Women Written by Women
They’re a bit mad, aren’t they? These women that are conjured up by women. They’re defiant even if they’re locked up in an attic, when they decide to leave the man who locked the invisible woman in the attic. Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a passable collection of stories. The writing seems like a pretence, almost like the author is performing a role she is expected to perform. What it does have is a strong cast of women. These women are defiant, defiant to the state, defiant for the state, defiant to society, defiant with their art. And this got me thinking, what is it about women written by women? It would be a travesty to neglect Virginia Woolf when talking about women that create women. While Orlando is wonderfully weird and Mrs. Dalloway is canonical in the Modernist movement it is another work that has a special place in my heart. Like the protagonist, Mrs. Dalloway, the writing meanders between observation, memory, emotion and the present. This meandering is
