You have several different possible approaches to choose from. Are you specifically focusing on female authors? A Tale of Gengi is widely considered the first novel ever written, and its author, Murasaki Shikibu, was a woman. With her tale of the Japanese imperial court, Murasaki showed the ladies of the court in a sympathetic light that might never have occurred to a male author.
Are you looking for groundbreaking female characters by male authors? Tess...
You have several different possible approaches to choose from. Are you specifically focusing on female authors? A Tale of Gengi is widely considered the first novel ever written, and its author, Murasaki Shikibu, was a woman. With her tale of the Japanese imperial court, Murasaki showed the ladies of the court in a sympathetic light that might never have occurred to a male author.
Are you looking for groundbreaking female characters by male authors? Tess of the d'Urbervilles might be a good starting point, Thomas Hardy's novel about a woman's struggles with class, fate and family. Several plays by George Bernard Shaw deal with women's concerns at the dawn of the suffragette movement (Candida, Major Barbara and Pygmalion come quickly to mind).
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is often bruited as a feminist statement, mainly because it was an early popular novel by a female author. This is troubling, because the book has no actual female characters (Elizabeth was a plot device and poor Safie was barely even that). Something by Jane Austen or Louisa May Alcott might be more on point.
Perhaps the best book about female emancipation written by a female author is The Color Purple by Alice Walker, about a woman who has an awful LOT to be emancipated from, though you'll need to decide for yourself whether the primary focus is Women's Studies or Black Studies.
The most important questions are: (A) What do you want to say about female emancipation? (B) What novel or play best exemplifies what you want to say?
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