by SUZANNE LEONARD
[1] Feminist fiction emerged in both the United States and Great Britain during the height of the second wave feminist movement, marking its entrance with demands for female autonomy, sexual and reproductive freedom, and a cautionary perspective on institutionalized heterosexuality. While feminist activists were at the same time encouraging a radical overhaul of the sex/gender system, feminist fiction often made similar arguments in a more subdued fashion, focusing on larger systemic issues through personal or confessional narratives that depicted the material circumstances of individual women’s lives. Perhaps best exemplified by novels such as Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1969), Marge Piercy’s Small Changes (1972), Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1973), and Marilyn French’s The Woman’s Room (1977) feminist fiction chronicled the psychological and sometimes literal journeys taken by women who come to a gradual understanding of the ways that gender prescribes their lives. Such realizations are frequently accompanied by a variety of plot devices that pertain to the female protagonist, including: her first sexual experience, struggles with men and marriage, forays into higher education, extramarital dalliances, visits to a psychotherapist, difficult reproductive decisions, and parenting challenges.
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