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In the early 20th century, women writers had a significant impact on a new image of women through their novels. The new set of roles for women was a social phenomenon that originated in the 20th century in the suffragette and feminist movements. The literary works of the early 20th century should be viewed as literature at the turn of the late Victorian era – a period in which writers laid the foundations for a new woman. These works resonated with new rights and social roles acquired by women. It was also associated with the understanding of fashion as the women’s social expression. In particular, images such as Gibson’s Woman, The New Woman, and the Flapper woman changed female roles and sexuality. This paper considers the factors that impacted women writers who created novels and stories with female characters.
The social phenomenon of feminism was largely based on the beginning of literary discourse in the writings of women writers of the late Victorian era, who condemned the victimization of women in marriage. At the end of the 19th century, several laws were passed that returned women’s rights over their lives, such as the prohibition of forced spousal sex, forced motherhood, and the return of the right to own and dispose of property (Diniejko par. 5). These achievements were made possible by Victorian feminists Emily Davis, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and Francis Power Cobb.
These and other women have put on the agenda higher education rights, employment, suffrage and property. The term “new woman” was invented by Sarah Grand in 1984; he reflected a departure from the Victorian ideal of a woman as an angel in the home, mother, wife and homemaker, and praised her intelligence, education, emancipation and self-sufficiency (Diniejko par. 6). Therefore, the literature of the early 20th century is inextricably linked with late 19th-century literature. It should be understood in the context of the then-prevailing trends.
The generation of the new woman was realized by feminists who saw themselves as full-fledged participants in society. These were women who came of age between 1890 and 1920 (Rabinovitch-Fox par. 1). The idea or image of the new woman was associated with electoral rights and consumer culture. She was a young woman, mobile, free and modern, and her final image varied according to gender, age, race and class (Rabinovitch-Fox par. 1). Therefore, social trends created the preconditions for literary heroes who reflected the new reality of women writers.
Women writers of the late Victorian era are often viewed as a single literary phenomenon alongside women who wrote from 1900-1910. Both the former and the latter expressed “the tension between individual identity and the uniformity implied by assimilation into the wider community” and used fashion as “a rich conceptual framework for analyzing the complex processes of identity formation” (Girling 154). Girling notes that “the fate of the individual in the era of conformism concerns many writers of the early twentieth century, as evidenced by the furious efforts to achieve autonomy among the fictional heroines Carrie Meber and Lily Barth” (158). Fashionable clothing was seen as a prerequisite for consuming “products of legitimate culture such as music, poetry, and philosophy” (Girling 159). Therefore, the appearance of the heroines who fought for rights began to have a symbolic character that defined the personality.
A breakaway from reality, in which a woman was perceived exclusively as an angel owned by a man, demanded new roles and images reflected in literature and the real world. Critics denounced the desire of female writers to create independent literature and compete with male writers. Literary critic Egerton wrote about the literature of new women: “she had only one little conspiracy to tell: terra incognita about herself, as she knew herself, and not the one that the man wanted to represent her” (Melhuish par. 7). The critic condemned the desire of women to compete with men: “I realized that in literature a man did everything better than a woman could hope to imitate” (Melhuish par. 7). Outstanding works of new women are the works of Sarah Grand (Babs the impossible of 1901 and The heavenly twins of 1893), Pearl Craigie, and George Egerton, pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne. These writers provided the basis for subsequent literary work, many of which imitated the genre.
Suffragette stories can be viewed as a separate trend in women’s literature of the early 20th century. These are the works of Constance Maud, No Surrender (1911), Gertrude Colmore, Suffragette Sally (1911) and Lady Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners: some personal experiences (1914) (Edwards 123). The pieces that inspired the writers are the images of the Gibson girl from the upper class and the bourgeoisie, in the same loose shirt with a belt and a long fitted skirt (Rabinovitch-Fox par. 11). This image was replaced by the role of a political new woman, which propaganda tried to impose masculinity and rudeness. This rudeness was then supplanted by real women who carefully chose clothes for protest rallies to create a new vision of themselves and their role. More recently, the new black woman and flapper woman, a white counterpart, celebrated luxury and sexuality while refuting the values of sacrifice, modesty, and restraint.
Thus, the factors that led to the emergence of women writers who revealed the female character were considered. The main factor was the influence of the feminist movement, which originated under the influence of the late Victorian era. This movement defended women’s rights for their bodies and property, as well as the right to vote. Later images of women are also reflected in novels and stories. These are images of a new woman participating in political and social life, of a new black woman who, in addition to social realization, including in music and on stage, was the first to risk expressing luxury and emphasizing sexuality. The most recent image is the image of the flapper woman, thanks to which the woman became associated with androgynous, boyish images and roles.
Works Cited
Diniejko, Andrzej. “The New Woman Fiction,” 2020. Web.
Edwards, Sarah. “The Regiment of Women: Neo-Edwardian Suffrage Narratives and Women Writers of the 1910s.” Women’s Writing 28.1 (2021): 123-142.
Girling, Anna. “Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers by Vike Martina Plock.” Edith Wharton Review 35.2 (2019): 154-159.
Melhuish, Fiona. “The ‘New Women’: Women Writers of the 1890s,” 2017.
Rabinovitch-Fox, Einav. “New Women in Early 20th-Century America.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 2017.
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