Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
Helen Lewis
For centuries, patriarchal culture has imposed on a woman the ideals of meekness, sacrificial service and humility, the role of a domestic angel, the sweetness of submission. The heroines of Helen Lewis are not like that at all. Their names were surrounded by scandals. They were imprisoned, they were stoned, and in modern times - after all, morals have softened! - just ridiculed. Complex, intolerant, uncomfortable and egocentric, sometimes aggressive, sometimes funny - originals, eccentrics, upstarts, they articulated implicit problems and showed the abnormality of the familiar. They broke stereotypes, forced society to revise gender conventions, changed the way of life, legal norms and state institutions - in the interests of everyone else. The dispassionate pedantry of an archivist historian and the honesty of an investigative journalist, an analytical mind, ardent empathy and a willingness to see the unpleasant truth about her heroines allowed Helen Lewis to write a sober, insightful, bitter, cheerful and fearless story of feminism, its victories and failures. Without pathos and resentment to tell about how half of humanity sought the right to dispose of their body and voice, their time and income, the right to make mistakes and correct mistakes, the right to be imperfect - to be human.
