Bookplanet: after 30 years, Marilyn French of The Women's Room is back with a new book

'I do still believe that men are to blame ...'
Marilyn French caused uproar with The Women's Room, the best-selling feminist novel ever. Thirty years on comes the follow-up. Sharon Krum asks her, do we still need a revolution?

There was a time, not so long ago, when Marilyn French was considered one of the most dangerous women on the planet. Dubbed "The writer with an AK-47" when her debut novel, The Women's Room, was first published in 1977, the tough billing obviously appealed to readers: the book, probably the most overtly feminist novel of all time, sold 20m copies worldwide. French dramatised all the frustrations, rage and boredom of her generation of desperate housewives, crystallised in the character of Mira Ward: a submissive, suburban housewife who goes to Harvard post-divorce and discovers both female friendship and feminism.

"God, how they attacked me in some quarters," French says now. "And why? Because I told the truth. They said I was a man hater, and I never defended myself against that, because I do believe that men are to blame for the condition of women." Still? "Yes. Even men who are not actively keeping women down, but are profiting from women's position, or who don't mind things being the way they are - they are responsible too. I don't hate men. In fact, throughout my life I've always said I like men very much. But men are responsible for the situation of women."

We are sitting in French's living room, 48 floors above downtown Manhattan. Now 76, and frail after having oesophagal cancer, French is still razor-sharp. Her disposition is disarming though. From everything I had read, I was expecting a tough nut, but on the surface she is a warm, amiable matriarch. She speaks softly, smiles often, and it is only when the words fuck and cunt fly out of her mouth that it becomes clear she has lost none of her revolutionary verve.

This month French is back in US (and online) bookstores with In the Name of Friendship, a novel billed as the companion piece to The Women's Room. Like that first novel, it is an examination of four women's lives, this time ranging in age from 30 to 76, and set in 2000. It considers how far feminism has brought us in terms of our marriages and careers, and how much is left to fight for.

Unlike 30 years ago, no one was exactly clamouring to publish this new work. The novel first came out in Holland three years ago, and only after it became a bestseller there did the US Feminist Press (whose charter only allows it to republish books published by others) come to the party.

French groans when asked about this situation. "Well, it has to do with what has happened in publishing. They have fired everyone over a certain age. I was told by one publisher - a woman whom I respect - that she adored my work. Then she told me to go off and write something more like Bridget Jones's Diary." My eyebrows hit the roof. "I am totally serious."

If this seems to reflect a lack of interest in feminist fiction, French herself is optimistic about the achievements and the future of the feminist movement. "God, when I was a young woman, we didn't feel we had any choices in life. I did not want to get married and have children [she has a son and daughter] but I did. There were no opportunities then, no kind of job you could viably aim for. Feminism got laws passed that are responsible for women going to university, practising medicine, becoming partners in law firms. At the time I got divorced [in 1967] I couldn't even get a telephone in my own name."

Feminism has even affected fiction positively, she believes. "I think male writers are depicting women as human beings much more than they used to ... not so much, you know, just as cunt." The downside, she says, is that "this spurious principle that men are superior to women hasn't really shifted. Both within religion and corporations men want to keep the world as it is. But then patriarchy took thousands of years to evolve and it will take thousands to dissolve."

I suggest that the majority of western women today are not looking to overthrow the patriarchy and she agrees. "I think we must have been really fed up in the 1970s to harness all that anger in one place." Women today, she says, are relatively content - "not unhappy enough to rise up". So is feminism dying? French shoots me a look that says, are you kidding?

"What is going on now is a huge, unstoppable feminist movement. But it's going on in little villages in Africa, in South America and India, and it's ordinary, illiterate women sitting up and saying, 'I'm a human being, and I have a life.' Women in Africa saying, 'You will not genitally mutilate me.' It's all happening at the grassroots now, globally, and it's fantastic."

French was born in New York, and describes her mother as the dominant parent. Both her parents grew up in homes where beatings were standard, but French's mother refused to let her husband hit the children. "From this we were taught never to bow to authority". French put herself through university, getting a BA and an MA in English literature. She married before working as a teacher, got divorced and then went to Harvard to get her PhD. She published her thesis, on James Joyce's Ulysses, the year before The Women's Room came out.

"I was always a feminist," she says, "because to me a feminist is simply any woman who thinks women matter as much as men do. I saw how the world was and I had been angry all my fucking life." It was the combination of a bad marriage to a bully, reading Kate Millet's Sexual Politics, and the rape in 1971 of her daughter Jamie (then 18) that led her to become truly radicalised.

"For months after the rape," she says, "Jamie was catatonic and anorexic and the district attorney tried to convince us to drop the case." French became her daughter's champion. "The district attorney said, he [the rapist] says 'she wanted it', thinking this would get us to back down." But they refused. "I was afraid she [Jamie] would get on the witness stand and be mute. But she spoke up, and he then admitted it." The rapist was convicted and jailed.

This all provided fertile ground for The Women's Room. Immediately, it became a touchstone for millions of women, and today French is still approached by strangers who tell her how much the book changed their lives. Yet for all the wonderful noise, she was also taken to task for using stereotypes for her male characters: the sexist pig; the repressive husband.

"Well, the men of that generation were stereotypes. I was just being honest. I mean there are wonderful male characters in fiction - everyone falls in love with Mr Darcy, but when do you meet anyone like that, really?"

Yet in In The Name of Friendship French has quantifiably shaved the rough edges off her male characters. Is she getting softer, or are men improving in her estimation? She laughs and admits to the latter. "No question. The women of my generation raised feminist sons. These men love their children, they are involved with them. But when it comes to the day-to-day nitty-gritty, women still do almost all the work."

French has devoted her career to writing about women's lives, both fiction and non-fiction, so how does she feel about women who insist there is no longer a need for a feminist movement?

"Women who say they don't need feminism hurt themselves, because they really believe they are less important than any man. I always tell women: make the most of what you've got now, because the more we advance, the more the backlash will increase. They will try to take it all away."

One example is the threat to abortion rights in the US, which has not mobilised women in the way it once would have. "If the supreme court overturns abortion rights," says French, "women will take to the streets again. But I think the next great revolution will include both men and women, and it will be driven by anti-corporate sentiment." She points to the Wal-Mart sex-discrimination class action suit that has been initiated by six women in the US (with potentially 1.5 million women in the class). "Corporations are killing us. Their lack of concern for human beings is devastating. One day people won't stand for it any more. And that will be a great day".