In our modern culture, we are used to hearing the term Girl Power. It tends to define the resiliency of girls who have the strength and courage to break out of the limitations of gender that lingering patriarchal notions try to apply to them. In short, the term refers to females who break rules and make their own rules.

When we look back in history, we see that Girl Power existed long before the term came along. It is notable that so many of these women throughout history were writers. It seems they not only wanted to pave their own way, but leave something of themselves behind for future generations. They wanted their messages to live on after they were gone. Patricia Highsmith was one of those women who created a Girl Power culture before a term existed to celebrate it.

Born in 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, Highsmith spent most of her childhood in New York City, except for a year in which she lived with her grandmother in Texas. She graduated from Barnard College in 1942 where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. After graduation, she began her literary career by writing scripts for comic books. Since the publishing world was extremely male-dominated, and comic books depicted primarily male characters, it can be assumed that Highsmith had to break some barriers to attain this position. She quickly learned she could earn more money working on a freelance basis in the comic book industry, and so supported herself by maintaining this career from 1942 until 1948. Some of the comic books she wrote script for include Real Heroes, Real Fact, and True Comics.

Her fiction, starting with her first novel, Strangers on a Train, demonstrates how much her creative work with comic books inspired her later craft. The character development skills she practiced at the start of her literary career and the real-life “characters” she worked with on the comic books are often clearly present in her novels. With her first novel she also established a mood that would come to define her work, one of dark, hidden, psychological places.

Indeed, Highsmith’s childhood makes it clear why themes of a disturbed soul keep resurfacing. Raised by her mother and stepfather in New York, she didn’t find out the man was not her biological father until she was 12. Highsmith has stated she discovered some harsh truths about her existence that year, and that it was one of the worst years of her life. Her biological father hadn't wanted her to be born, and left her mother not long before her birth. Some reports also say her mother felt the same, and even tried to cause a miscarriage. Not surprisingly, Highsmith had an unstable relationship with both her mother and her stepfather. During the same year these facts were revealed to her, Highsmith went to live with her grandmother in Texas. Interestingly enough, she often said her grandmother encouraged and improved her literacy, and that her grandmother’s vast library provided her with a great deal of reading. She admits that some of the books she found the most fascinating were those about psychological disorders.

Highsmith was not widely known for her work until after her death in 1995, though she did attain a degree of success and sustainability from her writing career. She won numerous awards for her novels and short fiction, and several of her titles were purchased by filmmakers. Strangers on a Train, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was the first to be made into a film. She admits she was paid very little, despite the film’s success.

Two of Highsmith’s other well-known novels are The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt. The former was made into a film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law and was released in 1999,. The latter will be released as a film in November, 2015. The Price of Salt is a lesbian novel published under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan, no doubt because, once again, she had used her Girl Power to break a societal taboo. Nonetheless, the novel sold over a million copies. Though she included homosexual undertones in her other novels as freely as she presented violence and mentally disturbed characters, none had focused so closely on an openly gay relationship. Highsmith admitted that one of the main characters in the novel, Carol, was based on a woman she encountered when working in Bloomingdales..

The Price of Salt is the story of Therese and Carol. Therese is trapped in a mundane existence until she meets Carol. After initially questioning what kind of relationship they have, the two finally embrace their love and travel across the United States, though Carol is a mother in the middle of a divorce. The women are pursued by a private investigator, which leads to some adventure. In the end, Carol must eventually choose between her child and her lover.

Both Highsmith’s fiction and her life defied the societal conventions of her time. Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, and The Talented Mr. Ripley were published in the 1950’s, a time in which women were expected to take their place in the home and raise children. Instead, she completely ignored the prescribed expectations, and defined her own reality. She wrote about taboo topics and even began to redefine pulp fiction with the characters and plot in The Price of Salt. Expressing both a homosexual voice, and one that reveled a dark and disturbed inner world with which so many undoubtedly live, Patricia Highsmith knew all about Girl Power.

One of the most interesting periods in literary history was the day of pulp fiction. The kind of books and magazines created during this era were not only different in appearance, but also quite unique in their subject matter and delivery of the stories found inside. Even all these years later, talk of pulp cover artists is still a popular topic because of how different the artwork was for that time.

The first pulp fiction publication to feature color cover illustrations was The Popular Magazine, founded in 1903. The pulp cover artists were often established painters; artists like Edgar Franklin Wittmack made oil paintings for The Argosy and Short Stories, as well as for non-pulp magazines like Popular Science; N. C. Wyeth was a distinguished book illustrator who also contributed to The Popular Magazine.

Pulp fiction reached its golden age before the start of World War II and the ensuing paper shortage. During the early thirties, the industry reached its peak, and artists would paint on average one cover a week. As many new magazines emerged, publishers recognized the cover illustrations as a big selling point and started emphasizing eye-catching motifs. Thence were born the staples of pulp fiction covers, such as voluptuous femme-fatales, damsels in distress, lantern-jawed action heroes, stalking shadows and skeletal horrors.

As pulp fiction became increasingly popular, a new generation of illustrators pursued their careers exclusively as cover artists, including Earl Mayan (The Shadow), Frank R. Paul (Amazing Stories), Walter Baumhofer (Doc Savage and The Spider) and Margaret Brundage (Weird Tales). The magazines demanded quick turnaround, and artists often struggled to finish their work on time - a fact visible in the prominent brush strokes and "unpolished" looks of many cover illustrations. Illustrators could make around $50 per cover, which was a decent wage during the great depression.

The end of World War II saw many publications bankrupt because of the paper shortage during the war and the reduced demand for escapism in popular fiction during the post-war period. Some artists continued to illustrate pulp annuals and other magazines, while others, like Dick Sprang, moved on to other types of publications that were gaining momentum, namely comics. Their art also graced the covers of pulp novels - dime store paperbacks that dominated the mass-market landscape of the '50s and '60s. Artists like Robert A. McGuire, Barye Phillips, Rudolph Belarski, and Paul Rader painted hundreds of covers during the Golden Age of Lesbian Pulps.

The great legacy of pulp artists is still visible in comics to this day. Many people collect original and reprint images from the age of pulp fiction simply because of the cover artwork. In fact, the style of the artwork has become a jumping off point for many modern artists today.