Question

"The emancipation of women", James Joyce told one of his friends, "has caused the greatest revolution in our time."

Other modernists agree: Virginia Woolf, claiming that in about 1910 "human character changed" and illustrating the new balance between the sexes, urged, "Read the 'Agamemnon' and see whether your sympathies are not almost entirely with Clytemnestra". D.H. Lawrence wrote "perhaps the deepest fight for 200 years and more has been the fight for women's independence".

But if modernist writers considered women's revolt against men's domination as one of their "greatest" and "deepest" themes, only recently, perhaps in the past 15 years has literary criticism begun to catch up with it. Not that the images of sexual antagonism that abound in modern literature have gone unremarked - far from it. We are able to see in literary works the perspective we bring to them and now that women are enough to make a difference in reforming canons and interpreting literature, the landscapes of literary history and the features of individual books have begun to change.

Which of the following titles best describes the contents of the passage?

• A. Modernist Writers and the Search for Equality
• B. The meaning of Literature from 1910 onwards
• C. Transforming Literature
• D. None of the options

Hint:

The title must cover both the writers and the gender theme.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

The passage is anchored by three modernist writers, Joyce, Woolf and Lawrence, each treating women's emancipation and independence as one of the defining struggles of their time. Woolf's reference to human character changing and Lawrence's talk of the fight for women's independence both frame the issue as a search for balance and equality between men and women in that period. The rest of the passage builds on this by discussing how criticism is only now catching up with what these modernist writers had already flagged.

A good title has to capture both halves of the passage: the modernist writers who raised the theme, and the underlying subject of equality between the sexes that runs through their quotations. Modernist Writers and the Search for Equality covers both. Option 2 is too narrow because it limits the passage to the meaning of literature from 1910 onwards, ignoring the specific focus on women's independence. Option 3, Transforming Literature, is vague and could describe almost any passage about literary change, missing the specific modernist and gender angle. Option 4 is unnecessary once a fitting title is available.

The passage is best summed up as an account of modernist writers and their engagement with the search for equality between men and women, which matches option 1.