Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

Griffin Prize

Such effusive congrats to all!

But there’s something here that ought to give women great pause in the Baileys announcement:

[Ms Fraser said]: “There’s very little domestic drama, and that clichéd idea of romantic fiction. There wasn’t much of that this year. These are big ambitious books that deal with war, grief and loss. They are not confined to the domestic arena.”

How long are women going to accept this critique of what makes literature important?  It used to be that men told us our fictions didn’t matter because they were small, interior, domestic, but now here is the same malarky coming from a woman:  if it’s personal, if it’s domestic, it’s unimportant.

Or goddamn it.  Could we maybe judge on merit regardless of subject matter?