Remember that tweet thread I wrote about lacking nuance and erasing history in our understanding of women writers in the past? Yeah... tihs is what comes of it.
bbc.co.uk/news/entertain…
bbc.co.uk/news/entertain…
So, we start from this lovely place. 'Women shouldn't have to use male pseudonyms to get published'. What we end up with is 'allow to me erase the agency of these writers and completely disregard the complex choices involved in pen-names'.
Is it possible that some of these women in an ideal world would have preferred to publish under their birth names? Possibly. But their pen-names are also names they chose for a variety of reasons. Some of those involve queer identities (notable case in point - Vernon Lee)
Others involve practical publishing choices, others involve anonymity, others involve the significance of certain names for the writer, others involve their literary identity.
The idea that women and afab people historically chose their pen-names are diverse. Although it's tempting to think along of the lines of 'they WEREN'T ALLOWED to publish as women' or 'they COULDN'T have published as women' this erases literary history and ignoring their agency.
Remember, these pen names were chosen in worlds with women writers, writing under their own names. Successful women writers. Best-selling women writers. From at least the 18th century the practice was wide spread.
We also have plenty of historical cases of women changing from their pen-names to their birth names IF THEY SO CHOSE. Let's not ignore that either.
Is it as simple as 'women could write whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and expect it to be both popular and uncritiqued'? No. Patriarchy. Double standards. Etc. The Bronte's work was consider unseemly in its themes, for example.
But it's not as simple as saying 'they couldn't publish with female names' because ... they did. Nor is one case universalisable. Give these women and afab people the courtesy of respecting them as individuals with individual choices.
If any future ill thought out endeavour decides to blazen my birth name on all of my fiction writing, disregarding my stated choices (I mean go at it if you have a 'I wish I could use my birth name, sigh' in some diary) I will fucking come back to haunt you. I swear to God.
If anyone has the time and patience to read my longer (and, if anything, angrier but also more detailed and informed) thread on erasing nuance in our conception of women's writing in the past... have at it.
An addition. What this ABSOLUTELY does (among other things) is erase queer and non-gender conforming identities. Not to get spicy or anything here but it also forces and defines these writers' into a definition of 'woman' along the lines that the publisher delineates, not them.
Look me in the eye and tell me George Sand and Vernon Lee were dying to use their birth names. As biographers note, for Vernon Lee that name was much more than a pseudonym. Look it up.
We do not get to go back and erase their choices because of our concepts of what 'women should do' including, bizarrely, being obliged to publish under their birth name. Weird.
Oof. This is one I wasn't aware of but it's a very dodgy one. They've changed from the masculine pseudonymous 'Mahlon T. Wing' to her birth name Edith Maude Eaton.
This ignores the other issues of identity involved with her pseudonyms and the existence of her more common pseudonym (Sui Sin Far) for which there were complex cultural choices as a Chinese-American citizen writing about an often silenced or hidden experience.
In case you're not clear, this does not respect her identity or her choices. It ignores her reality, history and position in order to 'prove a point' about women writers and male pseudonyms with no thought to intersectional identities. That's... a bit grim.
If you'd be interested in knowing more about some women writers who (gasp) were in print under their own name, here's a free pre-recorded online class on Gothic Women Writers from the 18th century on.
Shall I be that person? I shall!
I do all of my stuff for free but if you'd like to pop a tip in the ko-fi jar, please do feel free!
I run free education stuff online. Check it out!
ko-fi.com/samhirst
I do all of my stuff for free but if you'd like to pop a tip in the ko-fi jar, please do feel free!
I run free education stuff online. Check it out!
ko-fi.com/samhirst
A quick addition. As someone has pointed out and as I've become increasingly aware (particularly re. George Egerton), some of these names are also married names.
Fact check on myself there.
Sadly, doesn't make anything any better. Sometimes, it makes it worse (see Egerton)
Fact check on myself there.
Sadly, doesn't make anything any better. Sometimes, it makes it worse (see Egerton)
