Women: Literary Celebrities

Women: Literary Celebrities throughout the Centuries

In 1849 the Oxford English Dictionary first attributed the definition of a famous person, rather than the state of being famous, to the word ‘celebrity’. However, this begs the question of how we can best define the term ‘literary celebrity’ and furthermore whether this definition has shifted in the last centuries? Franssen, professor of Literary Culture at the University of Amsterdam, has stated that “literary celebrity results from a clash between two discursive configurations: literary authorship and popular celebrity” (91). In this article both of these elements, literary authorship and popular celebrity, will be discussed and this especially in relation to women and their role shaping

Gustave Flaubert was accused by the public intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre of having an “underlying fantasy of himself as woman” (Huyssen 45). Sartre managed to show how Flaubert fixated on his own fictitious femininity while at the same time sharing the period’s animosity towards real women. A thought process and behaviour unfortunately only “too common in the history of modernism” as stated by German and Comparative Literature professor Andreas Huyssen (45). A compelling example of this deplorable thought process is described in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper. Her work falls into the category of early feminist literature and the story categorically illustrates this notion of hostility towards women in the nineteenth-century. Male authors considered themselves in control, they were signs of masculinity, and they wrote genuine, authentic literature. Female authors posed a threat to them, turning the men soft, and damaging their ‘authentic’ writing within the bourgeois society; “the masses knocking at the gate were also women, knocking at the gate of a male-dominated culture” (Huyssen 47). During this time, the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mass culture and the

This evolution in meaning can certainly for a big portion be attributed to the mass media which stimulated the growth and spread of work by female authors. Many female authors now have their own fan base and even fan communities which surround them and their literary work. This new phenomenon has been defined by Fiske as: “Fan culture is a form of popular culture that echoes many of the institutions of official culture, although in popular form and under popular control.” (33). Like for instance popular pop music celebrities or popular movie stars the female popular authors also have their own fan clubs. These fans add value to the author and her work, additionally they intensify the popularity of the celebrity. Fans in turn enhance their self-esteem and feel more confident by reading the works of these popular authors. As long as a good balance between the giving and taking is in place fandom should not be regarded as an atrocious subject, but as a positive aspect belonging to life in the twenty-first century. And therefore successful female literary authors can easily be referred to as popular celebrities; who