text: Csereș Karina Nicoleta

illustration: Larisa Petcut

 

Writing has always represented an exercise of man's cognitive need to know and at the same time to leave to his predecessors a part of his knowledge accumulated throughout his life. At the same time, writing is also a facility for free communication, but also an indirect (literature) and direct (correspondence) way to awaken certain feelings, thoughts, moods, shivers.

Controversy and censorship placed on female sex/gender, however, halted the spread of female writing for a long period of time. The only ones who had the right to write were men because they were considered intellectual beings despite women.

anonymous writing

Between the years 1660 and 1750 approximately 50% of the published works were under the shadow of anonymity. Between 1750 and 1790 the number of anonymous publications increased to 80%. If some authors did not want to publish their works with their real name for reasons of modesty, notoriety or for fear of criticism they will receive for the written texts, for some, namely women authors, it was a convention. Pseudonyms were the only way women writers could make their works known without obstruction. The rigidity placed on female authors set off a chain effect that resulted in a majority of women writing under male pseudonyms. From the second half of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, the manifesto against female authors was implemented and spread because writing fiction, especially for money, was not "something a woman should do". The only women who could write and had access to reading were wealthy women who were not allowed to do other work. As more women began to write at the end of the 18th century, the notation "By a Lady" was created, which would be on the first page of the book, thus showing the gender and social class of the author.

The first novel published by Jane Austen, "Sense and Sensibility" (1811) appeared with the notation "By a Lady". The second, "Pride and Prejudice" (1813) appeared with the notation 'By the author of "Sense and Sensibility"'. Looking at it from the perspective of some readers in the 21st century it is very sad that Jane Austen never got to see her name on the pages of her books. Recognition of her books was made in December 1817 when her brother Harry wrote 'Biographical Notice of the Author' in which her name was revealed to the whole world. Austen was not the only author to keep her identity a secret. Other contemporary authors who published novels anonymously are Maria Edgeworth, Ann Radcliffe, Frances Burney and Mary Shelley.

"literature cannot be a woman's occupation"

Ten years before Jane Eyre (1847) was published, Charlotte Bronte corresponded a selection of her poems to the laureate Robert Southey to receive a review/opinion from him. His answer was far from the author's expectations. He advised Charlotte to get out of the world of literature because literature cannot and should not be a woman's occupation.

preconceptions about novels written by women

Mary Ann Evans better known as George Eliot gave voice to similar vocations. Her essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists published anonymously in the Westminster Review in 1856 criticizes the ridiculous narrative threads of short stories written by women.

'Silly novelists' novels are a genre with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them - frothy, prosaic, pious or pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity, which produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as "the mind and book species."

History has not been kind and fair to women writers, and unfortunately certain preconceptions can also be observed in the mentality of people today, such as the fact that novels written by women are meant to be romantic. At the end of this article, I state my desire to change this repulsion as well as a few contemporary women writers of poetry whom I wholeheartedly recommend: Svetlana Cârstean, Cătălina Stanislav, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Emily Berry.