Modernisms and feminisms

This essay investigates the tangled and often contradictory relationship between two notoriously complex ideological forms. Just as there are many feminisms, so there are many modernisms. A range of diverse, even incompatible aesthetic practices are commonly labeled modernist, including Futurism, Symbolism, Imagism, Vorticism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. Attempts to define modernism, then, are often made with the broadest of brushstrokes. Modernism can be characterized as a set of “multiple revolts against traditional realism and romanticism.” Its preoccupations might include a commitment to paradox and ambiguity, a tendency toward aesthetic self-consciousness, an interest in techniques of montage and juxtaposition, or a fascination with the demise of the integrated individual personality. Or modernism can simply be labeled an art of crisis, a term Michael Levenson finds to be inevitably central in discussions of this turbulent cultural moment. Studies of literary modernism tend to focus on the period 1890 to 1930 as the years when a new kind of writing emerged, one characterized by new aesthetic codes, unprecedented experimentations with literary form, and radical transformations in social, philosophical, and cultural themes. This common definition of modernism as the art of a specific historical period in one sense evades the difficulties of defining the movement in other ways. Yet, importantly, it also emphasizes its historical coincidence with feminism. The period 1890 to 1930 was simultaneously a time of increasing feminist agitation, as women in various countries entered higher education and the workplace in unprecedented numbers, campaigned for the vote, and placed issues of sexuality and gender firmly on the political agenda.