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Être femme et écrivain au XIXe siècle : un statut encore incertain
Authors: Mihaela BACALI
Number of views: 128
Reading is dangerous act for a woman – just remember the fate of
Emma Bovary. Writing is even worse. Being a woman and a writer in the 19th
century is completely undesirable, because femininity and celebrity are two
incompatible concepts. The fate of women writers was, at that time, still
uncertain. Indeed, reading, and even more, writing, was for them “the
forbidden fruit”. Because of their position of subordination in relation to man,
very often they had to keep quiet. Silence means total acceptance, keeping
your head down, not having the right to speak in political assemblies and
elsewhere in any meeting place. Women were driven from the great places
where public life took place: the Stock Exchange, the Bank, the Parliament,
the big business markets, clubs, cafes, and even libraries. Now, becoming a
writer means speaking, “talking to each other” because literature means
expressing oneself. This is why becoming a writer was a challenge that few
women dared to take up in the 19th century. Indeed, silence, irony, disdain are
the terms used most often to describe the situation of the “young born”. This
particular situation women found themselves in, has led us to ask ourselves
some questions to which we have answered through this article, namely: can
the destinies of 19th century female writers have anything in common? Does
the social position of rejection and submission lead to certain types of
detectable attitudes in writing? Is there a social phenomenon that has
generated the preference of women-writers for certain literary genres?