Marilyn French (née Edwards; November 21, 1929 – May 2, 2009) was an American radical feminist author, most widely known for her second book and first novel, the 1977 work The Women's Room.

She divorced Robert French in 1967 and then pursued a doctorate[1] at Harvard University, where she earned a PhD in 1972 on the thesis of The Book as World: James Joyce's Ulysses.

"My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of Western civilization, to make it a feminist world," she once declared.

At one point in the book the character Val declares in a moment of extreme anger, over her friend Mira's protests, that "all men are rapists, and that's all they are.

[11] Gloria Steinem, a close friend, compared the impact of the book on the discussion surrounding women's rights to the one that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) had had on racial equality 25 years earlier.

Despite carefully chronicling a long history of oppression, the last volume ends on an optimistic note, said Florence Howe, who recently retired as director of the publishing house.