Opinion Woman she wrote
Jackie Collins’s books recast women in a new light and broke stifling gender moulds.
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In this Feb. 22, 2015 file photo, author Jackie Collins arrives at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, California. (Source: AP Photo)
After having lost her mother, second husband and a third fiance to cancer, Jackie Collins, doyenne of the “bonkbuster” genre of pulp that she practically inaugurated and sold half a billion copies of, died last week after a six-year fight with breast cancer. But Collins’s life wasn’t defined by tragedy — barely anyone knew she had the disease — or defeat. No, the words that come to mind to define her are glamour and wit. She was unapologetically extravagant — her biggest weakness was “wearing too much leopard print” — smart-mouthed and no-nonsense.
Her books were sniffily derided and dismissed as smut — in fact, as far back as when she was in school, Collins was expelled for selling racy limericks to her classmates. But really, Collins’s first book, The World is Full of Married Men, published in 1968, recast women in a new light at a time when they were even more bound than today in stifling gender roles.
Her female characters had agency, desires, even political opinions — in Married Men, a married Linda has an affair with a man she meets at an anti-bomb protest rally. This, at a time when it wasn’t even legal for all women in the US to use the Pill. Still, Collins’s work was noticed mostly only for its bawdiness.
Married Men was banned in Australia and South Africa, and a British member of parliament even took out a half-page advertisement denouncing the book. It gave none other than Barbara Cartland “sleepless nights” — she may have seen in the book the birth of a dangerous competitor — and she even confronted Collins for her “nasty, filthy and degrading” book, to which Collins simply said “thank you”. In all the drama, the bold statement on the double standards on male and female infidelity and desire was missed.
Collins’s 32 books also foretold the rise and later ubiquity of Hollywood tell-alls and reality TV. She may not have named them, but the stars were always searching for traces of themselves — and their enemies — in her books.
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