In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf suggested that “we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure.”
Almost a century later, Schwarz too returns to her ancestral mothers to seek hope for the plight of the contemporary woman by revisiting the lives of inspirational feminist trailblazers of the past. Woolf is just one of Schwarz’s cohort of radical thinkers, artists, writers and feminists from the late 19th and early 20th century who recount their battles for freedom, autonomy and justice.
The lives of icons such as Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Eleonora Duse, Lina Poletti, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker and more are reimagined alongside lesser known figures of import in a series of vignettes and historical fragments. These are the women who refused to be pliant, who wished “to avoid being trampled down by the feet of men”. Schwartz intends to offer narrative retribution for the wrongs done to them by the men in their orbit, through misogyny and the patriarchy, by editing the men out of the story — an act of fictional revenge that is executed with considerable grace.
The popular fiction genre of “muse-lit”, where the lives of misunderstood or under-appreciated women are reviewed through a contemporary feminist lens, often suffers in execution as the truth of these women’s experiences cannot be rewritten in an authentic way that offers the meaningful justice that readers crave. Schwarz, however, has overcome this challenge through the scrupulous integrity of her research and by staying close to primary sources produced by the women where they dictated their philosophies, experiences and aspirations in their own voices.
The cumulative effect of combining these stories into a chorus that narrates this compendium of feminist history is artfully done with rousing, provocative and elegant prose. Without a doubt, there is inspiration to be found in these spirited reflections of the past, but it is exhausting to realise that so many of the issues these women faced, fought and sacrificed so much for are still so prevalent now.
While Schwarz makes no attempt to explicitly contextualise what this retrospective might mean for the feminist of today, this is the big question that lingers after reading. After Sappho is an ambitious literary project that delivers on its own promise with great stylistic power and verve.
