Novels That Shaped Our World

Sign language

BBC Four

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

BBC Four HD

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Examining the novel from three unique perspectives.

Series 1

Simulcast of network BBC Two in high definition.

BBC Two HD

BBC Two England

England

BBC Two Northern Ireland

Until 03/01/2009 BBC Two Wales (analogue) was known simply as BBC Two Wales. BBC Two Wales (digital) was BBC 2W. From 03/01/2009 BBC Two Wales schedules on both analogue and digital became identical

BBC Two Wales

Simulcast of BBC Two Wales in high definition

BBC Two Wales HD

Simulcast of BBC Two Northern Ireland in high definition

BBC Two Northern Ireland HD

Nikki Amuka-Bird

Sarah Barclay

Franny Moyle

IWC Media

Novels That Shaped Our World: Series 1: A Woman's Place

A  Woman's Place

A Woman's Place

BBC Two - Novels That Shaped Our World, Series 1, A Woman's Place

How women writers, women readers and women's lives have been central to the novel.

Examining the novel from three unique perspectives. This episode shows the way that women writers, women readers and women's lives have been central to the novel.

Ever since Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, published in 1740, the novel has been a predominantly female literary form, offering far more opportunities to women writers than any other and consistently turning a powerful lens on the full range and depth of women's lives. Yet novels that explore women's stories, characters and emotions have often been attacked as frivolous – and sometimes by women themselves. But they are only frivolous to people for whom love, sex, friendship, family and one's own prospects in life are trivial matters. And there have been plenty of very serious female novelists too, from George Eliot and Middlemarch to Virginia Woolf and Orlando.

Women's rights have always been at the heart of the novel. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a famous rallying cry for feminism. The battle for women's suffrage is the subject of the propagandist novel No Surrender, written by Constance Maud in 1911. Works like this were forgotten until imprints like Virago republished them in the 1970s. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is another case in point - now seen as an icon of African-American women's writing, its reprinting was promoted by one of the most significant novelists of the last few decades, Alice Walker, author of the lacerating The Color Purple. The episode brings the discussion right up to date with a novel from 2019 by a black British writer and about a black British woman, Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie.

Novels That Shaped Our World: Series 1

BBC Two

Knowledge, drama, comedy and the arts for a broad adult audience.

BBC Two is a lively channel of depth and substance, carrying a range of knowledge-building programming complemented by great drama, comedy and arts.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Novels That Shaped Our World

Series 1

A Woman's Place

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Four HD

About BBC Four