Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration by Anna Watz (review)

If the term “surrealism” evokes Salvador Dalí’s flamboyant, inscrutable paintings, then Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration affords an entirely new conception of this artistic and literary movement. Recognizing that Surrealism Studies has long privileged male artists and the visual arts, this volume seeks to expose and then rectify the field’s double marginalization of genre (literature) and of gender (women). The volume’s greatest contribution lies in its “sustained analyses” (10) of literary works, which range from close readings to comprehensive bio-bibliographic reviews. Each of the eleven chapters avoids reifying gender binaries. In this respect, the essays do not merely insert women into an established canon. They unsettle conceptual categories, like “woman” and “writing,” in order to show that they are not simple essentialist labels but are rather useful categories of analysis. It is the nuanced questioning of gendered and generic assumptions that makes this collection an essential reference for any literary scholar with a general or specialist interest in the surrealist movement. In my discussion here, I will provide a summary of editor Anna Watz’s framing of the subject and then focus on three of the contributions that illustrate how the collection as a whole engages with the literary, gendered dimensions of surrealism.