Throughout the history of literature, we’ve been given countless instances of women in despair and in sadness but save for a few writers (take Euripides, for example), we’ve rarely ever been given angry women who aren’t the villains or the foil for the perfect poised passive princess. Female rage has constantly been subdued and erased or warped into “she’s just batshit crazy” in pretty much every society.

girl, interrupted - susanna kaysen

the beguiled - thomas cullinan

my year of rest and relaxation - ottessa moshfegh

girl in pieces - kathleen glasgow

women who run with wolves - clarissa pinkola estés

pride and prejudice - jane austen

the bell jar - sylvia plath

the secret history - donna tartt

black swans - eve babitz

severance - ling ma

beloved trilogy - toni morrison

bad behavior - mary gaitskill

the year of magical thinking - joan didion

there there - tommy orange

valley of the dolls - jacqueline susann

american psycho - bret easton ellis

requiem for a dream - hubert selby jr.

ariel - sylvia plath

lolita - vladimir nabokov

anna karenina - leo tolstoy

rebecca - daphne du maurier

the virgin suicides - jeffrey eugenides

gone with the wind - margaret mitchell

the interpretation of dreams - sigmund freud

the stranger - albert camus

madness and civilization - michel foucault

the woman destroyed - simone de beauvoir

just kids - patti smith

to the lighthouse - virginia woolf

play it as it lays - joan didion

gone girl - gillian flynn

normal people - sally rooney

prozac nation - elizabeth wurtzel

how to murder your life - cat marnell

the catcher in the rye - j.d. salinger

love is a dog from hell - charles bukowski

jane eyre - charlotte brontë

her body and other parties - carmen maria machado

eileen - ottessa moshfegh

bunny - mona awad

little women - louisa may alcott

the perks of being a wallflower - stephen chbosky

homesick for another world - ottessa moshfegh

frankenstein - mary shelley

the picture of dorian gray - oscar wilde

diary of an oxygen thief - anonymous

boy parts - eliza clark

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo - taylor jenkins reid

a room of one's own - virginia wolf

mrs. dalloway - virginia wolf

wuthering heights - emily brontë

slouching towards bethlehem - joan didion

the white album - joan didion

trick mirror: reflections on self-delusion - jia tolentino

the idiot - elif batuman

1984 - george orwell

sense and sensibility - jane austen

the handmaid's tale - margaret atwood

the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald

city of girls - elizabeth gilbert

animal - lisa taddeo

a certain hunger - chelsea g. summers

in the dream house - carmen maria machado

the new me - halle butler

death in her hands - ottessa moshfegh

norwegian wood - haruki murakami