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Women's Writing and Feminisms: an Introduction

Working Paper · March 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2400.9840

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 Women’s Writing and Feminisms: an Introduction

In the West, the notion of an opposition between the sexes dates back to ancient Greek
philosophy. Aristotle, for instance, believed that nature always aimed at perfection, but
proceeded to argue that a woman was merely an inferior, incomplete version of man, who was
presented as the ideal enactment of nature’s objective. In equally misogynistic terms, as we
now perceive, the archetypal first woman in Hebrew religious texts was tempted by an evil
serpent and together they bring about the downfall of humanity and expulsion from Paradise.
Yet even these well-known narratives are open to challenge. The Greek poet Sappho, for
instance, celebrated love between women; similarly, religious texts also featured strong or
idealized depictions of women. Although the documents of women’s oppression historically
exceed the literature on liberation, the balance in our own times is beginning to shift.

Since the 1970s a wide range of feminist writers have made a significant contribution to
scholarship by uncovering the lost histories of real women as well as revealing the subversive
zone occupied by women’s imagined reconstructions of reality. Another aspect of the critical
project has been to reveal the complex operation of patriarchy, or to recover dissident readings
lurking within traditional texts. In these terms, the literary canon has been challenged, both
from with, and from the outside – from the position of exclusion, silence, and oppression.
Although feminists share many ideas in common, regarding the role of power, for instance, the
diversity of current work calls for the notion of feminisms, rather than a single system-driven
ideology. In this regard, feminist scholarship and cultural production both reveals the dominant
gender binary, while simultaneously deconstructing the shifting boundaries.

Historically, the dominant role of patriarchy was generally evident until the close of the
nineteenth century. Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of challenges to the ruling
gender divisions that disempowered women. Writing offered opportunities to explore the
injustice and cruelty endured by women, but it was also a space to imagine a different kind of
society in which women’s lives might be improved, and men’s dominant role(s) contested. In
the eighteenth century, novelists, poets, playwrights, and other social commentators and
political writers were beginning to suggest that the two sexes were complementary rather than
opposition. Ironically, women’s roles were increasingly celebrated in the same moment that
more rigid notions of what was deemed appropriate behaviour were adopted: women were
adoring mothers, caring wives, and domestic angels; those who fell short of this ideal were to
be despised as whores. In contrast, men occupied the public sphere and enjoyed both
economic independence and commodified ownership of their wives. Curiously, men often
enjoyed other women in extra-marital affairs; such was the hypocritical double-standard of
Victorian patriarchy.
 Nonetheless, a key development for women’s liberation was the notion of the rights of
the individual, which had found revolutionary and radical expression at the end of the
eighteenth century, most famously in works such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792). But the political movement for the political enfranchisement of
women was still more than a century away. Yet the suffragettes, who campaigned for women’s
right to vote, were crucial in the establishing the earliest modern use of the word ‘feminism’ to
express women’s aspirations and the advocacy of their political, economic and social rights.
Earliest evidence of the use of the word ‘feminism’ was sneering and pejorative: in 1897, for
instance, Athenæum noted that ‘coquettings with the doctrines of “feminism” are traced with
real humour.’ Similarly, in 1897, The Daily News ‘alluded […] somewhat disparagingly, to that
phase of feminism which is so curious a feature of the present day.’ In 1909, The Daily Chronicle
was still bemoaning, ‘Suffragists, suffragettes, and all the other phases in the crescendo of
feminism.’ Nonetheless, a more ironic and defensive counter-voice is noted in the example
from Clarion (1913), in which R. West confessed: ‘I myself have never been able to find out
precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a Feminist whenever I express
sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.’ For many English-speaking
writers, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an influential and inspiring writer; the extended essay
entitled A Room of One's Own (1929) is widely cited still as an example of early feminist cultural
ideas. Moreover, it is worth noting that there were many other female modernists who are not
as well known today as T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, or James Joyce: Djuna Barnes (1892–1982);
Kate Chopin (1851–1904); H.D. (1886–1961); Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943); Amy Lowell (1874–
1925); Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950); Marianne Moore (1887-1972); Katherine Mansfield
(1888-1923); Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957); Edith Sitwell (1887–1964); Gertrude Stein (1874-
1946), and Edith Wharton (1862–1937). Many modernist writers still remain undiscovered, and
many more deserve to have a more vivid presence and deserve to be better appreciated in
terms of their creative and critical contribution to modern and postmodern global culture.

Whether the starting point for readers is literary and cultural studies, critical theory, or
the canon of literary writings and its traditions, the agendas that have now been asserted by
feminist theories and explored in women’s writings, cannot now be silenced or excluded. Yet
we still inhabit a world in which the reality for many women is that they remain second-class
citizens and many women suffer terrible violence and injustice. Therefore, there is still a
pressing and urgent need to publish new scholarly critical work, which will help men and
women to reconsider their past gender identities, and equally significant, to reconsider their
futures. Karl Marx’s notion that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat
its mistakes is a timeless reminder of a need for heightened awareness of our historic roles and
our options for future transformation. Women’s writings are a key component in that project.
 In theoretical terms, feminist thought can be understood from several critical agendas.
We have noted the historical significance of political rights. Moreover, feminist thinking has
both contributed to, and served as a critical function within several major schools of theory:
Marxist and (New) Historicist; postcolonial; psychoanalytic. The examination of how gender
differences function through language (‘discourse’) has also been highly significant in the
development of a critique of ‘man-made’ or ‘centred’ language. Indeed, French critics and
feminist philosophers such as Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous have examined the distinctive
features of women’s writing as a challenge to phallogocentrism. Écriture féminine has emerged
as the key term that celebrates and explores the qualities at work in women’s writing which are
produced by the female body and by female difference. Writers such as Hélène Cixous,
Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, Chantal Chawaf and Julia Kristeva have been influential in the
interrogation of language as a male domain, and in offering a creative and critical challenge to
the dominant discourse. Admittedly, the work of poststructuralist feminism has taken many
different directions, with different results, and continuing controversy about its use and
effectiveness for the emancipation of women. The starting point has been the assertion that
women’s sexual pleasure has been denied; that deployment of language by men is oppressive;
that jouissance, play, metamorphic mobility and transgression should be adopted as techniques
and strategies for liberation from the patriarchal order. While the slogans and rhetoric are
often exhilarating, and the refusal of logic, order and reason is enigmatic and engaging, it does
not seem unfair to ask whether the project has enhanced the quality of women’s lives or
brought about a revolution of consciousness? In the past, theoretical gymnastics has
sometimes obscured more practical political, social and cultural applications of the creative
work.

While many feminists in the 1970s identified with a socialistic outlook, shades of
plurality and diversity became more apparent in the 1980s which saw the emergence (and
recovery) of black feminist approaches, and writings by ‘women of colour’. However, some
feminists chose radical separatist perspectives, and some moved in the direction of political
lesbianism. Nowadays, individual feminists are less restricted by ideological categories and
exclusions: the emphasis has shifted to dialogues and common interests. The perceived hostility
to all men has also waned, as The Guardian newspaper commented recently, ‘Nowadays, saying
bad stuff about men is not how feminism conducts itself.’ (15 Jan 2011) The notion that men
also need to read women’s writings and to reconsider their roles appears to be a significant
new challenge which has begun to emerge, and to find expression in the field of gender studies.
Moreover, the radical queer notion, building perhaps on deconstruction, suggests that all
identities are unstable and metamorphic. Given the diversity and openness of current debates,
a policy of democratic inclusion is a judicious and perceptive move that must be informed by
the conversational engagements and collaborative projects of contemporary feminist theories
and creative practices. Feminism, and women’s writing still comes across as a fierce and urgent
project, but it is one that is engaged rather than exclusionary.

Clearly, women’s writing continues to occupy an important place for more reasons than
one. It projects the responses of more than half of humanity and reflects a consciousness
constructed by gender. Women’s writing has questioned the existing viewpoints which are
essentially patriarchal. All women’s writing need not necessarily be feminist. But feminist
interpretations can also emerge through absence and negation. The women authors symbolize
the troubled self of a woman who rejects being contained by the society. She subverts the
subjection and the feminine identity imposed by patriarchy. Furthermore, colonialism and the
concept of patriarchy are inseparable in feminist discourse as it emphasizes a relationship of
inequality and injustice. In the patriarchal societies, be it India or Africa, women are subjected
to male subjugation and suppression. Female oppression is deeply rooted in the structure of
the different societies.

Black women face a double jeopardy, a special cruelty of being at one and the same
time the victims of one’s race and of one’s sex. The emergence of writers such as Toni
Morrison, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor in the post-civil rights era has made it
quite apparent that the African American women would no longer be content remaining
marginalized; they have challenged stereotypical assumptions pertaining to the colour
question. The last four decades have witnessed the publication of some of the most
fundamental works by African American women. By the 1980s, black women writers had
established their own traditions. Now they continue to move out of oblivion. These writers
examine individuality and personal relationships as a means to comprehending complicated
social issues while writing from the perspectives of being black and women. They are, thus, in
the best position to write on institutionalized racism and sexism. Though their writing expresses
both sorrow and anger, a sense of optimism about human possibilities is also found.

Women authors are committed to produce a positive existence for their female
characters; often they dismantle patriarchal structures that previously relegated women to
subordinate roles. Their female characters are strong-willed, determined, assertive,
independent and enterprising. In delineating the experiences of women as women they explore
their most personal convictions thereby presenting their perception of issues as women. They
are committed to social justice, to the exposition of suffering and dehumanization that result
from ethnic prejudice and superstition. They forge a voice for the voiceless by advocating
gender equity as a basis for development.

I. D. McCormick, M.A, Ph.D.

 Dr Ian McCormick served as a Professor at the University of Northampton. He holds degrees
from the University of St Andrews (M.A.) and the University of Leeds (Ph.D). His work has been
featured on the BBC (Radio and TV); in the Times Literary Supplement, The Observer, The
Guardian, TimeOut (London), and academic journals. Dr McCormick’s PhD was in the field of
English literature and cultural history in the eighteenth century. He has also published and
edited books on gothic literature and romanticism; John Dryden and T.S. Eliot; sexuality and
gender studies; modern literature; the contemporary Scottish novel; teaching and learning
strategies; drama education; literary/critical/cultural theory. Awards and Prizes include: the
King James VI Prize (1989); the Lawson Memorial Prize (1985); British Academy Major State
Research Studentship (1990-93). Dr McCormick is currently working on a book about
Shakespearean tragedy. At present he works as an academic tutor and writer. Most recent
book-length publications include 11+ English (2015), and The Art of Connection: the Social Life
of Sentences (2014), and a chapter in Sex and Death in Eighteenth-century Literature
(Routledge, 2013).

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