Which classical English novelist did most for the advancement of women?
Jane Austen, who has almost as many filmed versions of her heroine-driven novels available as Dickens has, and she wrote only six.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Daniel Defoe was the first author to draw attention to a wide range of issues facing women, eventually raising male consciousness in Moll Flanders. Whatever your opinion of that text, Defoe deserves credit for getting the ball rolling.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
• Charles Dickens did more to advance women than George Eliot, who did not admit to being a woman, and Jane Austen, who wrote beautifully about upper-middle-class women. Dickens’s heroines were sometimes nauseatingly saccharine, but he also described alcoholic women like Mrs Gamp, destitute women dying in childbirth in the workhouse, and victims of domestic violence like the prostitute Nancy in Oliver Twist.
David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
• Mary Wollstonecraft, with her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which appeared in 1792 between her two novels Mary: A Fiction (1788) and The Wrongs of Woman (1798).
David Tucker, Halle, Germany
• We have Mr Currer Bell to thank. Without him Miss Brontë would not have written.
Jennifer Rathbone, Toronto, Canada
• I don’t know about advancement, but P L Travers certainly promoted the elevation of Mary Poppins!
Joan Dawson, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Damned if I know, but I’m curious why you’ve chosen to eliminate the Scots, Irish (both Northern and Republic), Manx, Welsh and Cornish as well as we former colonials in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand? A bit parochial, what!
Terence Rowell, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
Just for the thrill of it all
At what point does the thrill of the new replace the comfort of the old?
At around the age of 18.
Michael Olin, Holt, UK
• About 55.
Tony Mount, Goolwa, South Australia
• For me it was February 1984 when I bought my first CD player and listened, without the crackles and hisses, to a recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
Avril Nicholas, Crafers, South Australia
• At the point where the thrill of the new clouds one’s judgment. For women it may happen in the buying of new shiny shoes that are not really comfortable (but one convinces oneself that they will become so). After a while one returns to the comfort of old shoes and abandons fashionable shiny newness. I doubt many men experience this.
Margaret Wilkes, Perth, Western Australia
• When comfort turns to discomfort and the thrill becomes irresistible.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
• When you jettison unwanted dross on eBay only to turn around and, with one click, purchase nostalgic gems from your past.
Andrew Baker, Bakersfield, California, US
• At the point of birth, and continuing approximately until one qualifies for a bus pass.
Paul Probyn, London, UK
• At the point of no return.
Jennifer Horat, Lengwil, Switzerland
Any answers?
Are garden gnomes always male?
R M Fransson, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
Can somebody please define the adjective ‘iconic’?
Gaynor McGrath, Armidale, NSW, Australia
Send answers to weekly.nandq@theguardian.com or Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK
