Women Writers and Lost Voices

Novelist and presenter of the Writing Scotland television series, Carl MacDougall, introduces an online learning journey on women writers in Scottish literature.

Liz Lochhead reckons 'Anon' was a great woman writer. And the number of prominent women writers working in Scotland today forces us to reassess the past. Have there always been writers like this in Scotland? And, if so, why haven't we heard about them?

Most of our ballads were transmitted by women who were more than mere informants. In folk song women rarely adopt a subservient or secondary role. They are usually the main protagonists and many songs are written from a woman's perspective.

Walter Scott's dominance over 19th-century writing obscured many writers he admired. One of the best-selling Scottish novels of the 19th century was Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs. Published in 1810, it's the story of Bruce and Wallace. Mary Brunton's first novel Self Control was published anonymously in the same year. Susan Ferrier's Marriage, published in 1818, is the nearest thing we have to a Jane Austen novel and is dedicated to Joanna Baillie, whose plays, many believed, were written by Scott. In fact, she was the only significant Scottish playwright of her time. Scott considered her a major writer and compared her work to Shakespeare.

Margaret Oliphant's writing reflects the degree of emancipation and financial freedom Victorian society gave upper and middle-class women. Kirsteen has an idealistic view of love and honour and is a heroine without a man in the wings. The book was published at the end of the 19th century, when Catherine Carswell's first novel, Open The Door, is set. Published in 1920 it details Joanna Bannerman's emotional and sexual awakening,

Edwin Muir described his meeting with Willa Anderson as 'the most fortunate event in my life.' Spurred by her encouragement, he began writing full time. Their translations of European authors, notably Franz Kafka, are still in print.

Willa's first novel Imagined Corners was published in 1931. Based on her childhood in Montrose, its characters need freedom to find themselves and follow their instincts. Nancy Brysson Morrison's approach is less direct and ultimately less hopeful. The weight of social convention and expectation is heavier. She came from a family known as 'the writing Morrisons'. Her brother Thomas and sister Margaret were both novelists, Margaret writing as March Cost.

Nancy's third novel, The Gowk Storm, follows a year in the lives of Julia, Emmy and Lisbet Lockhart, sisters whose lives are connected through conflict and desire. Like Carswell and Muir, Morrison's novel is beautifully written. She imbues her characters' surroundings with a symbolism and imagery that is impressionistic and wonderfully effective, revealing a tragic, familiar reality.

Scottish women writers now offered hope rather than identification. Change became a persistent theme and ambition replaced confinement. The certainties and duties of the previous century were openly questioned. Women were encouraged to develop in ways a previous generation would have found unthinkable, despite what has been called the double knot on the pinny. The first knot is the one all Scottish writers face in being perceived as part of a minority culture within Britain. The double knot comes when women writers are seen as second best within that context.

The woman who is to my mind our finest novelist, Muriel Spark, hasn't been granted the status she deserves. Nor has Liz Lochhead's enormous influence, questing imagination and energetic range been fully acknowledged. Both writers have relentlessly altered our perceptions and to a large degree have been taken for granted.

The range and variety of contemporary Scottish women's writing is extraordinary, reflecting the confidence found in Scottish writing itself. AL Kennedy's work can be playful and experimental, revealing their truths and empathies gradually; Kathleen Jamie turns centuries of Scottish thinking on its head; Ali Smith's characters appear in transition, on the cusp of discovery, as if there is something they need to resolve, a past pain or future development; and by having a transvestite take centre stage, by making Joss Moody begin as a girl who is gradually accepted as a man, Jackie Kay's novel Trumpet erodes gender distinctions.