"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."

Janis Joplin

In the last thirty years we have seen a real emergence, divergence and development of feminist writing. Like any writing we care to label or group together there are elements that are worthy of further academic enquiry. In this essay I will be examining what constitutes the politics aspects of modern women's writing - in other words what is political about women's writing?

Women's choice, equality and expression have been repressed through various positions of power and distribution of ideas, which have been dominated by men. Cultural institutions such as capitalism, the church and government laid down rules and barriers for women, which they have had to battle against. One of the benefits coming out of this ongoing battle for feminists was the expression of ideas through writing. Through ongoing repression (at any, or all levels) winning any rights for women has been political process - formulation and expression of ideas, debating demonstrating, raising public awareness etc. Women have had to an up hill battle to have their writing published due to publishing hous

that it would do. I would rather not have embarked on the project than

Elaine Showalter concept of gynocritics "woman as writer - with woman as the producer of textual meanings, with the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature of women.", highlights the process of reshaping literature - although for equality it sounds rather 'mono'. There are two keys aspects to understand where women's writing has come from; the first is that conquerors have always written history not the vanquished, and the second is that power cannot exist without politics or bias. It is has only been recently that men have ceased to dominated all aspects of society and in doing so controlled means of production (such as publishing houses) and institutions (such as universities) which has allowed women's writing to begin to flourish. Realising that our cultural identity is a social construction elements, women's writing has understood that the actual theories or narratives that they are producing will impact on how both men and women think about how society operates. So access to the circulation of ideas, particularly new ideas has been as remains critical advancing equality between the sexes.

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Approximate Word count = 2243
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)