Women's Experience of Modernity, 1875–1945

A collection of essays on women’s history and literary production at the turn of the twentieth century that centers the feminine phenomena.

Analyzing such cultural practices as selling and shopping, political and social activism, urban field work and rural labor, radical discourses on feminine sexuality, and literary and artistic experimentation, this volume contributes to the rich vein of current feminist scholarship on the “gender of modernism” and challenges the assumption that modernism rose naturally or inevitably to the forefront of the cultural landscape at the turn of the twentieth century.

During this period, “women’s experience” was a rallying cry for feminists, a unifying cause that allowed women to work together to effect social change and make claims for women’s rights. However, it also proved to be a source of great divisiveness among women, for claims about its universality quickly unraveled to reveal the classism, racism, and Eurocentrism of various feminist activities and organizations.

The essays in this volume examine both literary and non-literary writings of Jane Addams, Djuna Barnes, Toru Dutt, Radclyffe Hall, H.D., Pauline Hopkins, Emma Dunham Kelley, Amy Levy, Alice Meynell, Bram Stoker, Ida B. Wells, Rebecca West, and others. Instead of focusing exclusively or even centrally on modernism and literature, these essays address a broad array of textual materials, from political pamphlets to gynecology textbooks, as they investigate women’s responses to the rise of commodity capitalism, middle-class women’s entrance into the labor force, the welfare state’s invasion of the working-class home, and the intensified eroticization of racial and class differences.