Forgotten voices: The female writers who shaped the modernist movement

Modernism was an era that provided the late 19th and early 20th centuries with a cultural shift that introduced brand-new forms of literature, visual art, and performing arts to an already rapidly changing society.

Virginia Woolf seen writing (Credit: The Charleston Trust)

The innovative style was centred around beliefs which rejected traditions and conventions of the time, instead emphasising subjective experiences and experimentation with forms of art. The importance of the movement and its works can still be upheld today, as it has transformed cultural norms and shaped technique, design, and theory globally. Leaving behind a legacy that redefined art and literature, modernism is studied and celebrated for its radical challenge to the rigid constraints faced by its innovators and its encouragement of expression and experimentation.

Women assumed a crucial role in shaping the modernist movement by challenging social norms and exploring themes of identity through creative means. Notably, many of the female figures who influenced the era defied gender expectations and patriarchal traditions not only in their work but also in their own lives. However, these influential women often go unrecognised as the driving force of modernism due to the systems of the time. The prioritisation of male works left female writers’ work overshadowed and dismissed, despite its equal impact and importance.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was an English writer whose experimental writing style is often regarded as revolutionary in the modernist movement. She popularised new styles of fiction writing characterised by innovative forms and techniques, including ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. Her most popular fiction works including Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ reject the familiar conventions of Victorian literature by experimenting with themes of time and structure in the novels, allowing readers to experience narrative in unprecedented ways.

Woolf was a key figure in the circulation of modernist ideas through her work and her collaboration with other intellectuals. Her publishing house ‘Hogarth Press’, which she founded with her husband, distributed key modernist texts and radical ideas that were central to the promotion of British modernism. Woolf was also a key member of the Bloomsbury Group, who were an influential circle of English writers and artists who embraced and shaped modernist ideas and culture in Britain.

Furthermore, Woolf established herself as a feminist thinker in non-fiction works and essays such as ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929). Woolf used the essay to empower female writers and address their exclusion, insisting that their perspectives and stories were valid. The essay was vital in forcing societal change in attitudes towards women’s literature and prompted the development and revaluation of feminist literary theory.

Gertrude Stein

A celebrated figure of modernism, Stein made waves in the movement by adopting an innovative writing style, much like Woolf. Her work helped to define the aesthetic of the era through her use of experimental narrative structures, language and perception. Her prose was far from straightforward, and this had a great influence on later experimental writing, as she explored new artistic possibilities with a focus on language.

Stein was also an advocate for Cubist art and, having recognised its revolutionary styles and representations, she became a mentor for some of the artists and their works. In her salon, Stein hosted modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Matisse, and the space became a crucial meeting place for shaping the visual arts in modernist terms.  This led some to consider her a patron who established the cultural landscape of the time.

Gertrude Stein writing (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Beyond her literary innovations and support of the visual arts, Stein also played a pivotal role in attracting major literary figures to her salon and fostering a community. Stein’s mentorship and insight helped shape the development of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald while using her work to challenge conventional ideas about gender and identity. Stein pushed boundaries socially and artistically, as an openly lesbian writer subtly exploring themes of queer identity and domestic partnership. Together, her life and work form a significant force in the evolution of modernism.

H.D.

Hilda Doolittle, more famously known by her pen name H.D., had an impact on modernism through her experimental work, which significantly pushed the boundaries of poetry and its form. As one of the earliest imagist poets, she was instrumental in helping to reshape modern poetry away from the ornate and verbose Victorian style by valuing restraint and minimalism.

Often overshadowed by her male contemporaries, H.D. was a key figure in redefining 20th-century poetry through her contributions to the themes and aesthetics of modernism. By championing clarity and precision, her early imagist poems reflected the movement’s core ideals; however, her work increasingly evolved beyond the movement’s initial boundaries. Her long poems, such as ‘Trilogy’ and ‘Helen in Egypt’, took on more complex themes such as female identity and sexuality, psychoanalysis and inner consciousness. As a bisexual woman living in an era of rigid gender expectations, H.D.’s exploration of themes that were often marginalised in mainstream modernism, such as female desire, autonomy and resistance, offered a powerful reclamation of women’s voices from literary traditions.

(Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo)

Although during her lifetime she was known almost exclusively for her early imagist poems, her later poems and prose works have become increasingly recognised by feminist critics as a central figure in the history of modernist literature, and she has served as a model for several recent female poets. Her later recognition has cemented her position as a major modernist writer and an enduring influence on new generations of writers.

In revisiting the contributions of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and H.D., we gain a fuller understanding of modernism and acknowledge the crucial role women played in redefining literature, art, and identity. Their innovations not only challenged the conventions of their time but also paved the way for future generations of writers. Through highlighting their works, we ensure that the legacy of modernism reflects the diverse voices that truly shaped it.