WOMEN’S TWENTIETH CENTURY in English Literature

1. WOMEN’S TWENTIETH CENTURY in English Literature

2. “It’s all due to the time we live in”, The Golden Notebook,1962 Doris Lessing

3. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928)

4. Emmeline Pankhurst was leader of the Suffragette Movement fighting for women’s right to vote. In 1999 the Times named her as one of the 100 Most Important People because “she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.”

5. 1918: a law was passed in the UK granting all men over 21 and all women over 30 the right to vote. • 1928 the right to vote was extended to all women over 21.

6. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

7. Orlando, 1928

8. Orlando, 1928 • “For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man’s love of power.”

9. Orlando, 1928 • “Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male and female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience; but here we leave the general question and note only the odd effect it had in the particular case of Orlando herself.”

10. Orlando, 1928 • “Surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). And then she will write him a little note (and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either) and make an assignation for Sunday dusk…”

11. Orlando, 1928 • “...it is clothes that wear us and not we them' we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.”

12. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” – Ch. 1

13. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • Women have always been burdened with boring, tiring, time consuming household duties; furthermore they have always been denied those luxuries that men, instead, always felt entitled to such as, improving and enriching their knowledge and enjoying free time to employ as they pleased.

14. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • There are great differnces even regarding education for the two sexes, so if men’s Universities have always been lavishingly funded, on the contrary, women’s colleges are quite recent institutions and lack money along with generous patrons, testifying that it isn’t really considered important.

15. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • “One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth” – Ch. 2

16. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • Women have been regularly told to be inadequate, inferior, incapable of genius and in the long run they ended up believing so themselves. • Circumstances and conditions, all external, contributed to discourage them and made them vulnerable to others. Oppression, moreover, comes from within as well as from without, it is internalized.

17. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • “It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare” – Ch. 2

18. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • Judith Shakespeare’s fate, had she really existed, would have been totally different than that of her famous twin brother, William. • “genius is not born among labouring, uneducated servile people”, genius engendered witches and lunatics among women at that time.

19. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • “Life for both sexes – and I look at them, shouldering their way along the pavement – is ardous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and stregth. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are, it calls for the confidence in oneself.” – Ch. 2

20. A RoomofOne’s Own, 1929 • Economic freedom is essential to art. Unequal treatment of women should not be blamed on men who tried to build their self-confidence by subordinating women to their needs. This is a mirrored effect that causes anger and frustration in women and it shows in their writing. Jane Austen’s writing doesn’t bear any bitterness but, CharlotteBronte’s instead does, she had personal scars that protruded in her writing. – Ch. 4

21. Doris Lessing (1919-2014)photographby Chris Sutton

22. The Golden Notebook, 1962 According to Margaret Drabble, The Golden Notebook “which was published in 1962 – in other words the Fifties – was not only ahead of its time but a blueprint for women in times to come. Moreover as Lessing herself said: “it was written as though the attitudes that have been created by the Women’s Liberation movements already existed.”

23. The Golden Notebook, 1962 • A novelaboutwomanhood, politics, sex. Margaret Drabbledescribeditas “ a novelof shocking power and blisteringhonesty.” And shegoes on: “Lessing wroteabout women’s ambivalenceaboutmotherhood and sex and work in a way thatwassimultaneously shocking and influential. Ifsherejected the feministlabelitwasperhapsbecauseshehad no needforit. Ifothersgaveitotoheritwasperhapsbecausetheyneededher.”

24. The Golden Notebook, 1962 • Rachel Cusk asks how we should read Lessing today and, in her opinion, “one question is whether her ideas about womanhood, or about psychoanalysis or the possibility of writing have dated The Golden Notebook.”

25. The Golden Notebook, 1962 • But, Cusk says, “Lessing’s novel has become, if anything, more relevant over time.” As a matter of fact, she continues: “the modern reader may find it far franker, more open, more intellectual and more politically and personally revolutionising a text than its first readers did,”

26. The Golden Notebook, 1962 • indeed, she says that readers today “may find it more necessary, or even perhaps more shocking, for it makes our age seem prim and puritanical and half-witted by comparison, perhaps, her time is still to come.

27. GesualdoBufalino(1920-1996)

28. Ora, ragazzi, vi dico perché si scrive e perché si legge. La scrittura, ragazzi, è tre cose: religione, medicina e amore. • E’ religione perché è una confessione. Uno scrittore che scrive si confessa e anche quando narra storie di altri non fa che narrare se stesso. • E’ medicina perché serve a curarsi. Anche voi scrivete il vostro diario per guarire da una pena segreta, da una malinconia senza perché. • E’ amore perché scrivere significa inventare un personaggio che non corrisponde alla realtà ma che è frutto della nostra fantasia e del quale ci innamoriamo.

29. Si scrive per narrare e si narra per non morire. Lo scrittore è Shahrazade, che più racconta e più si allunga la vita. E si legge perché senza libri si diventa Calibano il mostro, che nella 'Tempesta' di Shakespeare dice di Prospero il mago: "Per liberarsi di lui per prima cosa bisogna togliergli i libri".

30. Leggiamo allora: per restare dei maghi che hanno il potere di cambiare il mondo. Ho fatto incidere nella biblioteca che ho donato al Comune questa massima latina: "Tecta lege, lecta tege": 'leggi i libri qui custoditi, custodisci i libri dopo averli letti'. I miei libri son il mio harem e mi ci trovo meglio che se fossero delle donne. Io ci ho passato la vita.

31. Passateci la vita anche voi. Sapete, nei miei fogli per lettere ho fatto disegnare un 'ex libris' dove si vede sul fondo di un mare in tempesta la prua di una nave che affonda e in primo piano una mano che affiora e che tiene un libro. Ecco, quel libro rappresenta la nostra Arca di Noè.

32. Further Reading: • Orlando, Virginia Woolf • A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf • The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf • https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/06/the-golden-notebook-50-years-on • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10467963/Doris-Lessing-A-mother-much-misunderstood.html • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10455494/Doris-Lessing-her-last-Telegraph-interview.html • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571907/Doris-Lessing-warns-of-inanities-of-internet.html • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10455882/Doris-Lessing-a-woman-ahead-of-her-time.html