Prospects and Impediments of Feminist Monolithism

This book reads mid-twentieth century poetry by British, American and Sub-Saharan women to postulate the desirability and possibility of feminist monolithism. It shows that there is a remarkable consistency in the themes and aesthetic preoccupations of poets widely separated from each other by both geographical space and historical epochs, which highlights that there are pertinent cross-cutting trends in women’s poetry which could be exploited as a basis for monolithism.

The text identifies the main tenets of feminism as recognition of women’s oppression and a determined effort through concerted strategies to resist and thwart this oppression and to navigate women out of peripheral positions into positions of power. By showing that these tenets are uniformly present in the poetry of very different women, it posits this uniformity as a stable ground on which feminist monolithism could be constructed, without glossing over existent differences between and among women.