Women-writes in english literature

Coding[edit]

The stylistic differences between the syntax and lexicon of men and women extends even beyond written communication. In other applications of communication the same rift exists. In computer programming and coding, women are believed to write code that is more user-friendly, containing comments that explain how to use it, and easy to understand variables, while code written by men tends to be cryptic and obscure. Emma McGrattan, a programmer located in Silicon Valley, says she can accurately determine whether code was written by a man or a woman just by looking at it.^[18]
Women's code may be different from men's, but that does not make it feminist by nature. Feminist code does exist, mainly through the lens of its purpose. The online programming projects WWO and the Orlando project were feminist archive projects meant to collect the works of women throughout history. Women's styles of writing have blended into the digital coding world, and emerged as feminist practices. Jacqueline Wernimont says of the archives, "Digital archives unite two historically gendered fields — computer and archival sciences. Literary scholars who depend on archival or rare book materials still confront, whether they acknowledge it or not, the legacy of an institutional form through which patriarchal power exercised the authority to determine value, classification and access. "Because men and their ways of addressing literature have been in charge for so long, women have to sort it through the digital archive, which is most important in a feminist sense. The styles of men's writing influence how they have viewed literature as the authority in the field, but women have become more relevant, their styles and strategies of writing have come into the light.^[19]

"Exemplary women" tradition[edit]

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  Hesiod, Catalogue of Women (attr.)
  
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  Plutarch, in Moralia
  
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  Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women) (1361–1375)
  
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  Christine de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405)
  
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  Osbern Bokenam, Legendys of hooly wummen (c.1430)
  
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  George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writing or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences. Oxford: W. Jackson, 1752.
  
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  John Duncombe, Feminead (1754)
  
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  Anon., Biographium faemineum : the female worthies, or, Memoirs of the most illustrious ladies, of all ages and nations, who have been eminently distinguished for their magnanimity, learning, genius, virtue, piety, and other excellent endowments. London: Printed for S. Crowder, 1766. 2 vols.
  
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  Mary Scott, The Female Advocate: A Poem Occasioned by Reading Mr Duncombe's Feminead. London: Joseph Johnson, 1774.
  
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  Mary Hays, Female Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries (6 vols., 1803)
  
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  Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished women from the Creation to AD 1850 (1854)
  
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  Charlotte Mary Yonge, Biographies of Good Women (First Series, 1862; Second Series, 1865)
  
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  Julia Kavanagh, Women in France during the Eighteenth Century (1850), Women of Christianity (1852), French Women of Letters (1862) and English Women of Letters (1862). These collective biographies "all argue against idealized, sentimental portrayals of female experience. She intended these biographies to provide a corrective to the silence of male historians on the topic of female influence in a variety of sphere beyond the domestic" (ODNB).
  
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  Helen C. Black, Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches.^[20]
  
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    "These sketches originally appeared as a series in the 'Lady's pictorial'... They are now revised, enlarged and brought up to date." Sketches of Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Riddell, Mrs. L. B. Walford, Rhoda Broughton, John Strange Winter (Mrs. Arthur Stannard), Mrs Alexander, Helen Mathers, Florence Marryat, Mrs. Lovett Cameron, Mrs. Hungerford, Matilda Betham Edwards, Edna Lyall, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Adeline Sergeant, Mrs. Edward Kennard, Jessie Fothergill, Lady Duffus Hardy, Iza Duffus Hardy, May Crommelin, Mrs. Houstoun, Mrs. Alexander Fraser, Honourable Mrs. Henry Chetwynd, Jean Middlemass, Augusta De Grasse Stevens, Mrs. Leith Adams, Jean Ingelow.