Feminism in Literature

After finishing "The New Dress" and "The Second Sex"one thing is clear, the common ideas of what was acceptable when it comes to being a "woman" in most if not all societies. I started by reading the two shortest out of all the readings first. In "The New Dress" the dress itself is not the main issue (How I took it) the main issue to me was the main characters unhappiness with herself. She has some idea that her clothes make her the better person and is trying to fit in. Though I was supposed to read this with a feminist’s eye I couldn't help but hear a little Marxism in this particular text. Mabel the main character seemed to be letting the clothing she wore and the opinions of others define her as a person. This can be seen in such quotations as "And at once the misery which she always tried to hide, the profound dissatisfaction -- the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other people -- set upon her, relentlessly, remorselessly, with an intensity which she could not beat off, as she would when she woke at night at home, by reading Borrow or Scott; for oh these men, oh these
Women, all were thinking -- "What's Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress!" I took this as besides letting what people say get to her she was allowing what they thought to define what was acceptable to her as far as being a woman or feminine went. In my second reading "The Second Sex” De Beauvoir discusses the 'myth' of what is meant to be feminine and how the ideas impact literature. Also the idea that the whole notion of femininity is something trumped up simply for the sake of argument and for the benefit of men by quoting "The Physiology of Marriage" which refers to women as "a beast of burden" With further reading I tied in De Bouvier thinking on what is meant to be feminine with Virginia Woolf's thesis on what a woman needs in order to be a successful writer. This can be taken in the context of what a woman needs to be "a woman" or "womanly" Virginia Woolf says that "a woman must have a room of her own" if she is going to write fiction. Another connection I made, though outside the text was the idea of "the problem with no name" (Betty Friedan)
Her thinking is limited and leaves "the true nature of women and literature unresolved" much like the place of women in their societies and literature as well. When asked to develop and answer a question from the readings I could only think of one. Why is it even in literature written by women, female characters are subjective?
A: Mabel's dress and what it symbolizes makes her subjective because with the dress even with its hideous nature she is seen as a woman and nothing else. She lets what other people think and say define her as long as this goes on she will be seen as nothing more In a way all her insecurities and what she fears have been culminated into this one thing. It is not until the end of the story that she rejects the traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman and looks to define herself on her own