“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart- I am, I am, I am.” It wouldn’t be amiss to say that this line from Plath’s The Bell Jar succinctly describes the spirit of female writers-rather, all female artists- across the world, past or present. As so lucidly described in her signature style by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, female creatives have faced any and every obstacle thrown their way and still put the product of their expressions and emotions out into the world. As the eras have changed and evolved, so have the problems. There’s not to say that things haven’t improved- all the women’s rights marches and suffragette movements have certainly wrought about a big change. But with the increased use and abuse of social media and the constant harsh scrutiny of women in the public eye, there is a whole new wall of opposition built up.
The pertinent questions that Woolf raised about the conditions necessary to create art, in particular financial and psychological, have been partially answered. The gap of financial security and access to means has been significantly bridged with the increase in access to education and digital devices/Internet in developing countries. But the psychological effect of societal perception still exists. In the 16th- 19th centuries, any kind of creative output from women was ridiculed as madness, as something automatically inferior just because it came from a woman’s mind. Ample examples abound- Rebecca West was deemed arrogant for her feminist views; Margaret of Newcastle was shunned and jeered at, ending up alone and mad; Aphra Behn and Frances Burney were thought of as ‘distracted’ or delusional for choosing to wield their pen to earn money.
Even the importance of subjects explored in literature was based upon if it was ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ in the traditional sense. For example, topics like wars and politics were deemed to be an exclusively ‘male’ sphere and more important to write about than, say, the emotions and inner life of women. Works written about women, by women, were dismissed as frivolous and unimportant, because men as the majority of the art-consuming public, didn’t care at all. Even today, anything that dares to explore female-female interpersonal relationships and the unique conflicts and experiences that are a part and parcel of being a woman, are said to be too ‘girly’ or ‘dramatic.’
Woolf talks at length about the psychological effects and aftermath of not having access to a creative outlet, of knowing your potential but being barred from achieving it. In the well-known passage where she imagines Shakespeare having an equally talented sister, she asserts that someone so highly gifted would certainly feel crazed and tortured if they were impeded and thwarted at every single turn, and it would almost certainly end in suicide. Even if she managed to survive, the immense nervous strain she would suffer would show in her work, unhappy and hostile towards the world. With the omnipresence of social media and press, all women doing any kind of creative work- writing, painting, music, sculpting, acting, singing- are inspected under a magnifying lens tinted by the public opinion of how a female in the public eye should walk, talk, look and behave.
Live examples are numerous- singers like Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift have spoken out about the constant discomfort and pressure to maintain a socially acceptable public persona, and anything not aligned with that image was needlessly scrutinized and criticized, taking a toll on their self-image and mental health. Esteemed writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Roxane Gay have spoken about being pigeonholed and pressured into writing only about certain topics, about gender biases still influencing how their work is received and reviewed. Certainly there are countless more examples of artists both established and aspiring who are suffocated and affected deeply by the invisible straitjacket of public opinion. Though there is now comparatively much more freedom in terms of expression, access to means, financial security, the dire effect of constant public scrutiny on the psyche of a female creative still persists.
But, for all the Charlotte Brontes and George Eliots whose work was deformed by the pressure, there are many more Jane Austens and Simone de Beauvoirs who withstood that very pressure and produced diamonds of stunning and sparkling clarity. The responsibility falls on us now, the ever-fickle audience, to lift these diamonds up to the light, and let the world see their shine. We must back them up and see in an empathetic, non-judgmental manner, to allow them the free-flowing and unimpeded state of mind so that they may produce such marvels as their talents make. As Woolf says-masterpieces are not “single and solitary births, they are the outcome of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of people, so that the experience of the mass is behind a single voice.”
And we all want to make our voices heard, don’t we?
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