Women

and

Literature

"If we study how women express themselves and how they really feel, then that would be women's liberation."

                     
                                            -an anonymous Wellesley student

As expressed above, the true revolution of women in the areas of art and literature comes from an emphasis on the study and awareness of women's writing through the ages.

Since the beginning of time, women have endured differences in their treatment by society because they are different--they are not male.

But is it so bad to be different?

Patricia Meyer Spacks writes in The Female Imagination,

       The differences between traditional female
       occupations and roles and male ones make a difference in
       female writing. Even if a woman wishes to demonstrate
       her essential identity with male interests and ideas,
       the necessity of making the demonstration, contradicting 
       the stereotype, allies her initially with her
       sisters. (7)

Only fairly recently have women begun to let their imaginations soar into the public eye via art and literature. In fact, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1819 under a pseudonym; she did not make it known that she was a female.

"It has been common for me to devise and publish theories about women; it was less common for women to write about themselves." As Meyer-Spacks continues in The Female Imagination, "Surely the mind has a sex, minds learn their sex--and it is no derogation of the female variety to do so" (7).

Writings in which women focus on themselves have been gaining exponential momentum since the beginning of the 19th century. Two prominent and revolutionary writers, Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf, delved into the issues of women in their day.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written by Mary Wollstonecraft, dissects the limitations that Bourgeois society put on females in that day. Women of the 1800's were repressed politically, domestically, educationally, and especially sexually by society's expected roles. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft supports her essays with literature and political theories.

Virginia Woolf continued with the same idea in her book, A Room of One's Own, published in 1928. Woolf's main premise was "women and fiction," and she concentrated on several aspects of life--political, social, and economic. Most of the emphasis, however, was placed on the psychological condition of women.

She began the essay with a statement of "insecurities" about her topic and what the topic really meant:

      The title women and fiction might mean, and you 
      may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like; or it might
      mean women and the fiction that is written about them; or it might
      mean that somehow all three are inextriably mixed together and you 
      want me to consider them in that light.  But when I began to
      consider them in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I 
      soon saw that it had one fatal drawback.  I should never be able to 
      come to a conclusion. (7)

Virginia Woolf's statement is a precise description of women and literature still today. Literature is still developing, changing, and flourishing. Women are establishing themselves both as a whole and as individuals. It is an ongoing revolution.

For a list of more prominent women writers click on to this website

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