ROMANIAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THE LITERARY PROFESSION DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20 TH CENTURY: EXCLUSION, FEMINISATION AND PROFESSIONALISATION OF WRITING

: The present paper aims to analyse the evolution of the writing profession in case of women writers during the first half of the 20 th century and especially during the inter-war period. In this respect, the present research mobilises three main methodological frameworks mainly consecrated by Pierre Bourdieu and his later followers: the sociology of professions, the sociology of gender, and field theory. The professionalisation of the literary occupation is also analysed from three main perspectives in front of the backdrop against which it occurred: firstly, the evolution of the literary profession is related to the feminisation of the literary field that allowed a wide insertion of women therein; the practices of exclusion, insofar as the literary occupation remained capitalised by male dominants; and, finally, the professionalisation of writing in the case of women is correlated to the development of the literary infrastructure during the inter-war period that contributed to the dislocation of the established criteria of the co-optation of newcomers.


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The structure of the literary field and the positioning of agents are directly influenced by the position of the field itself within the social system and within the wider intellectual and cultural field. The literary occupation in Romania had been devaluated as a legitimate occupation. This fact is determined by the lack of a rigorous methodology and a tradition that can legitimise it, along with the import of "Western Fiction of Boehme", a posture that works as a recruitment model, without requiring specific competences (Tudurachi 69) -here taken to refer to formalised sets of skills or otherwise specialised knowledge in the field of literary studies and practical writing, obtained via educational or academic means.
Moreover, the attempt of Cezar Bolliac to establish a pure literary society, that would have been served as an important institutional platform for professionalisation of writers and a professional homogenisation, will be turned into public accusations towards Bolliac as a dilettante, a superficial literate, as well as an impostor, his portrait being included within a pamphlet signed by I.H. Rădulescu. It can be added that Rădulescu's belligerent gesture reveals rather a generational competition than a real literary profile of Bolliac (Tudurachi 66). But, as an effect of the lack of a literary tradition in the local cultural awareness that can legitimise literary writing as a culturally and intellectually viable discipline, as well as a rigorous methodology that can mobilise the local literary production during the 19 th century, the community of writers and the writing occupation remain in a weak position within the intellectual field.
Because of those traits, along with the status of writing as a symbolic profession without the potential to ensure a steady income, the status of writers is frequently restricted to a postural representation of a bohemian intellectual figure (Tudurachi 67) without any specific competences or knowledge.
The main issue that arises at the beginning of the history of the literary occupation in Romania can be related to Pierre Bourdieu's definition of the literary and artistic professions of which volatile borders are given by the lack of requirements of educational or cultural capital, or even a specific formation (Bourdieu 15). From this standpoint, the assumption of the figural representation of Boehme creates a literary disposition for agents predicated on a devaluated status of the intellectual, devoid of both resources and competences. The wide circulation and assumption of the concept of Boehme reveals the uncertain platform of constructing literary field and its insertion 107 into the Romanian cultural system as a fraction and discipline located at the periphery of society, without a methodology and tradition of writing practices (Tudurachi 69).
During the evolution of the literary occupation and of the domestic literary system, the professionalisation of writing occurs without dispensing of the figural representation of community through the posture of Boehme. Given this status of writing, a question arises: whether social, ethnic, and especially gender criteria can represent a restrictive condition regarding the access to writing and literary professionalisation.
Thus, the present paper endeavours to demonstrate how the rules of masculine domination worked in terms of excluding women writers from the structure of the restricted-scale production consecrated to the legitimised authors, to the masculine elites. Thus, we will measure the access of women to the literary field comparing that with the position of the literary field itself and its degree of feminisation related to the access of women and to the loss of prestige of occupation. Paradoxically, the feminisation of the literary profession through the wide absorption of female writers in the literary field and the conceiving as a minor intellectual occupation (Cacouault-Bitaud 91) contribute, despite the restriction of women writer's assertion by the male dominants, to the democratisation of access to writing. A wide permeation of the access to the literary career involves a mobilisation of a number of strategies for autonomisation and professionalisation of women writing through the forms that are contributing to the specialisation of the women writing during the inter-war period.

The access to writing: statutory reproduction, literary sociability, and exclusion
In the case of the first women writers from Romania, the access to the literary profession mainly occurs against the background of a statutory reproduction (Bourdieu 87). The transfer of power between generations follows the logic of patrimonial reproduction in its state involving a principle of "the inheritance inherits their heirs, unless, by the mediation notably of those who are provisionally responsible for it and who must assure their succession 'the dead (that is, property) seizes the quick (that is, the proprietor disposed and able to inherit)" (Bourdieu 11 Movilă, Agatha Grigorescu or Bebs Delavrancea who contributed to the Romanian literary patrimonial heritage, were mostly introduced in the literary field due to the inherited educational and cultural capital, as well as the access had become realistic and favourable because of their bourgeois and upper-middle class origin. Writing is either an act of acceptance of the father's heritage, or it is regulated by the male relatives, mainly partners, and, as such, the access to writing and women's writing tradition remain mainly a bourgeois and urban calling (Pârvulescu and Boatcă 3). As a consequence, the plots of many women's literary works are largely inspired from the bourgeois, middleclass or upper middle-class lifestyle. The initial insertion of women as literary agents through a preponderantly masculine vision predicts right from the beginning a statutory predicament that will continuously affect women's literary careers. As an effect, the institutionalisation of masculine domination and women's exclusion from the hierarchical structure of the field becomes immanent and foretells a challenging struggle for women as it regards the acquisition literary legitimacy.
The act of the literary writing also occurs against the background of the global and local women's movements (revolving around associations, magazines, groups) as many egalitarian feminist movements are being articulated in the public space during the inter-war period under the tutelage of figures such as Alexandrina Cantacuzino, Elena C. Meissner, Calypso Botez or Sofia Nădejde (Mihăilescu). Egalitarian claims notwithstanding, the patriarchal laws remained a fundamental and general (Wittig) mechanism guiding and organising the activity and the structure of the field. In this respect, the phenomenon of the rise of feminist movements can also be put in a transnational context. Thus, the rising of egalitarian ethos (that mobilised the women's movements which are rather very partially social accepted) is a clear symptom of enlisting new-formed Romanian society into the Western spirit of modernity where already the figure of the New Woman is emergent (Pârvulescu and Boatcă). The New Woman "makes her appearance in urban literary settings" and renders the modern female artist who is the opposite representation of Victorian mother and obviously embeds the white European women (Pârvulescu and Boatcă 4). Turning to the Romanian women writers, it raises the question of where the bounds of professionalisation of writing is situated? Where it can be identified as stuck in tradition and reinforcing the dominant patterns of masculinity and a clear denying of this predicament? Is being "stuck in the masculine judgements" an effect of the symbolic violence or of the framing of gendered silence attached to the women's writing and female writers in general?
Worth noting is the fact that the restricted access to education marks a very low degree of the potential holders, education is, in turn, limited to a statutory reproduction despite of the supposedly "democratic" and "Bohemian" character of the literary field and activities at this time. At the same time, it remains an apanage of the upper-middle class, bourgeoisie, and aristocracy during the entirety of the 19 th and the first decades of the 20 th century. In this respect, against the background of circulating within a narrow community coagulated after social criteria and prestige, writing is established as largely accessible only to the upper classes, a fact that underlies not a true democratisation, but one largely reserved for privileged members of certain classes, most women and other marginal categories being certainly excluded. Hence, the bohemian character of the writing that allows a wide democratisation through an uncontrolled absorption of agents (Heinich 27) is denied when considering the women writers' community, as their access to the profession of writing does not require a specific competence, but rather a strong inherited cultural, social, and educational capital. Needless to say, it is then clearly not possible to talk about this in terms of the Bohemian artist on the margins of society or the unemployed, starving artist (Tudurachi 69).
The lack of specific competences in the case of Romanian writers in general must be related to the lack of a tradition of literary studies in Romania. Until the inter-war period, many professors had taught general notions such as languages (mainly Latin or Ancient Greek and French), without there being registered a rigorous research activity or creative writing programs for training aspirants to literary careers .
Thus, unlike the many male aspirants , early women writers could not aspire to the status of writers without a solid social and cultural condition. Writing circulates then as a prestigious occupation, and although its high symbolic status, as well as lack of requirements of the specific competences marks its peripheral status within the social and cultural systems, writing could not assure social mobility, being devoid of any material gain, in this way being meant to complement the status of already wealthy agents.
Therefore, the narrow access to writing for women is conditioned by the male figures' literary occupation. So, a wide corelation between parents' or male relatives' literary position and female writers can be noticed especially among those female authors who were born between 1850 and 1870. Thereafter, especially regarding female authors who had established themselves during the inter-war period, some changes in terms of women's access to the literary occupation and to the professionalisation occurs against the background of the reshaping of the literary field and the developing of the literary infrastructure. Even though, socially, the status of the literary occupation has undergone the same precarisation, an access of a wide number of women occurs between 1920-1938, with an especially noteworthy modification in the social composition of the women's fraction also being apparent as can be seen in Figure 1. statutory transfer, and held by those authors whose parents (father) or close relatives (such as uncles, grandfathers) are legitimised writers. As we can notice, this type of capital will remain the main condition for accessing the literary profession in case of women writers and had served as the only way of accessing it during the latter half of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th century. Relational capital pertains to those kinds of linkages that involve a domestic relationship between agents. More precisely, here the term is operated with a quite narrow sense, so being targeted those women writers whose partners or husbands are themselves established writers. In this way, writing occupation works in women's case as a feminised activity meant to confirm and reinforce the symbolic capital of their male partners . Lastly, the literary sociability is in accordance with the development of the literary infrastructure by establishing specific spaces dedicated to the professionalisation and sociability between writers such as literary clubs ("cenaclu"), editorships of publishing or literary magazines, reading groups, etc. These spaces contribute to the dislocation of the required social composition of literary agents. All those spaces that occasion the developing relational capital constitute places of literary sociability that can honour the inertia of new-comers or peripheral fractions who come from the margins of the field, being devoid of a specific disposition. For instance, Aida Vrioni is one of the most important figures of Women Writer's Society, without an inherited cultural capital, from a petit-bourgeois family, her target being to occupy an editor's position at "Adevărul" in 1903, her intention being initially declined, only to accede to the position in 1904 at the same magazine. The space of editorship will contribute to the development of her network in this way, being quickly inserted in the literary field, ultimately contacting writers who will later constitute her guild around the Women Writer's Society. Then, during the inter-war period, the literary events embedded as an important part of the bourgeois intellectual's lifestyle, as well as literary magazines, publishing houses, foundations such as the Royal Foundation "Carol I" or cenacles such as Sburătorul will serve together as important platforms of literary mobility by assured literary sociability that those spaces involve. Source: Chronological Dictionary of the Romanian Writers (1995, 1998, author's own study. The

Concordantly to the contextual [bourgeois] vision promoted among the members of the
Sburătorul cenacle, the meaning of women is to reinforce the masculine capital and prestige (Bourdieu 73), and this is entirely embedded within the practices of women's exclusion from the literary field during the whole inter-war period.
This fact had resulted in a complicity through women's participation in this male- hypothesis that will be argued for in the following section.

Feminisation of writing profession during the inter-war period
As a frequented concept in the sociology of profession, the process of feminisation mainly defines the relation between certain professional fields and the level of women's insertion within those professions (Bourdieu, Zaidman, Cacouault-Bitaud). More recent approaches, derived from the Bourdieusian theoretical apparatus, oppose to the concept of feminine and masculine two forms of gender capital, masculine or feminine capital, neither of which can be conflated with femaleness or manliness. Rather, these forms of capital designate specific advantages, dispositions, and skill sets (Skegs, Huppatz).
According to Claude Zaidman, the concept of feminisation must be delimited. There are three main ways of utilisation of the notion: firstly, it is related to a dynamic of equalisation that alleviates a harmful historical delay, then the concept is also used for Regarding the Romanian literary field and its feminisation during the inter-war period, many forms of this process had been articulated that marked the evolution of the local literary phenomenon until the Second World War. First, between 1918First, between -1939 Chronological Dictionary of the Romanian Novel records 60 women prose writers who published novels, among them a significant proportion being newcomers. In this respect, the feminisation of the field had taken place during this period against the background of narrow absorption of women within literary occupations, that remain consecrated professions for men, as E. Lovinescu will say to one of the female aspirants to a literary career: "literature is not a female vocation, but eminently a masculine one" (Lovinescu 604). Although women are well represented at the degree of the production of literary goods, the literary field as well as the means of legitimation and consecration remain capitalised by male dominants, in this way remaining a favourable space for reproduction of symbolic capital of the masculine elites. So, even though the occupation of writing had taken narrowly up to admit women, the feminisation could not assure an equal access to writing and recognition, moreover, the entrance of women will exacerbate the competition for defending the dominant position by the male elites.
Nevertheless, the methodological specialisation of other disciplines such as philosophy (Lazăr 199)  The same masculinisation occurs in other disciplines such as the sciences (Statistical Yearbook of Romania 362). As among humanities, literary studies took up to be mainly feminised during the inter-war period, that reverberates also as it regards the literary practices, insofar as many women start to practice writing, and the gendered dichotomy between rationality and emotions, between philosophy, sciences, or especially law (rigorous disciplines) and letters, between high-brow and low-brow In addition to the developing of publishing and literary sociability infrastructures for all literary agents, including women, such as publishing houses, associations/ foundations, literary magazines, cenacles, all these together mobilising essential tools for specialisation of writing occupation. The meagre resources redistributed to the literary fund at that time will lead to a reinforcing of the institution of literary prizes as well. For only 7 women from a total of 120 writers were allocated prizes by the Society of Romanian Writers, a fact that makes very clear that the mechanism of legitimation by the institution of the literary prizes is also monopolised by the male dominants, as well as their principles and judgements. In this given literary frame, there is no wonder why authors from the autonomous pole such as Sofia Nădejde, Natalia Negru, and Eugenia Ianculescu or even Adela Xenopol are completely eluded from the map of instances of legitimation by awarding.
On the other hand, among few female literary figures who were absorbed by the infrastructure of [the temporally] consecration, such as Henriette Yvonne Stahl or Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, both authors were fellows of Lovinescu's group.
Furthermore, it arises the question: would literary prizes serve as a measurement of professionalisation or not? Both mentioned authors are undeniably prestigious for the list of important authors from the inter-war period, nevertheless there are many differences between their literary rhetoric comparing it with the engaged discourse of Nădejde's fraction around the Women Writers' Society in terms of its engagement aimed to recover women's equal access to the profession of writing and to the literary field, in general. From this standpoint, it can be said that the literary prizes in their case do not represent a sign of professionalisation, but rather a recognition on dominant's part for their subjection to a system that reinforces masculine literary prestige and settles criteria for awarding, in other words, being awarded with a prize shaped by the judgements of masculine literary elites prove their complicit participation to the reproduction of dichotomic structure of the field and its masculine domination, as well as the its relational infrastructure defined in terms of the symbolic violence (Bourdieu 73).

Conclusions
As a last reflection on feminisation of literary profession, it can be added how the using of the notion assuming a referential relation to the generic masculine and its norms.
That is also proved inclusively by the way of operating the concept in many sociological approaches over the linking the term to that phenomenon such as de-evaluation, or loss of prestige. A very exhaustive and plausible argument can be deduced from Bourdieu's theoretical explanations by relating the term to the phenomenon of the symbolic violence. In this way, women's routes in the literary or any professional and artistic/ cultural field being predestined to a peripheral presence aimed to reinforce the symbolic prestige of the masculine elites, as it occurred undeniably in the local literature during the '20s and the '30s, if we consider how the access of women to the writing profession was conditioned by relational capital held with men [writers] who are either close relatives, partners, or peers.
Thus, in the domestic literary system during the inter-war period, a feminisation had just occurred against the background of poverty and lack of resources of the literary field. Nevertheless, literary occupation will remain a favourable scene for reproduction the symbolic capital of masculine elites. However, the wide absorption of women and the developing literary infrastructure will mark inevitably a pale professionalisation of women's writing, even against their exclusion from the restricted scale production and their peripheral position. Further, it remains open the question whether the political, social, and cultural dislocation that had taken place in the Eastern Bloc during the postwar period, will contribute to the rehabilitation of the condition women writers' fraction, and whether, or how, the professionalisation of female writing during the post-war era will be an even more complex process. The expansion of women's literary production from inter-war period certainly marked for that moment the most important evolution of women writers' fraction in terms of its autonomisation, although the access for coveted position and for legitimation was restricted to them. From this point, it can also certainly be said that the cultural changes from inter-war period reverberated beyond the community of female writers, at least, into a literary mobility by the assertion of women (despite their social and cultural portfolio, as well as inherited prestige) in the literary field and writing profession.