Sunday, March 24, 2019

UNSUNG WOMEN WRITERS OF THE POSTWAR ERA






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. 

To somewhat conclude: amidst the critical changes in the cultural and literary movement brought about by the two wars, women writers stood at the margins. Reflecting on this, it appears that in times of confusion and uncertainty, groups or a class already in dominance will strive to secure their position, marginalizing others. However, this has to be understood within the complex role of ideology, politics, and economic changes.

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

 

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