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Women of the Left Bank

Shari Benstock's Women of the Left Bank is a history of women writers, publishers, booksellers, and others associated with literary modernism, who made their homes in Paris in the decades from 1900 to 1940. A large number of these women were lesbians who, like gay people throughout this century, sought the relative anonymity of a large, cosmopolitan city. But a number of the women discussed here were not lesbians and the central irony that emerges from Benstock's lively book is that one did not have to be gay to seek out this type of urban protection. It was sufficiently transgressive merely to be a woman who wanted to write, publish books, or in some way lead a life that did not confine itself to the paradigm of women's lives established in the nineteenth century.

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 striking out in opposition to much of what they had left behind. Third, and perhaps most important, nearly all the women Benstock discusses were from English-speaking countries and Paris itself provided a tolerance borne of complete intolerance and immense indifference.

When Benstock describes Edith Wharton's access to a higher level of Parisian society she is deliberately describing an anomaly among expatriates interested in the arts. Few of these women had Whar...

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Women of the Left Bank. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:09, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689452.html