Mujeres de la "Rive Gauche". París 1900-1940

by Shari Benstock

"The question that predicates this inquiry is not 'What was it like to be part of literary Paris,'" writes Shari Benstock, but "'What was it like to be a woman in literary Paris?'" That city's Left Bank, says the author, was in the early part of the 20th century "inhabited by all those on the margin of culture, a place for the dislocated, even the dispossessed." Among these expatriates were women writers, editors, poets, journalists, and novelists who came to Paris from America or England, often to escape a family or society that made it hard for them to live as a lesbian or a black woman--or simply as an intelligent, ambitious person uninterested in settling into traditional domestic life.

If you believe the usual literary histories, the early 20th-century modernist movement in English literature was, Gertrude Stein excepted, a movement of men. Benstock restores the roles of such remarkable women as Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Beach, and Janet Flanner in the history of the time, revealing what she calls the "underside of the cultural canvas." The book is thorough and wonderfully descriptive, offering both a literary history and a portrait of the lives of creative women. --Maria Dolan

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Feminism, France, Art, Biography Memoir

600 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come, say their names with me:

Bryher, Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, Renée Vivien, H.D., Kay Boyle, Caresse Crosby, Maria Jolas, Solita Solano, Nancy Cunard, Jean Rhys…

All of these women are vital, essential, figures in the history of twentieth century literature and gender politics. Pretty much all of them remain either marginalised or ghettoised within the standard histories of the period, and most of their work is either out of print or, at best, under-read and incorrectly analysed. This means that you are duty-bound to track down their works and read them. The operation of the heteronormative, patriarchal dynamic we are all situated in has changed a great deal over the last hundred years, but still requires you to make a conscious effort to move in a different direction to that prescribed.

Let me tell you a bit about one of my favourites. A woman I knew nothing about prior to reading this book, save her name and her association with this period.



This is the incomparable Natalie Barney.

Look at all the fucks she does not give.

She held a salon at her home on 20 rue Jacob for a little over 60 years. She was consciously lesbian from the age of 12 and published love poems to other women under her own name as early as 1900 (when she was just 24 years old). She thereby became the first woman to openly write about such topics since Sappho.

At her salon in the teens or twenties you may have seen, for example:

Colette performing on a makeshift stage in the garden
Mata Hari riding into the garden as Lady Godiva on a white horse
Andre Gide in discussion with Stein and Eliot
George Antheil previewing his First String Quartet

She established, in 1927, an Academie des Femmes in an attempt to forge a place for women writers in history and as a counterpoint to the Academie Francaise (which would not open its doors to women until 1980). She supported, both financially and emotionally, many of the artists listed at the start of this review.

She was, to put it bluntly, fucking awesome.

You can read this by her A Perilous Advantage The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney

Her GR page is here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

So, briefly, what about this study itself?

Well written, enjoyable to read - balanced perfectly between the academic and the biographical. Five stars for it and Five for the people it describes.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I said in my initial status update on this book, "I had intended to skim, but that quickly proved to be an impossibility," as almost instantly I was engrossed by this group of utterly fascinating women—fiercely intelligent, unapologetically complex, sometimes contradictory, but each in their own diverse ways dedicated to the artistic life, in the process often turning in very real ways life itself into an artistic statement. Utilizing both biography and literary analysis—and demonstrating how often these factors intimately intertwine—Benstock attempts to sketch the ambiguous boundaries of the vibrant Parisian Left Bank community as it functioned during the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Benstock's task is an admittedly daunting one: the first comprehensive study of its kind, it is not particularly surprising that as the chapters progress one begins to get the impression that Benstock is struggling to retain control of her material in light of its obvious potential to branch out infinitely, and the first few chapters function as marvelous portraits of a number of women and/or pairings (romantic, professional and often both at once), most particularly those dedicated to Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner, Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney and the coterie of women circling her. Once she gets to the substantial chapter on H.D., however (included in this study rather tenuously as she intensely disliked Paris and actively avoided spending time there), Benstock is attempting to weave into this histiocultural narrative the stories and accomplishments of a number of individuals, and often these attempts fail to do their subjects justice. Aside from H.D.'s odd inclusion in this study and much space devoted to Colette (undoubtedly a crucial player in this world, but not an expatriate), exactly who and what is excluded is also rather curious: Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness barely warrant a few passing mentions, and a number of names listed on the cover (Kay Boyle, Caresse Crosby, Maria Jolas and Solita Solano and several others) collectively receive less analysis than, say, the paintings of Romaine Brooks, a topic supposedly outside the scope of study.

But such problems are minor compared to what Benstock does accomplish, which on the one hand is bringing these various women's life stories to vivid life, and on the other providing a much-needed countering voice to the heterosexual masculine (and extremely romanticized) depiction of the expatriate life as depicted in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, the text which has almost singlehandedly defined this period in the popular imagination. Benstock also does important work in being part of the movement to reexamine and completely reinterpret the literary work of Stein, Barnes, Barney, H.D., Nancy Cunard and others, proclaiming their central importance in any analysis of the Modernist literary movement, defying the condescending marginalization this work has traditionally received by creating spaces of "alternative Modernisms." What I most appreciated, however, was how Benstock directly confronts the ways in which the writing of these women resists easy canonical assimilation, and attempts to take into account the ways in which very little of the collective artistic output that was created present a clear, unproblematic case studies for feminist study and discourse. Benstock recognizes this, and it makes her analysis and the portrait of a place and time all the more richly observed.

The documentary Paris Was a Woman (Greta Schiller, UK, 1995) provides a nice cliffnote-type accompaniment to this (admittedly hefty) volume, with archival footage, photographs and films which provide a brief but tantalizing taste of the period (with Benstock and several other scholars she prominently quotes throughout Women of the Left Bank providing context and analysis). Not an adequate substitute by any stretch of the imagination, but a nicely realized introduction and/or supplement.



The entire film can be found on YouTube. See here.

Review originally posted on my blog, Memories of the Future.

[Suvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd suggest reading through Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank first and then start tackling this, an extremely deep analysis of the female Paris expatriation. I just recently discovered this fantastic subject and all its wonderful women, some of who still are unfortunately quite unknown to the general public, trampled by the male Modernists.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although suffering from an overabundance of academic reasoning and prose, the chapter on Gertrude Stein is worth the slog. I may not believe that "the disruption of expectation in masculine/feminine distinctions emphasized by Stein's odd dress...poses difficulty for the analyst." No difficulty for me. She wore skirts not to subvert male hegemony, but because she was fat.

I do agree that "her status as a genius allowed her to subsume gender distinctions and ignore them."

A genius is a dyke is a rose.

[c_branwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baaardzo mi się ta książka podobała. Taką właśnie książkę chciałam przeczytać. Historia o kobietach (głównie Amerykankach) w Paryżu w pierwszej połowie XX wieku. O ich kręgach artystycznych, salonach, wydawnictwach, związkach. Autorka świetnie wyjaśnia jak te kobiety umiejscowiły się wobec głównie patrairchalnego modernizmu, jak tworzyły swoje własne zasady twórczości pisarskiej, jak były odbierane przez społeczeństwo. Bardzo gęsta książka, dużo w niej nazwisk i pojęć, więc raczej dla czytelników, którzy się tymi tematami interesują.

[Helynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This hefty volume—518 pages including its extensive chapter-by-chapter footnotes and length bibliography—is an exhaustive description of the lives and works of numerous women—mostly ex-patriot Americans—who assimilated into the Bohemian-style life on the Left Bank of Paris between 1900 and 1940—in the middle of the belle époque and the Dreyfus affair, continuing through World War I, the prolific Entre Guerres period, and the tumultuous years leading up to World War II. These talented and courageous women created their own niche on the Left Bank, hung out at the café Les Deux Magots, and defied conventions (some left husbands behind, many were Lesbian) to work as journalists and booksellers as well as produce some amazing and watershed works of literature—while flying in the face of traditional literary parameters. “Writing allowed the momentary release of the bonds society tightened around women,” author Shari Bentock states. “In France particularly there was a strong tradition of women writers who kept accounts, journals, diaries and commentaries on daily life; these legers gave a form and shape to lives that were warped into the conformity dictated by both church and state. Through these writings we discover the discrepancies, the huge gaps, between the exterior life or preserved gentility and the interior of life of passions, frustration, and unused energy” (76). Some of the women Benstock describes are quite well known, such Edith Wharton, one of the earliest expats to claim Paris as home and produce several fictional and non-fiction words just before World War I, Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, and the iconoclastic Colette, who left a brutal husband, who was taking credit for her works of fiction, and became a flamboyant example of the “pure and the impure” in her novels, plays, and lifestyle. These and other lesser-known writers such as Nancy Cunard, Nathalie Barnes and Djuna Barnes, were their own kind of feministsa and literary “modernists” whose works represented a backlash against T.S. Eliot’s insistence on order. These women defied the expectations of “male” writing that had always existed. Speaking of male writers, some of these women were friends of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and other British and American men who came to Paris with the same kinds of literary goals. However, these women remained dedicated to their own productivity on their own terms and supported one another, largely ignoring any attempt on the part of men to sway or dominate them. Because the Académie Française at that time refused to let women exhibit works or enter its exclusive ranks, Barney and Colette founded as a response, the Académie des Femmes. Adrienne Moninier, with friend and lover, Sylvia Beach, ran the Maison des Amis des Livres, thus pioneering the idea of a public library in France (with women in mind). The beautiful and stylish Djuna Barnes ushered in a new kind of journalism and literature, chronicling her own adventures with various female lovers. Her novel Night Wood, based on her affair with Thelma Wood, remains a cult piece today. Benstock provides not only fascinating biographical information on these women, but also analyzes many of their works in detail. The women she describes with such meticulous research and often deliciously gossipy detail are too many to mention, but their lives and works are so worthy of being examined and evaluated that is a joy to have this book as a reference to so much fascinating information.

[Theresa Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

"she will not experience the need, like a masculine reader, to own her favorite authors in beautiful and lasting editions- at bottom it is true that she is not a bibliophile in the sense in which this word is generally understood. she will prefer to keep the ordinary editions that were the very ones she read first, and she will surround them with her kind attentions... if the book pleases her intensely she will copy passages from it."

"the metonymic economy of the heterosexual world in which women's value for men is measured by certain parts of their bodies (breasts, buttocks, legs, hair), reducing the complete woman to her sexual parts."

"leave off looking to men to find out what you are not- seek within yourselves to find out what you are" - mina loy

"artists and writers remain impotent in the face of political danger: they may be able to diagnose societal ills accurately, but cannot do anything to change them."

"if we have no example of what we wish to be, we have, what is perhaps equally valuable, a daily and illuminating example of what we do not wish to be." - virginia woolf "three guineas"

"a womyn is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own. if she is taken you cry that you have been robbed of yourself." - "nightwood"

[Tslyklu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introductory book, knew little about French literary history so the clarity in biography and wide scope is really helpful for figuring out where to read, just read alongside this the works discussed in each chapter, but some analyses of like the subjects' literary works seemed kind of lacking. I mean the sort of notes even someone as obtuse as I am can understand from reading the book alone, I'm sure she dulled a lot of the finer points of her reading for this book and I don't see the point of reading analysis as crude as what I can come up with. The analysis tends to be more helpful when the work relies more on biographical material (such as The Ladies Almanack) but even then it's frustrating that she clearly knows so much more than what's in here in the way of biography but withholds it (I'm guessing for "readability"?), I wish that more of the complexities of her insight had gotten into this.

[Diane Meier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic in density, this book delivers on what it means to do -- explore and define and sketch for us the women in Paris who helped to create The New. Their intertwining lives, their courage to live their own lives, and most of all, their remarkable support for Art -often at their own peril, should challenge us and give us heart.

I wish a few more of the artists for whom they went to the barricades had been women - but this is what it was -- and this is how it was. And Shari Benstock gives us every possible tool to drill deeper and discover what it is that created this rag-tag band of midwives for Modern Art.

I am in awe of them and have been for decades. And I am deeply grateful to Benstock for untangling the knots of their history and the details of their interconnecting lives for me.

If this moment between the wars in Paris is your thing - this is your book too.

[Thierry Sagnier · Rating 4 out of 5]

You like history? You like Paris? You like smart, independent women (and their men)? All right, this is the book for you.
I love the left bank and was born and raised not far from it. The people there are still originals, somewhat snobby, largely fascinating. This book will make you feel you really did meet Gertrude Stein, Alice B., Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys. It belongs on your bookshelf and is, I believe, one of the more important volume ever authored on the history of feminism, without belaboring the issue.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

really got me in the mood for more scholarly books, analyzing and critiquing works and the history of women of the left bank. i wasn't able to finish it because the library only allowed one renewal but trust me, it's a great book and requires a lot of time and effort in it's reading. These were important women of the day who've been overlooked. this book inspired me to create my own salon (and to be more well-read and go get a masters in english).

[Louise Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my absolute favorite books! Women authors who were, and still are, bright lights of literature and poetry. Many of these women are lesbian or bisexual, and as "out" as the times would allow. They supported one another as authors, and often as "sex variants" as well. A look at women's history and LBGT history, too.

[Jane Rutter]

Fantastic, compelling! This book reveals hidden Paris of the Belle Epoque at its best.I wanted to be back there in those times befriending all these fascinating women.My music theatre piece- a flute concert with annecdtes about these fabulous women is about to be made into a DVD. I will perfom a concert version of it in Paris later this year.

[Kat B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful study of the Women and their works who shaped the Paris Left Bank in the years during and between the two World Wars. I found this book completely engrossing. It is a Non-Fiction book covering the lives and works of women such as Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney, Renee Vivien, Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes and Jean Rhys.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this book, after having read it in 1993. It's still as wonderful as it was the firs time.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative. Touches on even the more obscure writers in that circle.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good bathtub book

[Cindy Huyser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sweeping study of expatriate women writers on Paris' left bank from the late 1800s through the 1940s is a must-read for anyone interested in this period. It's a great source book.

[Susan]

inspired

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent study! Review published in The French Review 61.6 (1988): 999-1000.

[Jargon Slunce · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very comprehensive overview of some of the most badass writers and publishers of the 20th century

[Ann Fathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good presentation of the lives of these creative women living in Paris in the early 20th Century.

[Melanie Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the book I thought I was purchasing. I was interested in the lives of these women, not book reports on the books written by the men who surrounded them

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biographical sketches are interesting; analysis thereof borderline-offensively simplistic.

[Kay read by Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women of the Left Bank by Shari Benstock
In the preface author, Shari Benstock quotes the words penned by author Monique Wittig “homosexuality is not only the desire for one’s own sex, “it is the desire for something else that is connoted…. This desire is resistance to the norm”
Question: Do we live surrounded by four walls constructed by men and their experience? Do women have their own independent thoughts or language or is it all twisted into the culture developed by the patriarchy? Even in Sapphic relationships, we follow the heteronormative patterns built of a structure created by and designed for men. Our clothing is designed with the man in mind. They set rules for what we can wear and how we can treat our bodies.
This very deep book covering all of the literary names during the two great wars made me think. I am reading of a culture of women sharing the same area and living their dream and yet the underlying issue is these wonderful cultured women are still bricked in but the rules and laws designed by the male. The book is teaching about women’s greatness. These women started building a voice for women and women’s thoughts while trying to appease the male so they can stay free enough to continue their creativity and passions. We are less so always have to do more to even attain an equal footing. This is a wonderful book for all women of any culture, lesbian or straight to read. I was lifted by what was accomplished during this time as women worked together and competed with each other. Fully a 4-star read.

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"If the experience of expatriate women writers in Paris tells us anything, it tells us that poetics and politics are never separate and that the very notion of the "asexual" incorporates the concept of the "sexual." Further, it has shown us the ways in which some Modernist women writers fused "asexual poetics" and "sexual politics" in the continuation of a female poetic tradition that extended back to Sappho and forward to H. D.'s re-writing of the classical tradition”

[Elisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be warned, all ye who approach this book: it is very, VERY dense. Informative, yes. Interesting, yes. Satisfactory, yes. But fun? Hell no.

In hindsight, I should have approached Women of the Left Bank in the same way that I usually approach the books I read for essay research: skim for the relevant parts. Yet, because this book focuses on a time period which I'm so interested in and covers a lot of women that I want to learn more about, I thought that I'd enjoy reading it in full. Unfortunately, I didn't. Whilst I did learn a lot and gain some fantastic recommendations in terms of writing from this time period (I've become particularly interested in Djuna Barnes after reading this), I found it a little too heavy when it came to biographical details of individuals. Upon starting this book and seeing the long list of names on the cover, I expected a joint biography focusing on period over persons, but that's not what I got. Benstock dedicates an awful lot more time to some women than others, and, unfortunately, that left me wading through a lot of material that I was thoroughly uninterested in.

Off the top of my head, the women who get full chapters of their own are Gertrude Stein (+ Alice B. Toklas), H.D. (+ Bryher), Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, and Sylvia Beach (although, really, the chapter centralises on Adrienne Monnier). All of the other women listed on the front of this book either pop up in passing every now and again, or are featured in the much more panoramic first section of the book, which I much preferred to the rest of it. I feel like I got slightly mis-sold as to what this book would be. I enjoy biography and like discovering new people of interest through biography, but that isn't what I thought Women of the Left Bank would be. Had I known that it would so intently focus on selected women, I probably wouldn't have read it. I would have been far more selective in my approach, which would have saved me an awful lot of time and energy. I'm sure that this is an invaluable resource to anyone interested in any of the women listed above, and if I ever do work on any of them in future (which is definitely possible) I'll be sure to revisit it. For the time being, though, much of it was irrelevant to me and I ended up skimming or completely skipping out sections to be done with it quicker.

Despite my obvious dissatisfaction at what I personally got out of this book, I do think it's an invaluable resource, especially to those interested in lesbian history and/or lesbian writing. The vast majority of expatriate women in Paris in this time period were lesbians (including all of the women I listed at the top of the last paragraph who get chapters of their own) and Benstock explores why that is in rich, sympathetic detail. She evaluates their roles and the impact that their sexuality had on their writing, yet continuously frames lesbianism as a natural, normal thing which brought these women much happiness personally as well as professionally. Given that the last biography of expatriate Paris I read (Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, which actually post-dates this book by seven years) seemed very squeamish about using the word lesbian and constantly referred to the relationships between Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as "friendships", that wasn't something I was expecting, and boy was I glad to see it. Bravo Shari Benstock for drawing attention to such a significant part of what made these women so remarkable in a gentle, non-dismissive, and non-exploitative fashion. I highly recommend this book for those reasons.

I must also add to this review that I'm beginning to fall completely in love with Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. What individually great women, and what a great team they made (in all senses of the word). They definitely currently rank as my favourite expatriate women and I definitely see myself reading more about them in future.

Overall, Women of the Left Bank wasn't what I thought it was going to be, hence my disappointment with it. That makes my review purely subjective and I'm well aware of that. I've tried to outline all of the things that this book does and doesn't do so that no one has the same reading experience with it that I did, and so that those who are truly interested in the areas that Benstock explores can find it. I'm sure that, one day, if I'm writing an essay on Djuna Barnes, I'll return to this book and think that it's the greatest thing ever because it provides everything that I could possibly need to know. However, that day is a long way off, and for now this book feels like a misleading, dense, and slightly-confused tome which I didn't get a great deal out of. I'm glad to have read it, but, if I could go back in time, I'd spread my reading out a bit more to avoid losing interest as quickly as I did.

[Mary]

see private notes

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wonderful book is a reminder that women (many of them lesbians) were indispensable to the creation of literary modernism. As always, men took the credit, but women made it happen. Besides being an important piece of history, the book is a good read, too!

[Norini · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love lit in Paris in the early 20th century, then read this. It is a bit academic but it is written by an academic.