In this lively and thoughtful discussion, Chris Hedlin (Notre Dame) is joined by Dr. Ashley Reed (Virginia Tech), author of Heaven’s Interpreters, to unpack a deceptively simple question: Is women’s literature…bad? Together, they explore how cultural bias, literary taste, and gendered expectations have long shaped how we read—and how we dismiss—the stories women write.
Why Do We Apologize for Reading Women’s Books?
Hedlin opens by noting how often women preface their reading with an apology—calling beloved novels “guilty pleasures” or “trashy.” Even professional reviews often blend praise with subtle disdain. What does it say about our literary culture that pleasure—especially women’s pleasure—is treated as suspect?
Cringe, Taste, and Gendered Value
Reed shares her experience teaching a course jokingly dubbed “Cringelit,” featuring bestsellers often labeled “bad”—from Twilight to The Da Vinci Code. These books aren’t all written by women, but the dismissive language often is gendered. Why is women’s fiction so often coded as unserious, while similar male-authored thrillers escape that label?
Women, Novels, and Moral Risk
Tracing the novel’s rise in early America, Reed and Hedlin examine how 19th-century “seduction novels” both fascinated and alarmed readers. The act of a woman reading alone was seen as risky—emotionally destabilizing, even dangerous. The cultural response? Encourage women to read sermons, not stories.
From Ruin to Virtue: Women Write Back
In the wake of the Second Great Awakening, women authors gained visibility. Their fiction shifted toward moral formation, portraying virtuous Christian heroines rewarded through marriage. Derided later as sentimental or formulaic, these stories were, in fact, deliberate rejections of the “fallen woman” narrative—and offered their readers a model of thoughtful, morally grounded agency.
Emotion vs. Intellect—and the Roots of Dismissal
Genres like domestic or sentimental fiction explicitly aim to move readers. But as literary criticism came to value abstraction and distance, emotion-driven stories became easy targets. The long-standing mind/body divide fed into the dismissal of women’s fiction as “too emotional”—and therefore less worthy.
Whose Taste Builds the Canon?
Reed highlights how modernism entrenched a hierarchy of literary value: male writers like Henry James were exalted for sophistication, while women’s fiction was pushed to the margins. Her blunt assessment? “High literature is whatever men are writing at the time.” That extends to whose stories survived and whose were lost—especially Black women’s voices, too often excluded from 19th-century publishing.
Is It “Good”? Or Just Unfamiliar?
The question of whether women’s literature is “good” misses the point, Reed suggests. Canon formation has always been subjective. Popularity, emotional resonance, or social influence have rarely been enough for inclusion. Instead of asking whether a book is timeless, we might ask: Whose standards are shaping that judgment?
Literary Culture, Then and Now
The discussion draws connections between 19th-century circulating libraries and today’s BookTok and book clubs—spaces where women have long shared and shaped literary life. Reed ends by offering a list of recommended 19th-century women’s texts—spanning romance, adventure, memoir, and fantasy—for readers ready to rediscover what’s been left off the syllabus.
Final Reflection
This conversation challenges the long-held idea that women’s literature is lesser by nature. Hedlin and Reed make the case that cultural discomfort with pleasure, emotion, and women’s voices—not literary merit—is what drives dismissal. In doing so, they invite us to read more generously, think more critically, and expand our idea of what literature can be.
