Scholars have continuously argued whether men and women use different words, different styles, altogether a different language, when they write novels, collections of poetry, erudite essays and historical treastis. Did G.H. Lewes get it right, when he identified in 1904, “sentiment” as a consistent “feminine literary trait” and George Eliot, when she said, “maternal affections” distinguish books written by women?
The answer could be yes, going by a survey conducted on the Modern Love essays submitted to the New York Times in the 21st century. Even as gender roles have merged, it seems men and women still have an entirely different vocabulary when they talk about emotions close to their hearts. Women, for instance, write more about feelings, men about actions. To quote the editors of the New York Times; “Men’s words tended to be more active: “bomb,” “hit,” “strike,” “punch,” “battle.” Women were more likely to describe feelings: “resentment,” “furious,” “agony,” “hurt;” they were also significantly more likely to use the word “feel.” Men, meanwhile, didn’t write about different emotions than women – they just mentioned fewer of them.”
The Editors also observed that women and men may feel love similarly, but they write about it differently. A lot of men’s stories seem tinged by regret and nostalgia. They wish previous relationships hadn’t ended or romantic opportunities hadn’t slipped away. They lament not having been more emotionally open with girlfriends, wives, parents, and children.
Women, on the other hand, are more inclined to write with restlessness. They want to figure love out. Many keep mental lists of their expectations, detailing the characteristics of their hoped-for partner with alarming specificity and then evaluating how a new romantic interest does or doesn’t match that type. Often they would write something like, “I always pictured myself with someone taller, a guy with cropped brown hair and wire-rim glasses who wears khakis or jeans, the kind of person who would bring me tea in bed and read the Sunday paper with me on the couch.”
Men, however, almost never describe the characteristics of their ideal partner in this way. Even if they have a specific picture in mind, few will not put that vision to paper.
Another string of words women frequently use consist of “The List of Flawed Men,” in which they dismiss each man they have known with a single phrase. There was the one with the sideburns, the med student who smoked, the gentle guy who made toy train sets but couldn’t commit, and the physically affectionate finance guy who always searched for bargain meals.
It appears men rarely compose that kind of list. Perhaps because they’re afraid to, not wanting to be seen as belittling women. In general, men write more cautiously about women than the other way around.
According to Daniel Jones in “How we Write About Love”, “Love stories are full of romantic delusion, idealizing love to an unhealthy degree. But in the accounts I see, men and women delude themselves in opposite directions. A woman is more likely to believe her romantic ideal awaits somewhere in the future, where her long-held fantasy becomes a flesh-and-blood reality. A man’s romantic ideal typically exists somewhere in the past in the form of an actual person he loved but let go of, or who got away. And he keeps going back to her in his mind, and probably also on Facebook and Instagram, thinking, “What if?”
Book reviewers also use different words to write about books depending on the genre of the writer. They are three or four times more likely to use words like “husband,” “marriage,” and “mother” to describe books written by women. Conversely, reviewers are twice as likely to use words like “president” and “leader,” as well as “argument” and “theory,” to describe books written by men. The results are almost too good in their confirmation of gender stereotypes. Meanwhile, New York Times book reviews overwhelmingly suggested that women tend to write about domestic issues and affairs of the heart, while men thrive in writing about “serious” issues such as politics. It’s not that women don’t write about politics or men don’t write about feelings and families. It’s just that there is a very strong likelihood that 
if you open the pages of any book review page in a newspaper, you will be transferred back into a world that more nearly resembles ancient cave dwellers.
Perhaps, cynically, we might say these results are hardly surprising. Yes, the presence of stereotypes of women writers in book reviews is sad but largely predictable. But what is particularly startling about our results is their chronological stability: If you look at the results for the period between 2010 and 2016, the distinctive words are nearly identical. Men still write about politics and have “ideas.” Women still write about “family” and obsess over love or themselves.
There is also the question of which gender describes the other better in their work. When a writer and poet Katha Pollitt learned scholars were researching this topic she said. “You could not possibly be suggesting that! I think few men write female characters who are complex and have stories of their own. Where are the vivid, realistic and rounded portrayals of women in Roth, Bellow, Updike?”To which another writer responded saying, “I have two words for you. Anna Karenina.”
According to Michele Willens, “Tolstoy’s classic was written a long time ago, of course, and, on the flip side, evergreen female authors like Jane Austen and the Brontes managed to give us fine portraits of men alongside their memorable heroines. However, we have had a few revolutions since, resulting in a lot of space on the shelves, the stage, and the screen devoted to feminine mystiques and mistakes. For women writers, it is about finally getting, if not even, at least equal time. “
“By default, women have it easier than men when they attempt to craft characters of the opposite sex,” says novelist Sally Koslow , “because our whole lives we’ve been reading vast amounts of literature written by men.” For male writers, trying to navigate the evolving battles of the sexes is more challenging. To their credit, they are not necessarily shying away from tackling women in their work, but are they ‘getting’ them? “I don’t necessarily find women difficult to write about in the third person,” says author Eli Gottlieb, “but to write them in the first person is to make a hubristic leap. It can be done—Madame Bovary comes to mind—but the reader will often begin from a suspicious wariness.”
To be fair, today’s female novelists rarely take on a male voice, but when they do, their success rate seems noteworthy. Willens observers, “This past year’s “it” book was Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, in which the author tells one story from both the male and female points of view. Hilary Mantel has also wowed critics and readers with “HIStorical” fiction, and Louise Erdrich wrote the prize-winning The Round House from the viewpoint of a teenage boy. “
Why don’t women write about men, more? Either because they feel men have had their say, thank you, or they feel obligated to mine their own juggling lives for rich material. “A novel takes two years out of your life, so I am more comfortable living with characters I know,” explains Sally Koslow. “Before I start every book, I think of Jack Nicholson’s line from As Good As It Gets. Someone asks him, ‘How do you write women so well?’ and he says, ‘I think of a man and I take away the reason and the accountability.’
But whether we fail or not in capturing the rhythm of the heartbeat of the opposite gender, as literary critic Sarah Seltzer says, “writing across gender may be harder, require more research and humility. We may fail or get ‘called out’ for letting our biases show, or being ignorant. But the attempt at understanding, empathy, and inhabiting the soul of someone whose life experience is not ours, helps us grow as writers, and people too.”
