I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
Interpretation
This quote highlights a gender bias in literary evaluation, suggesting that women's writing is often dismissed as less serious compared to men's.
Jennifer Weiner's quote critiques the long-standing double standard in the literary world that values men’s writing on subjects like family and emotions as 'serious literature' while relegating women’s writing on the same topics to the realm of 'romance' or 'light reading.' This reflects broader societal biases regarding gender and the legitimacy of women's narratives, prompting a discussion on why certain voices are valued differently.
In practice
In a discussion about literary contributions at a book club, this quote can underline the importance of recognizing women's perspectives.
But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.
I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'
When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out.
Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.
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