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Marilyn French, groundbreaking author and historian, died of heart failure on May 3, 2009, at the age of 79. Her first book, The Women's Room, came out in 1977 and sold 20 million copies 24 languages. She inspired millions of women to stand up for themselves.
This extraordinary woman began her life on a traditional path. French got married in her early twenties, supported her husband's career, and raised children as she put herself through college and graduate school at Hofstra University. After her divorce in 1967, French received a fellowship to attend Harvard, where she completed a doctorate in literature.
Although divorcing her husband scandalized her mother, who felt that she shouldn't leave her marriage as long as her husband "didn't beat me or gamble or drink," French did not consider herself a radical until 1971, when she read Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. That same year, French's 18 year old daughter was raped and the district attorney did not want to prosecute the case. French insisted on going to trial, and the man was convicted.
Her experiences with marriage and justice clearly influenced her outlook on gender relations. Elaine Woo wrote in The Los Angeles Times:
The novel's most-quoted line -- "All men are rapists, and that's all they are," spoken by the protagonist after the near-rape of her daughter -- was often erroneously attributed to French herself, giving critics what they thought was proof of the author's man-hating rage. The accusation infuriated French. "What I am opposed to," she told the London Times a few years ago, "is the notion that men are superior to me."
Although she said the novel was not autobiographical, her protagonist's trajectory mirrored her own. There was, she said, "nothing in [it] I've not felt."
It is an understatement that The Women's Room impacted many women. Rhea at The Boomer Chronicles wrote:
I remember reading The Women’s Room by Marilyn French in the late 1970s, in the midst of my burgeoning feminist days. Everyone I knew was reading it, and discussing it. In a word, The Women’s Room blew us away. I am not sure what it would be like to read it today — would it hold up after all these years? — but I know the impact French’s work had on me then. Not only the feminist content of her work, but the writing. I dreamed of having her writing talent. And I regarded her as a genius.
Alida Brill wrote at The Guardian:
She believed in the power of words to change the world, to make it a better place for girls and women. She did not hate men, despite all the incendiary language that became attached to her decades earlier and appear in her obituaries now. She didn't much care about those who tried to relegate her to a slagheap of radical man-haters. Responding to that would waste time – valuable writer's time...
All the words Marilyn wrote and published across more than three decades matter. They matter tremendously. In 1977, exactly a decade after I graduated from high school, I walked into Marilyn's The Women's Room, and when I walked out I was a different person. My close friends and I tore through it, refused to loan our copies and used it as a bible for our own liberation.
Her main characters were not our peers – they were closer to the ages of our mothers than to us – but we understood the message. It was that as women we were entitled to be in charge of our own lives, whatever it takes to get there and however difficult patriarchy makes it. Women don't have to settle for less than an equal share in everything from work, to satisfaction in love and loyalty in friendships.
I was already a feminist when I encountered the novel. When I closed the book I was a woman no longer willing to hide behind my youth or use beauty as an excuse for not getting the job done.
While Lisa Tuttle didn't think The Women's Room was a good book, she still respects it's place and what it wrought:
The Today Programme had invited Sarah Dunant and Christina Odone to discuss the significance of French's most famous book, The Women's Room. I was slightly apprehensive, expecting a typical & pointless argument about feminism between two women with differing politics, but was very pleasantly surprised by how sane and affirmative the comments were ... at one point the presenter (John Humphries? I can't
