TITLE:
Loy, Leading Lady with a Mystic Vision, Shattering Masculine Parameters of Sexual Identity
AUTHORS:
Atrija Ghosh
KEYWORDS:
Loy, Futurism, Feminism, Sexuality, Subjection, Patriarchy, Agency, Autonomy, Hymen, Sexual Identity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.12,
December
18,
2023
ABSTRACT: The following study intends to focus on Loy’s feminist voice, continually
surfacing in most of her works—in the “Feminist Manifesto” published
posthumously, where she vehemently asserted women’s right to selfhood rather
than patriarchy subsuming their personalities and desires, in Insel as
an autobiographical account of her own relationship with German surrealist
artist Richard Oelze, where she voluntarily subverts the essential muse-patron
dynamic, in The Lost Lunar Baedeker, where she makes use of vivid
imagery, Biblical references, and allusions throughout “with the desire to
ridicule, and surpass certain poetic laws.” In her works, both poetry and
prose, we find a constant effort towards achieving female aesthetic autonomy—we
aim to discuss few selected poems of Loy: namely, The Effectual Marriage, Human
Cylinders, The Black Virginity, At the door of the House, Lunar Baedeker, among
others, that bring together: Futurism and Feminism. Loy’s feminism was as
uncompromising and resistant as her femininity, as she exemplified and lived
the sexual, gender and maternal contradictions of the New Woman. Inspired by
early debates of Futurism, she was attracted to two of its key men, Giovanni
Papini and Filippo Marinetti, yet resisted misogyny and brilliantly satirized
its sexual politics in her poetry and manifestos. In Loy, we find a need to
politicize the feminine and the aesthetic.