Discuss the factors that contributed to the rise of novel by women. or, Why did woman before 18th century prefer to write fiction, not poems or drama? Why could not women before 18th century write poems or dramas other than fiction? Or, What according to Virginia Woolf are the obstacles for women to become writers?

Discuss the factors that contributed to the rise of novel by women.

or,

 Why did woman before 18th century prefer to write fiction, not poems or drama?

Why could not women before 18th century write poems or dramas other than fiction?

Or,

What according to Virginia Woolf are the obstacles for women to become writers?

Ans. The history of Europe records that there has been no continuous writing by women before the le century. They could not write as habitually as men or could not write any classics of English fiction. It is perhaps due to some obvious reasons, women have never been focused in history or literature. To be precise, the history of English is the history of the male, not of the female. Women lacked experience and inspiration. They were important as mothers, grandmothers, wives, lovers or daughters etc. Women were focused as beautiful—their color, their style and their graces and charms etc. are all that was written in literature and this is how women were presented in history or literature. The literature of Europe bears a testimony to it. Women were important emotionally and domestically. There has been no significant dramatist or poet in England. Even the Elizabethan literature is exclusively masculine. However, at the and of the I e century and in the beginning of the 19 th century we find women coming into fore front writing with extraordinary success.

Law and custom were largely responsible for such intermissions of silence on the part of the women. Women had no liberty even in matters of love and marriage. They had to comply with the wishes of their parents. However, in the beginning of the 19th century, there have been changes in law, customs and manners, and the women of the 19th century enjoyed greater liberties. They had education. They were free even to choose husbands for themselves. It is significant that four great women novelists of the 19^th century – Jane Austen , Emily Bronte , Charlotte Bronte and George  Eliot, not one had a child and two were unmarried. Women felt encouraged   write novel, and they started writing about themselves-their problems and to tations. The novel they wrote was all about domestic life and emotional life. century novel was remarkable because it foreshadowed the life and experiences of women. They could not become poets or dramatists, perhaps for lack of experience. Unlike Conrad or Tolstoy, they could not write travel literature. Whatever they wrote remained fiction, because they needed novel or fiction to write about their experience of life. They needed a room for narration. Even their emotional life to some extent was regulated by law and custom. The significant novels of the 19th century like pride and Prejudice. Villette, Middle March, Emma etc. were written by women novelist.

Austen's Pride Prejudice gives a picture of love, marriage and property. A proprieted man was most covetous among the spinsters. It was important to get married. Girls made themselves busy to look for husbands. Austen shows mothers to be husband-hunters for their daughters. Love and marriage is the central action of Austen's novel. The novel ends with numerous marriages and at the end the novelist makes it clear that a good marriage is the highest objective in the life of a girl. In other words, 19th century novels mostly dealt with domestic life of women. In the 19 th century novel, we become conscious of a woman's presence. For example, in Middle March and in Jane Eyre, we find someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.

Given chances, opportunities & liberties, women started to write fiction and the changes in women's mind, their habits, desires etc have been recorded in fiction. A women has to discover the outer world in relation to her and woman's writing is getting to be secular. It does not insist upon femininity. A women's book is not written as a man would write it. The change in attitude of the English women has turned them into a voter, wage-earner, a responsible citizen, from a non-descriptive influence, fluctuating and Vague. Her relations are now not merely emotional. They are Intellectual, they are political. She writes on her own, and no longer seeks the Patronization of others like husband or brother or parents or elders of the society. Her attention is being directed away from the personal to the Impersonal. Women's novels or novels by women naturally become, more critical Of society and less analytical of individual lives. Women seem to expect to occupy the offices of male-prerogative. Their novels now deal With social evils and remedies. The men and women they portray are not related emotionally. They are important socially, politically, economically and intellectually.