Alison
Flood in the Guardian has written a piece about author Catherine Nichols finding
that submitting her manuscript under a male pseudonym brought her more than
eight times the number of responses she had received under her own name. “In an essay
for Jezebel, Nichols reveals how after she sent out her novel to 50 agents,
she received just two manuscript requests. But when she set up a new email
address under a male name, and submitted the same covering letter and pages to
50 agents, it was requested 17 times.”
Responses from agents to Catherine Nichols included comments
such as “beautiful writing, but your main character isn’t very plucky, is
she?”; responses to her male pseudonym were “polite and warm”, even when they
were rejections, describing the work as “clever”, “well-constructed” and
“exciting”. One agent who sent her a formal rejection as Catherine asked to
read “George’s” book, and then asked to send it to a more senior agent.
Nichols’ essay comes at a time when the literary world is
under scrutiny for its attitude to female writers, with Vida’s
annual count of the paucity of female reviewers, and female authors
reviewed, added to in recent months by the novelist Nicola
Griffith’s discovery that novels featuring male protagonists are more
likely to win literary awards. The novelist Kamila Shamsie has called
for a “year of publishing women” in 2018 to “redress the inequality”.
The Flood article goes on at some length but ends with the comment: “Nichols
has since used the comments she received as “George” to rework her novel – and
now has an agent.” So the book needed work, the work was done and then
accepted.
I saw the headline to this article and felt outraged. Then I
got to thinking about it and I have the feeling there will always be personal
bias in the selection of anything, from sweeties to flash cars and everything
in between. I also suspect, but cannot prove, that there are fewer men writing
than women these days, which might be one reason the so-called male submission
was taken up so readily. Women write about things women are interested in, and men
do not find them so engaging. Yet male readers must be catered for in the
bookshops and it seems the agents are busily looking to fill that need.
Perhaps women writers need to invade the literary world; to start
writing literary reviews instead of putting a paragraph on Amazon and Goodreads.
It takes time to write a fair review, to put forward an argument and back it up
with facts. Perhaps more women need to write about something other than simple romance,
tackle bigger topics. Then the recognition might come. I wonder how people feel about War and Peace v Gone with the Wind? Me Before You v Anna Karenina?
