Literary Feminists
“… One of the insights of feminist writing [is] to notice that liberal individualism is an ideological formation that privileges male existence over female.”
Ruth Robbins, “Literary Feminisms”
Feminist writing over the past few decades has focused on the relationship of gender and racial differences as defined by society. Authors such as Mina Loy, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein, all modern feminist, have all been consumed their works with how these modern and post-modern ideas possess imagined possibilities of personal relationships; mainly relationships between African American’s and white race and gender. Forty years ago women practically knew where and how their lives would end up. American women especially, today can have just about any career they desire and more importantly they are able to become influential published writers, writers that are held on a level with all the great male writers of the past and present. Feminist forces societies to look at the women as individuals, each with their own ideas, opinions and dreams. Many of the women produce literary works that show the meaningful interactions between these characters and how they overcome the stereotypical issues against gender and racism. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the modernist/ postmodernist theory as “a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by drawing of attention to conversations,” or “an idea of, being or related to the era after the modern one.” Feminist are concerned with the equality for woman and the issues of gender difference in comparison to men.
Mina Loy and Toni Morrison both labeled as a futurists, feminists, modernists as well as a post-modernists, however, adapt to the feminist theory with moderately different approaches. Loy attempts to strive for feminism through the idea that women are in fact not equal to men and “the only point at which the interest of sexes merge- is the...