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Chapter 4 Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern World

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Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918-1959
This chapter is in the book Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918-1959
Chapter 4Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern WorldBut for a woman or any being whose nature it is to live through the emotions, clarity of mind can only be got by taking the natural order. And I do think many of us thinking and educated women of this age go against our natures by striving to force ourselves to deal fi rst through the intellect, living too much with ideas and not suffi ciently trusting ourselves to the truths that would come to us through the deeper sensual and emotional channels.Catherine Carswell (1928)In the Introduction to Gender in Scottish History Since 1700, Lynn Abrams discusses the difference between ‘women’s history and a history informed by understandings of gender’, commenting that while ‘women’s historians aimed fi rst to achieve visibility for women in the past’, their aim today (at least in relation to the developed world) ‘is to identify women as historical subjects or as social actors and to integrate their stories into the historical landscape’.1 Similarly, Marianne Dekoven in ‘Modernism and Gender’, her contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, argues that the early phase of feminist modernist criticism was preoccupied primarily with establishing the importance of women modernist writers, both by opening the canon to include them and by broadening our under-standing of what constitutes Modernism so that it is not so exclusively defi ned by the valorization of formal as well as thematic characteristics (vast unifying mythic themes) associated with masculinity.2Her view is that once a tradition of ‘women’s modernist writing, and the importance of the major female Modernists became better established’, then the focus changed from viewing the work of female and male modernists separately, and moved towards seeing modernism itself as a wider and more varied movement.3Such a departure from the kind of ‘separate development’ situation of early feminist studies noted by both these writers is certainly the kind of procedure one would want to follow in relation to contemporary literary history where women have to a signifi cant extent achieved an equal presence with men on the cultural stage. Yet this situation is a relatively recent phenomenon in EB0024 - MCCULLOCH TEXT.indd 68EB0024 - MCCULLOCH TEXT.indd 686/4/09 16:13:096/4/09 16:13:09
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Chapter 4Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern WorldBut for a woman or any being whose nature it is to live through the emotions, clarity of mind can only be got by taking the natural order. And I do think many of us thinking and educated women of this age go against our natures by striving to force ourselves to deal fi rst through the intellect, living too much with ideas and not suffi ciently trusting ourselves to the truths that would come to us through the deeper sensual and emotional channels.Catherine Carswell (1928)In the Introduction to Gender in Scottish History Since 1700, Lynn Abrams discusses the difference between ‘women’s history and a history informed by understandings of gender’, commenting that while ‘women’s historians aimed fi rst to achieve visibility for women in the past’, their aim today (at least in relation to the developed world) ‘is to identify women as historical subjects or as social actors and to integrate their stories into the historical landscape’.1 Similarly, Marianne Dekoven in ‘Modernism and Gender’, her contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, argues that the early phase of feminist modernist criticism was preoccupied primarily with establishing the importance of women modernist writers, both by opening the canon to include them and by broadening our under-standing of what constitutes Modernism so that it is not so exclusively defi ned by the valorization of formal as well as thematic characteristics (vast unifying mythic themes) associated with masculinity.2Her view is that once a tradition of ‘women’s modernist writing, and the importance of the major female Modernists became better established’, then the focus changed from viewing the work of female and male modernists separately, and moved towards seeing modernism itself as a wider and more varied movement.3Such a departure from the kind of ‘separate development’ situation of early feminist studies noted by both these writers is certainly the kind of procedure one would want to follow in relation to contemporary literary history where women have to a signifi cant extent achieved an equal presence with men on the cultural stage. Yet this situation is a relatively recent phenomenon in EB0024 - MCCULLOCH TEXT.indd 68EB0024 - MCCULLOCH TEXT.indd 686/4/09 16:13:096/4/09 16:13:09
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vi
  4. Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism 1
  5. Part I Transforming Traditions
  6. Chapter 1 Towards a Scottish Modernism: C. M. Grieve, Little Magazines and the Movement for Renewal 11
  7. Chapter 2 Hugh MacDiarmid and Modernist Poetry in Scots 29
  8. Chapter 3 Criticism and New Writing in English 53
  9. Chapter 4 Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern World 68
  10. Part II Ideology and Literature
  11. Chapter 5 Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars 93
  12. Chapter 6 Neil M. Gunn: Re-imagining the Highlands 113
  13. Chapter 7 Modernism and Littérature Engagée: A Scots Quair and City Fiction 131
  14. Chapter 8 Poetry and Politics 154
  15. Part III World War Two and its Aftermath
  16. Chapter 9 Visionaries and Revisionaries: Late Muir and MacDiarmid 169
  17. Chapter 10 Continuities and New Voices 198
  18. Bibliography of Works Cited 216
  19. Index 223
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748634750-006

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vi
  4. Introduction: Modernism and Scottish Modernism 1
  5. Part I Transforming Traditions
  6. Chapter 1 Towards a Scottish Modernism: C. M. Grieve, Little Magazines and the Movement for Renewal 11
  7. Chapter 2 Hugh MacDiarmid and Modernist Poetry in Scots 29
  8. Chapter 3 Criticism and New Writing in English 53
  9. Chapter 4 Beyond this Limit: Women, Modernism and the Modern World 68
  10. Part II Ideology and Literature
  11. Chapter 5 Whither Scotland? Politics and Society between the Wars 93
  12. Chapter 6 Neil M. Gunn: Re-imagining the Highlands 113
  13. Chapter 7 Modernism and Littérature Engagée: A Scots Quair and City Fiction 131
  14. Chapter 8 Poetry and Politics 154
  15. Part III World War Two and its Aftermath
  16. Chapter 9 Visionaries and Revisionaries: Late Muir and MacDiarmid 169
  17. Chapter 10 Continuities and New Voices 198
  18. Bibliography of Works Cited 216
  19. Index 223
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