Rubyfruit Jungle was first published by Daughters, Inc. (a small feminist press) in 1973, after every mainstream publisher in New York had rejected it. It sold 70,000 copies through word of mouth before Bantam Books bought it in 1977 and made it a mass-market bestseller — eventually selling over a million copies and becoming the most widely read lesbian novel in American history.
Molly Bolt is the novel’s narrator and driving force: born illegitimate (her mother tells her she was “a bastard”), adopted by a poor family in rural Pennsylvania, and aware from childhood that she is attracted to women. But the novel is not a “coming out” story in the agonized, self-doubting mode that dominated gay fiction in the 1970s. Molly never doubts herself — she is confident, funny, aggressive, and entirely unapologetic about her sexuality. The world’s disapproval is the world’s problem, not hers.
The picaresque structure follows Molly through high school (expelled for a lesbian affair), college (a scholarship to the University of Florida, where she thrives academically and sexually), and New York (film school, poverty, ambition). Each episode demonstrates Molly’s intelligence and resilience against a society that penalizes her for being female, poor, and lesbian — but never destroys her spirit.
Brown’s political argument is embedded in the novel’s tone rather than its content: by making Molly joyful rather than tortured, confident rather than ashamed, the novel insists that lesbianism is not a tragedy but a fact — and that the tragedy lies entirely in society’s response to it.
Collecting Rubyfruit Jungle
First edition (Daughters, Inc., Plainfield, VT, 1973): Softcover original.
Market values:
- First printing (Daughters, Inc.): $80–$250
- Bantam mass-market first (1977): $5–$15
- Signed copies: $60–$150