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WOMEN’S
TWENTIETH
CENTURY IN
LITERATURE
ENGLISH
“It’s all due to the time
we live in”,
The Golden Notebook,1962
Doris Lessing
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928)
 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.”
 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.
Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941)
Orlando, 1928
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
A Room of One’s Own, 1929
 “A woman must have money and a room of
her own if she is to write fiction” – Ch. 1
A Room of One’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.
A Room of One’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.
A Room of One’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
A Room of One’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.
A Room of One’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
A Room of One’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.
A Room of One’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
A Room of One’s Own, 1929
 Economic freedom is essential to art.
Unequal treatment of women should not be
blamed on men who tried to build their selfconfidence 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
Doris Lessing (1919-2014)
photograph by Chris Sutton
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.”
The Golden Notebook, 1962
 A novel about womanhood, politics, sex.
Margaret Drabble described it as “ a novel of
shocking power and blistering honesty.” And
she goes on: “Lessing wrote about women’s
ambivalence about motherhood and sex and
work in a way that was simultaneously
shocking and influential. If she rejected the
feminist label it was perhaps because she had
no need for it. If others gave ito to her it was
perhaps because they needed her.”
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.”
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,”
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.
Gesualdo Bufalino (1920-1996)
 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.
 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".
 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.
 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.
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
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571907/Doris
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10455882/Dor
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