Jewish literary history has long viewed itself in conversation with traditional gender roles found throughout Jewish history. These gender roles have changed over time, influenced particularly by the intersection of traditional Judaism, its accompanying way of life, and modernity. One might assume that the historical positioning of women in the domestic sphere limited women’s engagement with literature; however, in her article “Gender Roles and Women’s “Window of Opportunity””, Parush suggests that the situation was more complicated. Traditionally, a sharp divide existed between the gendered roles of Jewish men and women. In explanation, Parush quotes Mendele the Bookseller, writing, “the woman…takes care of this-worldly affairs, and the husband worships the Lord and takes care of the affairs of the world to come” (38). However, she argues that women’s positions as the keepers of the home and “this-wordly affairs” ultimately opened a ‘window of opportunity’ that made women’s engagement with literature possible. She writes that the advent of modernity, with its cross-cultural connections in the marketplace, “[permitted women] to learn foreign languages, to acquire a secular education, and to receive an exposure to modernity” (Parush 39). This exposure to modernity gave women a unique position in Jewish history. Despite her nonexistent formal religious education, a woman could find herself in control of several languages, savvy with money, and able to make decisions about her own life. Thus, Jewish women (although Parush, here, is perhaps lacking in her discussion of women of different socio-economic backgrounds) could serve as the facilitators for the entrance of modernism into the Jewish home, a role that Jewish men were certainly not expected to adopt.
So, what role does this ‘window of opportunity’ play in Jewish literary history? As modernity came knocking and women had acquired real world skills and exposure, the door opened wider for women authors to make themselves known. This was particularly true in the land of Israel; Zionism’s purported egalitarianism, paired with the feminization of men who pursue intellectual over physical pursuits, created a prime environment for poets like Esther Raab to emerge. The combination of new opportunities for women writers within an old framework, however, can trigger what authors Gilbert and Gubar call ‘the anxiety of influence’ in their essay “Infection in the Sentence: the Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship”. This phenomenon is described as an internal recognition that literary texts are inherently connected, perhaps dangerously so, with their authors. This encourages a fear of writing and creating as the ultimate destruction, specifically in women; because there was no significant literary tradition of Jewish women authors, the pioneering female authors faced an entirely new realm within literary history.
This is not to say that the literary and social world was immediately ready for the entrance of women poets; far from it. Patriarchal hegemony in the literary field was not immediately reversed; women poets still faced exclusion from the Hebrew literary canon. Dan Miron, in his article “Why Was There No Women’s Poetry in Hebrew Before 1920?”, writes “the discrimination, if it existed, was not in the ill will of the literary establishment. Instead it manifested itself in the cultural and aesthetic tastes, and in the norms and restrictions these determined” (Miron, 70). Michael Gluzman argues against Miron, ultimately claiming that whether or not the exclusion was intentional is irrelevant; women authors faced explicit barring from the literary canon. In the end, examining gender history within Jewish history can be a useful tool in understanding women’s roles in literary history.
So, what role does this ‘window of opportunity’ play in Jewish literary history? As modernity came knocking and women had acquired real world skills and exposure, the door opened wider for women authors to make themselves known. This was particularly true in the land of Israel; Zionism’s purported egalitarianism, paired with the feminization of men who pursue intellectual over physical pursuits, created a prime environment for poets like Esther Raab to emerge. The combination of new opportunities for women writers within an old framework, however, can trigger what authors Gilbert and Gubar call ‘the anxiety of influence’ in their essay “Infection in the Sentence: the Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship”. This phenomenon is described as an internal recognition that literary texts are inherently connected, perhaps dangerously so, with their authors. This encourages a fear of writing and creating as the ultimate destruction, specifically in women; because there was no significant literary tradition of Jewish women authors, the pioneering female authors faced an entirely new realm within literary history.
This is not to say that the literary and social world was immediately ready for the entrance of women poets; far from it. Patriarchal hegemony in the literary field was not immediately reversed; women poets still faced exclusion from the Hebrew literary canon. Dan Miron, in his article “Why Was There No Women’s Poetry in Hebrew Before 1920?”, writes “the discrimination, if it existed, was not in the ill will of the literary establishment. Instead it manifested itself in the cultural and aesthetic tastes, and in the norms and restrictions these determined” (Miron, 70). Michael Gluzman argues against Miron, ultimately claiming that whether or not the exclusion was intentional is irrelevant; women authors faced explicit barring from the literary canon. In the end, examining gender history within Jewish history can be a useful tool in understanding women’s roles in literary history.
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