Women Making Modernism ed. by Erica Gene Delsandro

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women Making Modernism ed. by Erica Gene Delsandro Hannah Roche Women Making Modernism. Ed. by Erica Gene Delsandro. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2020. viii+238 pp. $80. ISBN 978–0–8130–6617–2. In an essay for the inaugural issue of Feminist Modernist Studies in 2018, Madelyn Detloff draws attention to the wearying ‘Sisyphe position’ occupied by feminist modernist scholars. Having spent decades pushing against the innumerable inequalities and patriarchal hierarchies that continue to characterize modernist studies, the feminist Sisyphe is tired. But she has also developed resilience, resistance, and a will to push on. ‘Rolling a rock up a hill over and over again is frustrating’, Detloff writes, ‘but it gives one strong arms’ (‘Strong-Armed Sisyphe: Feminist Queer Modernism Again … Again’, Feminist Modernist Studies, 1 (2018), 36–43 (p. 37)). This collection of nine robust and invigorating essays shows the Sisyphe of feminist modernism at her muscular best. Presenting women writers, artists, and thinkers ‘in terms of arrangements rather than hierarchies’ (p. 5), the volume sheds light on the feminist networks that made literary and artistic modernism as we (should) know it. In doing so, the book itself stands as testament to the collective power of women who write. The makers of modernism in the book’s title are not simply its often forgotten subjects, but also the scholars whose work aims to rescue, revitalize, and re-evaluate the contribution of those women today. In the first chapter following Erica Gene Delsandro’s lucid Introduction, Emily Ridge points out that ‘communities and networks are made up of small, disparate, mobile parts’ (p. 37). The mobility of the book’s individual ‘parts’ is one reason [End Page 119] why its case for women’s networks is so compelling. Peggy Guggenheim and her chequebook appear in chapters on financial speculation (by Julie Vandivere) and Emma Goldman (by Catherine W. Hollis), and the thread of Celia Marshik’s work on second-hand clothing is picked up by Jane Garrity’s discussion of Mary Hutchinson and ‘the pleasure of an old garment’ (p. 78). We later learn that an impoverished Edith Sitwell spent Bryher’s gift of £500 on two Ascot hats and a fur coat (Vandivere, p. 112). Both Garrity and Melissa Bradshaw explore Vogue’s modernist investments, while Allison Pease promotes ‘low theory’ (or even no theory) by demonstrating the value of Marshik’s material approach to the evening gown over the ‘vogue’ of certain frameworks (p. 124). In this way, the traditionally feminine subject of fashion is tailored into something both empowering and theoretically exciting, and modernism’s many interconnections or ‘constellations of correspondence’ (Delsandro, p. 191) are presented in new and enlightening ways. Not all of the women discussed in this volume championed other women. Bradshaw alerts us to Amy Lowell’s acerbic put-downs, and Vandivere observes how Guggenheim’s financial support was ‘sporadic and bitterly won’ (p. 107). However, given its primary focus on collaboration and sisterhood, it is fitting that the collection concludes with an essay inspired by a conversation between Detloff and Bradshaw. In a playful yet politically powerful explanation of why she does not have ‘Woolf fatigue’, Detloff considers the professional and pedagogical hazards of Woolf scholarship at a time when feminists worry about the ‘long shadow’ cast by modernism’s three most popular women writers: Woolf, Stein, and H.D. ‘have the potential to cast shade on other female modernists who deserve more light’ (p. 205). Though Detloff uses different metaphors here—‘We cannot burn down the institution [. . .] but we sure as hell can turn up the heat’ (p. 215)—it is impossible to read this essay on ‘iconic shade’ without remembering her strong-armed Sisyphe (or, indeed, without thinking of Mina Loy’s iconic lampshades from Chapter 4). Presenting Woolf as an outsider who was forced to ‘combat structural inequities’ (p. 215), Detloff ends the collection with a nod to the writers who, now part of the canon, were once rolling a rock up a hill. Women making modernism may still be pushing, but books like this one will help us to reach the top and stay there. Hannah Roche University of York Copyright © 2022...