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literary_criticism
Feminist Literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literature
Feminist Poetry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_poetry
Feminist Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory
Frankenstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
Human Rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights
Social Equality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_equality
Suffrage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage
Women’s Liberation Movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women’s_liberation_movement
Women’s Rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights
A Vindication of the Rights of Women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vindication_of_the_Rights_of_Woman
The Requisite Feminist Perspective in Literature and Life
Copyright © Robert J. Tiess, 2026
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