Summary Of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle

Originally published in 1973, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle is viewed by many as the quintessential lesbian coming-out and coming-of-age novel. The time frame of this book is the 1950’s to the1960’s, when our country was still fully a patriarchal society, and the sexual revolution had yet to start, or was in it’s infancy. It is the story of Molly Bolt, a girl with a very strong sense of self; she is precocious and headstrong and she refuses to compromise who she is for anyone or any reason. She understands that she likes girls at an early age, and doesn’t think that it should matter who a person likes to anyone but themselves. The circumstances of life try to bring her down, or even break her, but her intelligence and strength shine through as she faces her challenges head-on, and embraces a life of unconventionality in a society geared toward male-dominance and heteronormality. She struggles to make a name for
Molly was a film student, but all of the other students were male, and they treated her as though she did not belong there. They wouldn’t let her get any of the equipment for her assignments, harassed her at every opportunity and were flat-out obnoxious. Molly just kept plugging along, working her hardest and being true to herself. In her senior year she was expected to produce a short file, which was to showcase all her years of study at New York University. Professor Walgren, “Head of the department and dedicated misogynist,” met with Molly for the routine project consideration. After she explained what her project was to be he mentioned that she might have trouble getting the camera for the weekends, and asked her who her crew would be. When she said she didn’t have a crew, “Professor Walgren coughed behind his fashionable wire-rimmed glasses and said with a slight hint of malice, ‘Oh, I see, they won’t take orders from a woman,