|
 American
author, famous for her feminist novels. In her work French underlines
that the male-dominated culture is founded on contempt for women,
as examined in her study The War Against Women (1992).
"Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense
of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men
are making no effort to discover it. But men's long-standing war
against women is now, in reaction to women's movements across
the world, taking on a new ferocity, new urgency, and new veneers.''
(from The War Against Women)
Marilyn French was born in New York into a poor family of Polish
descent. She took a B.A. at Hofstra College (now University) in
Long Island in 1951, and left the college to marry. In 1964 French
earned her M.A. and between the years 1964 and 1968 she was an instructor
at Hofstra University. After raising two children and divorce, she
continued her studies at Harvard University, taught English at Hofstra
and received her Ph.D. in 1972. From 1972 to 1976 she was a teacher
at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
French started to write seriously in 1957, but had only few stories
and articles published in nearly twenty years. French's first book
was her thesis on James Joyce (1976). It was followed a year later
by The Women's Room, which became a huge success, was translated
into some twenty languages, and made into a television movie in
1980. The central character is Mira Ward, whose life is traced from
her childhood to middle age. Additional views offer other voices,
whom Mira encounters on her voyage of self-discovery. Mira builds
her life after divorce and finds men incidental - there is no co-existence
between the sexes.
"I don't know any successful woman with love in her life.
Men can manage it, but not women. Disproportion in numbers, and
besides, men are too threatened by independent women. They can
always find one who will build up their ego. And I, we, independent
women, can't find a man who doesn't need continual bolstering."
(from Her Mother's Daughter, 1987)
 The
battle between sexes also was the main subject in French's second
novel, The Bleeding Heart (1980). This time the story focused
on a middle-aged woman, who has a love affair with a married American
man on her sabbatical leave in England. The relationship of a submissive
woman and a dominant man is doomed. In her non-fiction scholarly
book Shakespeare's Division of Experience (1981) French examined
the polarity between the masculine and feminine principles. She
argued that Shakespeare "never abandoned belief in male legitimacy
or horror of female sexuality." Her Mother's Daughter (1987)
was a story about four generations of women, and the bond between
mothers and daughters. The narrator, Anastasia, is determined to
avoid the oppression of her forbears, but she is haunted by that
collective past. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1986)
was a series of essays on the history of the treatment of women
by men in the past 2500 years. The book was criticized for romanticizing
matriarchal cultures.
The success of The Women's Room enabled French to write
and publish without doubt and anxiety about money. In 1992 appeared
The War Against Women, a study of oppression and violence
of different institutions and individuals in patriarchal world.
According to French, the violence has become more threatening as
an answer to Feminist movement. French argued that physical, economic,
and political attack on women is an intrinsic part of today's male-dominated
global society.
In Our Father (1995) the presidential advisor Stephen Upton
has suffered a stroke, and his daughters gather in his mansion to
await his death or recovery. Gradually they learn one another's
secrets and the truth about the life they might have shared. My
Summer with George (1996) was a story of a summer love affair.
The protagonist is Hermione Beldame, a women's romance writer who
meets George Johnson, a southern newspaper editor, and starts to
fantasize about her future with George. A Season in Hell
(1998) was French's personal account of her journey through cancer
treatment. She was offered no hope but survived metastasised oesophageal
cancer.
Central themes in French's books: feminism, the battle
of sexes (see also Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedman, Germaine
Greer, Doris Lessing) - For further reading: Contemporary Popular
Writers, ed. by Dave Mote (1997); World Authors 1975-1980, ed.
by Vineta Colby (1985)
|
