Who are the 10 world-famous important writers of feminist literature?

1. Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) – A Room of One's Own, 1929

A Room of One's Own is based on two lectures given by Virginia Woolf at Newnham and Girton Universities in 1928. But this information should not mislead us into thinking that the book is entirely based on fact. On the contrary, A Room of One's Own can be described as more fictional than realistic. At the beginning of the book, Woolf says, "I think it is unnecessary to say that what I am about to tell does not exist, that Oxbridge is a fabrication, that 'I' is a convenient term for someone who has no real identity," and adds, "Some lies will fall from my lips, but there will be some mixed in with them." There may be truths, I leave it to the reader to find out this truth and decide whether it is worth keeping or not.

2. Doris Lessing (1919 – 2013) – The Golden Notebook, 1962

British author Doris Lessing, creator of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature Golden Notebook, asked: "Do you still believe that your novels will be read after 100 years?" "If it is to be read, I wonder which one will be read." Maybe it could be the Golden Notebook. Because it is a very comprehensive summary of our time.” After the suppression of the Hungarian rebellion, Lessing turned her back on communism in 1956 and six months later wrote The Golden Notebook, in which she described the crisis of a successful female writer who no longer wrote. It can be said that the main themes of Lessing's works are feminism, the war between the sexes, and individuals pursuing integrity. The leftist, fiercely independent, and feminist heroines in Lessing's works, which are mostly set in the south of Africa or England, rebel against the cultural restrictions of the societies they live in. Her most-read and most translated novel, The Golden Notebook, is seen as one of the cornerstones of the women's movement.

3. George Eliot (1819 – 1880) – Middlemarch, 1872

Mary Anne or Marian Evans, who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, is one of the most famous English writers of the Victorian period. In Middlemarch, which Virginia Woolf described as a masterpiece, the unhappy marriage between the old Professor Casaubon and the young Dorothea Brooke and Eliot's admiration for Baraban are told. The novel, which is about the mistakes and extramarital love of Dorothea Brooke, who is searching for the meaning of life, also criticizes the social and political morality of a provincial town.

Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.

4. Ingeborg Bachmann (1926 – 1973) – Malina, 1971

Bachmann, one of the most important feminists of the 20th century, starts by breaking the molds of this masculine world when she takes up the art of the novel. It immediately breaks down the classical judgments that the novel should be considered an engineering activity and have a solid structure. In this respect, it challenges the literature of the men's world at the first step. She begins to weave her work with a literary discourse that makes one feel militantly that a feminine world has priorities. And she never compromises again until the last line of her work. One would have to be a fool not to recognize that Bachmann is the author who shares the same flat with her boyfriend Ivan in the novel Malina. However, the author never mentions this. Like many other elements in Malina's novel, this is left to the reader's discretion. Problems, disappointments, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction that can happen in everyone's life.

5. Margaret Atwood (1939 – ) – The Handmaid's Tale, 1985

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a feminist writer, is one of the few examples of Feminist Literature. The content of the book is an example of dystopia (a pessimistic perspective that reveals that the ideal society today and in the future will gradually deteriorate, especially since the order will terrorize people and social ties will disappear). The book examines the difficult living conditions that will occur with the reversal of today's women's rights. The Handmaid's Tale describes a terrifying hierarchy, a totalitarian and theocratic state, where women are under the command of men and are classified according to a caste system, where procreation is encouraged and valued above all else.

6. Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) – The Second Sex, 1949

In her book, Simone de Beauvoir, who has an important place in the development of feminist thought, intends to remind her of her feminist stance against the Western philosophy tradition, which defines women as the absence of men, the missing other, and is believed to equate rationality with masculinity and emotionality with femininity. Simone de Beauvoir applied existential theory to the special existential conditions of being a woman. In The Second Sex, one of the most influential works of the 20th century, she explains that throughout human history, women have been defined by men as the other of men, identified with nature and the body, and excluded from the process of creating culture and civilization.

7. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935) – The Land of Women, 1915

Gilman's Country of Women, which has an important place in radical feminist thought and boldly expresses many awarenesses, describes a society of women without men, classless, and living in peace. The book draws attention to gender discrimination against women, which is ignored or included between the lines in many classic male utopias, and its other feature is that, for the first time in literary essays dealing with women, feminist elements are handled openly and consciously in a utopian style. Gilman, who created her utopian country from women who contradict the female stereotypes and definitions of the class-male-dominated society, also touches upon the tension between nationalism, citizenship, equality, and freedom within the women's movement, which are the fundamental contradictions of the 20th century.

8. Kate Millett (1934 – 2017) – Sexual Politics, 1970

In her highly acclaimed book, Kate Millett, one of the leading figures of the feminist movement, presents the theory of sexual politics to the reader and examines the ideological, biological, social, class, economic, and educational aspects of this theory. Defining the concept of romantic love as a tool for men trying to gain control over women, Millett also touches upon the conflict between women created within patriarchy. The author, who attributes the systematic exclusion of women from education and their ignorance to the patriarchal order, emphasizes that the roles assigned to women do not move away from passivity, motherhood, and servanthood.

9. Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 – 2018) – The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969

Ursula K. Le Guin is a woman who defines herself as an anarchist feminist. The symbols that Le Guin, known as a science-fiction and utopia writer, uses in her fantastic stories have their counterparts in real life and in real people. The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards, the two most important awards of science fiction, is considered one of the important examples of feminist science fiction because it saves gender roles from the existing biological references, compulsory male and female roles and duality in which we are stuck and do not think otherwise. In the book, in this fictional order where opposites complement each other, gender is gathered in the same body as both men and women. There is no longer a woman or a man, but the human being as a whole, where harmony, understanding, and equality are achieved.

10. Marge Piercy (1936 – ) – Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976

With this novel, feminist writer Marge Piercy creates a new world by correcting the shortcomings and mistakes of our lives one by one in today's world and produces a utopian book. In her book, Piercy criticized the America of the 1970s, which was shaped by social oppression, environmental destruction, class differentiation, and sexual exploitation, and revealed her ideal society through the Mattaposett society of 2137. In line with feminist views, she reconstructed the family institution and biological productivity.