Women of the Left Bank

But Paris, in particular, offered advantages and attractions that other cities, such as New York or London, did not. In the first place, Paris became the birthplace of modernism. In the visual arts especially Paris had long held the leadership position in the Western world and writers and artists of every sex and sexual persuasion recognized this preeminence and sought to be a part of the emerging modernist project. Secondly, Paris offered the right combination of the familiar and the exotic. Standards of living were more than adequate for the flocks of American and British expatriates, yet everything around them was subtly different and decidedly foreign--a constant reminder of their own bravery in striki

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aptations to Paris but they had in common the fact that Paris enabled them to write. Colette, whose great fortune was never hers because her books were published under the name of her domineering husband Willy, claimed that she never wanted to write at all, but did so out of economic necessity. But the others found their voices in Paris. Wharton's writing earned her an immense second fortune, Stein's writing earned her admiration and, eventually, great fame--but little in the way of popularity or even comprehension, and Barney's writing project was only one facet of her determination to live an utterly open, unapologetic life as a lesbian--never dissembling and always supportive of other lesbians and women. Since much of Benstock's book is dedicated to the appreciation of the way the nature of women's experience in Paris emerges from their works, she concentrates on a great deal of literary analysis. In most cases her critique informs the reader's sense of Paris as a retreat for women whose goals and interests were at odds with those of the larger society. Her analysis of Djuna Barnes' novel Nightwood, for example, is a remarkable reading that gets at the sense of geography (the geography of an emotional and actual underwor
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1453
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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