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Feminism Through History
It all started with Sappho. Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet. She wrote about Love, mostly. Mind you, this is a time when male beauty is quite highly regarded. Think of all the Greek statues that you see at museums. The (male) human form was literally worshiped by society and the artists of this time. Still, Sappho’s poetry of love has stood out enough to be known today. What’s more, there is debate about the nature of her affection shown through her writing. Though only fragments exist today — rescued by recent literary scholarship — the general understanding is that she was a lesbian and that her poetry was aimed at an audience that shared this sexual orientation. Considering the circumstances of the society she lived in, it is impossible to assume Sappho was anything but an exceedingly independent poet and thinker!
Moving up to the 1800s:
If you look at literature at that time, there are such authors — (in the canon of literature — as Jane Austen, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, the poet Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and, my favorite, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Yes, these are all white women but let us not forget the such women as Phillis Wheatley, a black woman slave who learned to read and write and also showed exceptional talent in poetry! With some persuasion on her part, she was allowed to write poetry and thus became the…
