2 ms·

Wow.. what a strangely specific rant. I'm not going to go over every misconception and only address the "female authors" point as one example: With regards to

Wow.. what a strangely specific rant. I'm not going to go over every misconception and only address the "female authors" point as one example: With regards to the Brontës, I found this quote: "For example, when a 20-year-old Charlotte Brontë sent a selection of her poetry to England’s poet laureate Robert Southey, she received the following response: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life." [..] Along with her sisters Emily and Anne, she assumed a male pen name under which she released her work. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell and Emily became Ellis Bell. "They never used their real names on the title page while Emily and Anne were alive," says Emily Auerbach, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Searching for Jane Austen. "But the pen names helped them open the door and at least get a reading" So there... How is this contradictory to the narrative that female authors had to use male names to succeed? Did you fail to comprehend this in your TV show, or are you wilfully misrepresenting the facts? And Darwin is different because he got into trouble for the Theory of Evolution, not for being a man. By that logic, you couldn't talk about the plight of slaves in the US without also highlighting that white farmers at the time often died of Tuberculosis.

cgriswald 10y ago
The Brontë sisters published under male pen names because that was what was necessary to sell books. It was not a question of whether publishers were willing (they were, but required the sisters to accept the financial risk) but whether the public was willing to buy. It was very very common for female writers to publish under a male pen name at this time because that was what it took to sell. And while that may be sexist, it is not institutional sexism (as is implied), but public perception of gender. Likewise, Darwin was boycotted by public perception of heresy. In my mind, if anyone was victimized at all (can you be victimized by someone not choosing to pay you for your ideas?), both the Brontës and Darwin were equally* 'victimized' by the same force: an ignorant public. I think it is largely irrelevant whether it was because of gender or because of the perception of heresy, especially for a show called "Horrible Histories". But pandering to modern feminism sells more. Arguably, the Brontës had it easier: they could publish as men and have the public be more open to their ideas. Darwin, in contrast, was being actively campaigned against* because of his ideas.
- dTal 10y ago
  >It was very very common for female writers to publish under a male pen name at this time because that was what it took to sell. In these enlightened modern times it is now often sufficient for her merely to use her initials, to obscure her shameful female nature. A famous example: J. K. Rowling.

cgriswald 10y ago

The Brontë sisters published under male pen names because that was what was necessary to sell books. It was not a question of whether publishers were willing (they were, but required the sisters to accept the financial risk) but whether the public was willing to buy. It was very very common for female writers to publish under a male pen name at this time because that was what it took to sell. And while that may be sexist, it is not institutional sexism (as is implied), but public perception of gender. Likewise, Darwin was boycotted by public perception of heresy. In my mind, if anyone was victimized at all (can you be victimized by someone not choosing to pay you for your ideas?), both the Brontës and Darwin were equally* 'victimized' by the same force: an ignorant public. I think it is largely irrelevant whether it was because of gender or because of the perception of heresy, especially for a show called "Horrible Histories". But pandering to modern feminism sells more. Arguably, the Brontës had it easier: they could publish as men and have the public be more open to their ideas. Darwin, in contrast, was being actively campaigned against* because of his ideas.

dTal 10y ago
>It was very very common for female writers to publish under a male pen name at this time because that was what it took to sell. In these enlightened modern times it is now often sufficient for her merely to use her initials, to obscure her shameful female nature. A famous example: J. K. Rowling.