July blogathon # 19: "I want my life to be extraordinary"

[anghara]

Just yesterday, flapping around the Web as you do, I tripped across this article

It'a about "anomie", and they define the term like this:

Anomie, which literally means “without law” in German and French, was defined by Durkheim to be a state of “normlessness.” ....in times of social change and upheaval, clear societal standards and expectations

Comments

[eneit]

Someday, somewhere, I hope to pass your books on to a much loved grandchild, or mayhaps, if I'm lucky enough, great grandchild, who also weeps when they read about Senena.

[anghara]

Thank you. And so Senena survives....

[dichroic]

Small nit: the list you link to is not a list of women scientists, but of scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It may not be a useful distinction in the time of Hypatia but it certainly is by Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. If anything I think women engineers are even less recognized than women scientists.

Theology is another field in which woman's notable contributions have been underrecognized as far back as Macrina of Nyssa or Beruria.

[anghara]

"If anything I think women engineers are even less recognized than women scientists."

Fair point. I stand corrected.

[icecreamempress]

Take literature. There was ONE Jane Austen.

That isn't accurate. First of all, Austen published as "A Lady" during her lifetime.

Second of all, there were many very successful women novelists of that era whom most people no longer read today, most of whom vastly outsold Austen at the time. Maria Edgeworth, Fanny Burney, and Ann Radcliffe are the three most famous (the last was parodied by Austen in Northanger Abbey), but there were many more.

[anghara]

Indeed, but the couple of salient points here are that (a) yes, my point WAS that Austen published as "A Lady", as opposed to taking refuge in male-dom, as it were, and was nonetheless accepted and read - and (b) sure, there were others out there and they were more or less successful on a sliding scale but as you yourself point out above these are women writers who are NO LONGER READ TODAY. Austen is. So "There was ONE Jane Austen" stands, as far as it goes

[icecreamempress]

Not that the above is meant to argue with your central point--the Brontes published under male names because they wanted to be taken more seriously than the average "lady novelist"--but I am sad that the many very successful lady novelists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are now forgotten.

And they came in for abuse even from George Eliot! Yikes.

[anghara]

Could it be because the "silly, frothy" novels were (a) all that a woman could be expected to produce and (b) in fact, to read...?

I'm sad that many - most - of the women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries are lost today, if only because their unique perspectives were lost with them. But the point remains that large numbers of their male counterparts of the same era ARE still around and still read even if the novels they produced are considered turgid and unreadable in this day and age - but those novels are now called "classics" and taught in our schools. Few books written by the women of that historical period have even survived, let alone been granted "classic" status.