The Awakening (1899) is Kate Chopin's masterful novel of a young woman who struggles to find self-knowledge and inevitably suffers the consequences of trying to establish herself as an independent spirit.

In the play A Doll's House (1879), Henrik Ibsen examines a woman's restricted role in the nineteenth century and the disastrous effects those limitations have on her marriage.

Lessing's The Fifth Child (1989) is a harrowing portrait of a mother's struggle to raise a "disturbed" child, raising important issues about the nature of family and a woman's role within it.

Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours (2002) focuses on similar themes of madness and traditional notions of a woman's place.

Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969) studies the history and dynamics of feminism.