From the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, writers and other artists began to break with the aesthetic traditions of the Victorian and post-Romantic era in what came to be called Modernism. In a world dominated by dogmatic belief in Christianity, literature followed a realist sense of the natural order. Modernism, however, experimented with upending the previous adherence to logical narrative and according to Susan Sniader Lanser in Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice, "challenged both of the narrative imperatives—knowing and judging... associated with classic realism." Modernism also added new literary devices to the writer's arsenal, such as symbolism, constructed patterns, rejection of a realist approach, and experiments with time.
This aesthetic shift was deeply informed by the significant changes in Western understandings of the world at the time. Shifts from adherence to the natural order towards belief in scientific laws, as well as the departure from conceptions of stable personalities to Freudian psychology, both informed modernist writing. Indeed, Lanser writes that "traditional foundations of fact and value [were] severely undermined." Central to these ruptures was World War I, which created what Judy Simons calls a post-war "contemporary wasteland." The return of thousands of severely injured and traumatized veterans changed the social landscape in Britain and elsewhere in Europe forever. World War I also prompted many women to work outside home for the first time; with men at war, women took their place in factories and other traditionally male fields of work.
In conjunction with these sociopolitical shifts, literary experimentation also offered new opportunities for women. Women writers saw Modernism as an opportunity to develop a new, women-centric literary aesthetic, since it presented a shift away from literature about traditionally masculine domains and towards literary explorations of inner life. As a result, this period saw a wave of newly prominent women writers aligned with the tradition of Modernism. Among many others, famous women writers of this era include Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and of course, Katherine Mansfield.
