Marilyn French
| Marilyn French | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 21, 1929 Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | May 2, 2009 (aged 79) Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Hofstra University, Harvard University |
| Occupation | Author, lecturer |
Marilyn French (née Edwards) (November 21, 1929 – May 2, 2009) was a feminist American author.
French was born in Brooklyn to E. Charles Edwards, an engineer, and Isabel Hazz Edwards, a department store clerk. She received a bachelor's degree from Hofstra University (then Hofstra College) in 1951, in philosophy and English literature. She also received a master's degree in English from Hofstra, in 1964. She later attended Harvard University, where she earned a Ph.D in 1972.
She was an English instructor at Hofstra, from 1964 to 1968, and was an assistant professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1972 to 1976.
French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce.
In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. For instance, one of her first non-fiction works, Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985), is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world. French took issue with the expectations of married women in the post-World War II era and become a leading, if controversial, opinion maker on gender issues who decried the patriarchal society she saw around her. “My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of Western civilization, to make it a feminist world,” she once declared.
French's first and best-known novel, The Women's Room (1977), follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says, "all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes."The Women's Room sold more than 20 million copies and was translated into 20 languages.Gloria Steinem, a close friend, compared the impact of the book on the discussion surrounding women’s rights to the one that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) had had on racial equality 25 years earlier.
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