Womisim
The Woman in Modernism
Heike Wrenn, English 428
“King and Queen of Serbia Murdered!” “Revolts in Russia!” “Greeks Revolt in Crete!” “King
Carlos and Crown Prince Assassinated!” “Bulgaria declares Independence!” “Revolution in Portugal!”
“Archduke Ferdinand Assassinated in Serbia!” These were just some of the headlines that appeared in newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century. The beginning of the century was a time of confusion and growing tension, of unease with social order and of uproar and revolution which eventually led to World
War I. It was also a time of new advents, inventions, thought patterns and a sense of liberation from many traditional bonds; it was the beginning of the modernist era. Modernism is often defined as a response to the scientific, political and economic developments of the time and the way people dealt with those issues. The tension and unease that these issues brought along with them also manifested in the art of the time; it affected music, philosophy, visual art, and of course literature. Writers and authors of the time who reflected on these issues could not help but to give voice to the tension and change in their work, and a new literary genre, the modernist movement, was developed.
Modernism embraced the issues of class, gender, the struggle for knowledge, and the senselessness and alienation of the time. The movement was a response to an international sense of depression, the helpless feeling held by many at that time that nothing was concrete or reliable anymore.
It dealt with the way human personality seemed to change, as Virginia Woolf once stated in 1910, and it embraced disruption and rejection to move beyond the simplistic. Gender issues have always been a topic in society as well as in literature, so naturally gender became a major focus of the modernist movement.
Women, their intelligence and their judgment had always been regarded with contempt by a maleoriented society (Marsden). Women had been seen and treated
Heike Wrenn, English 428
“King and Queen of Serbia Murdered!” “Revolts in Russia!” “Greeks Revolt in Crete!” “King
Carlos and Crown Prince Assassinated!” “Bulgaria declares Independence!” “Revolution in Portugal!”
“Archduke Ferdinand Assassinated in Serbia!” These were just some of the headlines that appeared in newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century. The beginning of the century was a time of confusion and growing tension, of unease with social order and of uproar and revolution which eventually led to World
War I. It was also a time of new advents, inventions, thought patterns and a sense of liberation from many traditional bonds; it was the beginning of the modernist era. Modernism is often defined as a response to the scientific, political and economic developments of the time and the way people dealt with those issues. The tension and unease that these issues brought along with them also manifested in the art of the time; it affected music, philosophy, visual art, and of course literature. Writers and authors of the time who reflected on these issues could not help but to give voice to the tension and change in their work, and a new literary genre, the modernist movement, was developed.
Modernism embraced the issues of class, gender, the struggle for knowledge, and the senselessness and alienation of the time. The movement was a response to an international sense of depression, the helpless feeling held by many at that time that nothing was concrete or reliable anymore.
It dealt with the way human personality seemed to change, as Virginia Woolf once stated in 1910, and it embraced disruption and rejection to move beyond the simplistic. Gender issues have always been a topic in society as well as in literature, so naturally gender became a major focus of the modernist movement.
Women, their intelligence and their judgment had always been regarded with contempt by a maleoriented society (Marsden). Women had been seen and treated
Cited: Coolidge, Mary Roberts. Why Women Are So. New York: Holt, 1912. Print. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: the Corrected Text. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print. Glasgow, Ellen. “Feminism.” New York Times 30 Nov. 1913: 656. Proquest Historical Papers. Web. New York: Scribner, 1938. Print. “Idea Of Women’s Inferiority Immortal Myth, Dr. Adler Says.” New York Times 7 Sept. 1935: 17. Marsden, Dora. “Bondwomen.” The Freewoman 23 Nov. 1911: n. pag. The Egoist Archive. Web. West, June B. “New Woman.” Twentieth Century Literature 1.5 (1955): 55-68. Print.