French, Marilyn (1929– )

US feminist writer. Her first novel, The Women's Room (1977), the story of a generation of 1950s housewives who transform themselves into independent women in the 1970s, sold 4 million copies, and was made into a television film 1980. In The War against Women (1992) she discussed the harm done to women for the sake of religion and cultural customs, such as female infanticide in China.

Her other novels include Her Mother's Daughter (1987), which takes the lives of four generations of women in a Polish-American family, and Our Father (1994). As well as a book on James Joyce's Ulysses (1976), she has written Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals (1985), which explores theories of power and control and the morality that continues to glorify war.