Not long ago, literacy was a gift that was not offered to women in quite the same way it was offered to their brothers. Boys were more likely to receive thorough educations, preparing them for university and, in many cases, professions that would give their family name another generation of distinction.

Daughters were often educated differently, if they were educated at all. Their lessons were more likely to prepare them for the work expected of them: keeping a household, cooking, sewing, raising children, and managing the many small details of domestic life. Go far enough back—to the eighteenth century, for instance—and the educational opportunities available to a girl could be astonishingly limited. Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, had little formal schooling and taught herself much of what she knew.

When I think about giving a woman I love a book, I am thinking about far more than the front and back covers with pages in between.

I am thinking about the privilege of being able to open a book simply because I want to.

I dream of giving books to my girlfriends because we have inherited something that generations of women had to fight, improvise, or sacrifice to obtain: the freedom to read.

“But this sounds terribly boring,” a woman might protest, particularly if she isn’t a lover of literature in the way that I am. “Can’t you just get me a gift card?”

I understand. Reading is not everyone’s idea of a good time. Some women would much rather receive something practical, or perhaps a piece of costume jewelry to complement their latest ensemble.

And costume jewelry isn’t a bad thing. There is a place in life for everything.

But I am of the sort who wants to give books to her friends.

So, if I discovered that a birthday was approaching and I hadn’t yet found a present, these are six of the first books that would cross my mind. They are books about womanhood, education, friendship, family, independence, and the possibility of becoming more fully ourselves.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

This important piece of literature is so short that it is really more of an essay. In spite of its few pages, Woolf touches on subjects that remain remarkably relevant today. Her thoughts on womanhood, and on what women needed to possess in order to live and work successfully, were far ahead of her time.

I would think of gifting this to a casual reader precisely because of its length. There are equally important observations about womanhood tucked into Middlemarch, but for someone who does not particularly love books, it might be less intimidating to make their way through Woolf’s essay—and, in doing so, encounter the truths she lays out so candidly.

It is a small book that asks some very large questions.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Women have traditionally been looked at as the caretakers of a family. This is no bad thing. In a loving family, daughters and sons should be honored to care for their parents—or for other relatives—in the same way that they were once cared for, long before they could even walk.

There is great honor in being the person who cares for aging relatives, hurting siblings, or those in need within a community. But women are also allowed to crave more, and to acknowledge that they might want more from life.

In Excellent Women, English author Barbara Pym has such a tender understanding of women who are observant, capable, and perhaps a little too accustomed to putting themselves second.

I’d want you to know that a quiet life is not necessarily a small one—and that you don’t have to disappear in order to be good.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

I would give Remarkably Bright Creatures to a woman who has spent so much of her life taking care of everyone else that she has forgotten she is allowed to have a life of her own.

Shelby Van Pelt’s novel is gentle without being frivolous. At its center is Tova Sullivan, an older woman whose life has been shaped by loss, loneliness, work, and responsibility. What I love most is the novel’s understanding that a life can change even after we have convinced ourselves that it is already finished changing.

There is something comforting about being reminded that friendship can arrive at unexpected ages and in unexpected forms, and that loneliness does not have to be permanent.

I would hand this book to a woman I love and tell her: there is still so much life waiting for you.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

I haven’t actually read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman yet, which perhaps makes its place on this list a little unusual. But it is one of those books that I want the women I love to know exists.

Published in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument was remarkably direct: women were not born intellectually inferior to men, but were being denied the education and opportunities that would allow them to develop their minds.

That makes it a particularly fitting book for this list. When I think about the women who came before us, and how many were discouraged from reading, writing, studying, or thinking beyond the boundaries prescribed for them, I feel a certain gratitude for the fact that I can now pick up a book simply because I want to understand something.

I would give this one to a woman as a reminder of something Wollstonecraft understood centuries ago: a woman’s mind is worth cultivating.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

I would give Anne of Green Gables to a woman who has ever felt that she was too much of something: too imaginative, too talkative, too emotional, too strange, or simply too different from the people around her.

Anne Shirley enters the world as an unwanted orphan and gradually finds something she has desperately wanted all along: a place where she belongs. But what I love about Anne is that she doesn’t have to become less herself in order to earn that belonging. Her imagination, her ambitions, her temper, and her enormous capacity for feeling are not things she ultimately has to apologize for.

There is also something wonderfully feminine about watching Anne grow up. She wants an education. She wants friendship. She wants beautiful things. She wants to write. She wants to make something of herself.

I would give this book to a woman I love as a reminder that growing up does not have to mean becoming smaller.

You are allowed to remain a little bit Anne.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I believe every woman needs to encounter the March sisters at least once in her life. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are so different from one another, yet they remain bound by one of the greatest ties there is: sisterly love.

There is a scene in which, in a fit of rage, Amy throws her older sister Jo’s manuscript into the fire. I don’t think this scene is talked about enough, because what follows is a quarrel of fearsome proportions. Sisters fight, and Amy and Jo certainly did. They each managed to wound the other deeply, and yet neither could stay angry forever.

Little Women is not simply the story of a peaceful family waiting out the winter while Father is away at war. It touches on the many sides of sisterhood, including the ugly and the unfortunate. I would want you to read it so that you might know that even if you one day fight with your sister over something that seems terribly important in the moment, it doesn’t mean that the love is gone. Reconciliation is possible.

The lessons one can uncover in Little Women are, truly, timeless.

I Love Giving Books to Women

A book is such a small thing to place in someone’s hands, yet it can contain an entire world. It can remind you that other women have felt what you feel, wondered what you wonder, made mistakes, wanted more, loved fiercely, and sometimes had to begin again.

The women who came before us were not always given the freedom to read whatever they pleased. I don’t want to take that freedom for granted. I want to celebrate it by filling the hands of the women I love with books.

So if a birthday is coming up and you’re wondering what to give your mother, your sister, your daughter, or your dearest friend, perhaps give her a book.

And if she doesn’t like it, well—there’s always costume jewelry.

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Cover Image: Louise Tiffany, Reading (1888) by Louis Comfort Tiffany

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