Even
in times of economic and sociocultural changes which brought about a radical transformation in literature, women writers continued to be marginalized.
As Modernism emerged throughout Europe and the US during the end of the 19th
and the 20th century, women writers were generally at the
periphery of the literary movement. However, when the First and Second World
War shaped changes in literature, it was a time when this marginalization defined
the work of many women writers in the US and Europe.
The Great War
The
First World War and the aftermath was a confusing time for the youths. Gender
traditional roles had to be altered as women were needed as laborers to fill
the position of men who left to fight in the war. This had provided more
freedom for women to participate in the labor force and to lead a life in the
public sphere. Subsequently, because of their contribution to the war, British
women won the right to vote in 1918. Two years later, American women also gained the right to vote (note that it would take years until universal suffrage was achieved in both Britain and the US). However, alongside this political achievement, there was the aftermath of The Great War (1914–1918) which affected the moral values, gender roles, and literature of the time. Virginia Woolf had said that the War was a defining moment for the writers of her
generation.
The women writers who defied the masculine convention of writing were invisible in the growing literature of the time and remained marginal in the history of Modernism.
In the US, the effect of The Great War gravely shattered the generation’s moral
values. Writers would set sail in search of a safe haven; many ended up
in Paris where creativity apparently was not as limited as in the US. These writers were
called the “Lost Generation”, a generation which had lost their faith in the
government, God, and the American dream. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald
were some of the major heroes of this generation. Through their
experimentation with new literary forms, they questioned the morality of the
war. Nevertheless, this new movement was predominantly a boy’s club.
With
the freedom American women gained in the roaring '20s, the literary scene still
offered less freedom for women. Thus, this led many women writers to join the emigration of American writers to
Europe, particularly France, in the 1920s and '30s. It is ironic that these expatriate who left their hometown disillusioned,
found their home in what would later be fascist-German occupied France. These women who had
gained many rights in their own country, found their home in a nation where
women couldn’t even vote.
 |
| Left Bank writers, Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes |
The
American women writers and artists who relocated to Paris included Gertrude Stein,
Djuna Barnes, Solita Solano, and Thelma Wood, just to mention a few. These
women spent their most productive years in Paris where their work and lifestyle quickly became a subculture within the male dominated literary and art
community. The unmarried, bohemian, and bisexual lifestyle led by these
Parisian women—known as the Left Bank women writers—was reflected in their
work.
The
women writers who defied the masculine convention of writing were invisible in
the growing literature of the time and remained marginal in the history of
Modernism.
Post-Cold War
The
1940s was a time of academic, political, and ideological exclusion.
Anticommunism and cultural hegemony was the postwar political agenda of the
West. It was timely that during this conservative period Simone de Beauvoir
wrote the feminist classic, The Second
Sex. However, as the postwar economy was recovering throughout the next
decade, conformity and the nuclear family became key to maintain stability and
women were expected to head back home.
The
1950s was a post war period marked by peace and the ideal patriarchal family.
In the US, a white middle-class family living an economic stable suburban
life was deemed the ideal lifestyle. The image of the liberated working middle-class
women of the 1920s and '30s was replaced by images of women in the kitchens of
the suburbs. Any strong and independent thinking women who were misfits of the
40s were lured back to motherhood and dependency.
 |
| French philosopher and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir |
Why? Because the
patriarchal family was needed to provide a strong sense of security and
stability of returning to the days where things were certain; a reassurance
that the economy and the family were recovering, so everyone would feel safe and
forget the war.
After
World War II, the US government made low-interest loans available for former
soldiers which was followed by a high demand for housing. As a response,
construction and real estate companies began building small similar two-bedroom
houses just outside but close to the city, suitable for nuclear families. These
suburban houses, particularly those built by Levitt and Sons, revolutionized
home construction and created what is called the “suburbs”.
The
families living in the suburbs were typically white middle-class households with a
male breadwinner and two children. The father who usually had served in
the war became a working man with a 9 to 5 job, while the mother was the
homemaker.
The
harmonious image of the traditional family with their rigid gender roles
was good for business and was highly exploited by advertising companies. To
represent the ideal American woman, they created images of neatly dressed slender
wives who cleaned, cooked, and took care of their children with a big a smile
on their face. However, in real life this was mostly not the case. Behind the
safe doors of many suburban houses lived an unhappy educated housewife
discontent with domestic life and the repressive gender roles she had to
fulfill. This was the theme of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique published in 1963 on the onset of the feminist
movement in the US.
 |
| Beat writer Diane di Prima |
In
the US literary scene, this post-World War II period gave birth to the “Beat
Generation” which became a counterculture to the consumer culture and
traditional family values of the postwar. Similar to the Lost Generation, the
Beats too faced an uncertain future, but different to the previous postwar
generation, the Beats emerged at the beginning of postmodernism where
literature and the arts were changing.
Beat
writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs openly expressed
about sexuality and were critical of heterosexual norms. Beat women writers
were part of this larger community of Beat male writers; however, many mainly played a
supporting role to their male peers. But Beat women such as Diane di Prima, Joanne
Kyger, and others wrote from the margins with a distinct style as a form of
resistance to traditional gender roles and sexism, and are considered the voice
of women in the literary movement of that period.
War, Gender, and
Literature
With
the grave devastation and disillusionment that came as a result of the Great War,
a new form of expression flourished, one which broke with the traditional structure
of writing. Experimentation and subjectivity characterized this new way of
writing. The changes in literary style were influenced by the War, but prior to
the War, industrialization and mechanization were already changing society.
Class and family structure and gender roles were changing and affecting a new
generation of writers.
The
confusion, disillusionment, transition, and economic recovery following the First
World War turned into a quest to reach a new stability, one which did not
want to question gender relations or would rather let the old tradition remain.
On the other hand, changes surrounding sexuality and gender were inevitable.
This was an issue reflected in Woolf’s work, the most acknowledged female Modernist
writer of her time. Critically speaking, Modernism and the Lost Generation were a masculine obsession to strengthen manhood and brotherhood in turbulent times; forms of misogyny which made women only visible at the margins.
 |
| British Modernist writer, Virginia Woolf |
When speaking of the post-Cold War Beats, considering how revolutionary they were, it raises
the question of why Beat women were marginalized. Upon addressing this question,
we must first understand that gender ideology was used to buttress the recovering
postwar economy, at the same time, the capitalism which was developing benefited from the
ideology. So it was repressively imposed especially upon girls
and women. This factor in part may have made Beat women unconsciously submit to
their gender role or found it hard to break from it.
The
asymmetrical relationship of female and male Beat writers has been widely
discussed. Based on it, one speculative argument for the reason why Beat men
were less supportive of changes in gender relations is because that it was just
plain convenient. Maintaining women as objects of desire available at your feet
is convenient, whilst at the same time as a partner she may be willing to care
for you and the house.
Modernism and the Lost Generation were a masculine obsession to strengthen manhood and brotherhood in turbulent times; forms of misogyny which made women only visible at the margins.
For
Beat women and other preceding women writers, this era was one of
self-reflection. Consequently, it was this repressive '50s ideology of the traditional
family that also gave rise to the resistance of “idle” housewives. This
resistance became part of the feminist uprising of the '60s that paved the way
for many women authors and feminist literature in the late '60s and '70s.
Updated March 2021
Sources
Longley, R. 2018. Who
Was the Lost Generation? ThoughtCo. Available at:
www.thoughtco.com/the-lost-generation-4159302 [Accessed 16 February 2019].
Lynch, S. 2015.
Out of the Wasteland: The First World War and Modernism. The Irish Times.
Available at:
www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/out-of-the-wasteland-the-first-world-war-and-modernism-1.2190829
[Accessed 18 March 2019].
O'Connell, Whittet E. 2019. The Lost Generation’s
Women: Writers, Muses, and Supporters. Ploughshares. Available at:
blog.pshares.org/index.php/the-lost-generations-women-writers-muses-and-supporters/
[Accessed 16 February 2019].
Ryan, Z. 2016.
Stereotypes in Suburbia: 1950s and Today. ThirdSight History. Available at:
social.rollins.edu/wpsites/thirdsight/2016/11/20/stereotypes-in-suburbia-1950s-and-today/
[Accessed 19 March 2019].
Stevenson, R. 2016. Broken
Mirrors: The First World War and Modernist Literature. British Library.
Available at: www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/broken-mirrors-the-first-world-war-and-modernist-literature
[Accessed 18 March 2019].
Photographs: Pinterest.com
