To what extent has the novel fostered social change? This paper examines the role of Dutch novels in the history women's emancipation between the 1960s and the 2010s. Comparing the discourse around both male and female characters, it concludes that the literary discourse around gender has not significantly changed in this period. As such, it rejects the hypothesis that the distance between male and female literary discourse decreases between the 1960s and the 2010s. Thus, the discourse around gender in novels has stable boundaries that has not transformed in parallel with the social changes of women's emancipation.