OBIT feminist writer/acad. Marilyn French(5/2009)

Subject: Obit: Marilyn French
From: Emma B
Date: 05 May 09 - 08:12 PM

I may have missed this but......

Marilyn French, whose novel The Women's Room is a feminist classic, died Saturday in New York of heart failure.
She was 79.

After French's 18-year-old daughter was raped, her experience trying to convince the district attorney to prosecute the rapist helped radicalize her opinions on the way society regards women.

Much of French's scholarly work was dedicated to exploring how society treats women

In a 2007 interview she said she was still an "angry person," particularly when she saw the plight of women in other countries.

"I don't know if anger is a good thing, but it is useful and I don't know how you can avoid it. You look at the world and it's the only possible reaction"

Subject: RE: Obit: Marilyn French
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 May 09 - 08:22 PM

Thanks for posting this. I had missed it also. Here are a few links to articles.

From the AP:

Marilyn French, feminist and novelist, dies at 79

NEW YORK (AP) — Marilyn French, the writer and feminist whose novel "The Women's Room" sold more than 20 million copies and transformed her into a leading figure in the women's movement, has died at 79.

French died of heart failure Saturday at a Manhattan hospital, said Carol Jenkins, a friend and president of New York's Women's Media Center.

She was an academic in 1977 when "The Women's Room," her first novel, was published. Her aim, she said, was "to change the entire social and economic structure of Western civilization, to make it a feminist world."

The landmark novel, which was translated into 20 languages, details the journey to independence of a 1950s housewife who gets divorced and goes to graduate school. The book mirrored aspects of French's own life experiences, including the rape of her daughter.

She was called anti-male after a character in the novel says: "All men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes."

"Those words came from a character, and she was not a man-hater and never said that in her personal life," Jenkins said. "But she wanted men to accept their part in the domination of women."

Still, the novel "connected with millions of women who had no way before of claiming their anger and discontent," Jenkins said.

The male subjugation of women is the main theme of French's novels, essays, literary criticism and her four-volume, nonfictional "From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women."

A Brooklyn native, French graduated from Long Island's Hofstra University with a master's degree, studying philosophy and English literature. She taught there in the 1960s. After her divorce, she earned a doctorate from Harvard and was an English professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

A smoker, she survived a battle with esophageal cancer in 1992 that included a 10-day coma she described in "Season in Hell: A Memoir."

Her last novel is to be published this fall, and she was also working on a memoir.

French is survived by her son, Robert French, of East Brunswick, N.J., and daughter Jamie French of Cambridge, Mass.

A memorial is planned for June in New York.

Subject: RE: Obit: novelist Marilyn French (May 2009)
From: Emma B
Date: 06 May 09 - 07:58 AM

I'm not certain who altered my thread title but Marilyn French was much more than a 'novelist'

The obituary in The Guardian yesterday more accurately described her as

'writer and academic'

'The fact that she came to public attention as a popular novelist may not have been entirely comfortable for a woman who regarded herself as a serious academic, but it expresses a tension at the heart of her work.

French was an intellectual whose non-fiction polemics were rigorously researched; she published scholarly works such as Beyond Power: Women, Men & Morals (1985), a 600-page analysis of patriarchy, and the four-volume From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women (2002).'

A Brooklyn native, French graduated from Long Island's Hofstra University with a master's degree, studying philosophy and English literature. She taught there in the 1960s.

After her divorce, she earned a doctorate from Harvard and was an English professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

Subject: RE: Obit: novelist Marilyn French (May 2009)
From: Maryrrf
Date: 06 May 09 - 09:52 AM

I admired her work. Now that I've read some of her bio in the obituary, I realize that "The Women's Room" was drawn essentially from her own experiences. RIP.

Subject: RE: Obit: novelist Marilyn French (May 2009)
From: Janie
Date: 06 May 09 - 10:20 AM

I never read any of her academic work, but both The Women's Room and Her Mother's Daughter were powerful works that left a lasting impression on me.

RIP

Janie