Chrysallis
Chrysallis, no. 1, 1978
The literary magazine Chrysallis was founded in 1978 by Hannemieke Stamperius (1943-2022, best known under her writer's pseudonym Hannes Meinkema and also writing under her married name Hannemieke Postma), Hanneke van Buuren (1938-2015), and Ethel Portnoy (1927-2004). Important contributors later included Angenies Brandenburg, Liesbeth Brandt Corstius, and Esselien ’t Hart.
Women
Amidst the already existing Dutch and Flemish literary magazines, like Tirade, De Revisor and Maatstaf, Chrysallis was the first magazine in the 1970s that, in the wake of the Second Feminist Wave, specifically focused on literature by and about women. In the ‘Introduction’ in the first issue, Hannemieke Stamperius explains on behalf of the editors:
We explicitly want to open our pages to women from all those countries where Dutch is spoken: Northern Dutch, Flemish, and Surinamese women, Antillean and South African women. And women from all other parts of the world where women create literature and art, and women who think about books and images and write about them.
Feminist
In doing so, the editors explicitly adopt a feminist stance and state their intention to investigate the barriers women face that prevent them from participating as extensively in literary life: ‘Anyone who works through a year's volume of any literary magazine will find fewer names of women than of men, while surely no one would think that women are less capable of writing, nor are there any sound reasons to assume that fewer women want to write.’
The editors also reverse the clichéd response women often hear when they want to participate in a male-dominated platform: ‘Of course women are allowed to participate, but they do have to meet the quality standards.’ Chrysallis, in turn, warmly invited men: ‘But if a man submits a contribution to Chrysallis? Of course, we include what we find good and beautiful, and it really doesn’t have to be better or even demonstrably just as good as what women produce.’
In the introduction, the editors also indicate what Chrysallis would open its columns to:
- republications of work that was unjustly forgotten;
- interviews with women in literature and art;
- articles about books by domestic and foreign women that receive little attention elsewhere;
- research into women's reading experiences and the image of women in literature;
- historical documents of literary importance written by women.
International perspective
In this approach, Stamperius relies on a statement by Eilaine Showalter: ‘the length and breadth of women’s experiences are far from being mapped out.’ Feminist and literary scholar Eilaine Showalter (b. 1941) was an important American example for the editors of Chrysallis. She published the influential book Towards a Feminist Poetics in 1979. Judith Smets provided a translation of Showalter’s essay ‘Writers and the World of Women’s Experience’ for the first issue. And besides Showalter, the editors of Chrysallis drew on more international examples. Because Chrysallis explicitly focused on the female voice and did not shy away from ‘experimental’ methods to make it more audible, the editors also deliberately sought examples in the international literary world. In the introduction, the editors state: ‘Chrysallis stands alone in the Netherlands, but many foreign countries have preceded us in an inspiring way – with magazines such as The Feminist Art Journal, Women and Literature, Mamas Pfirsiche, and countless others.’ This broader, international perspective also characterizes the contributions to Chrysallis. In addition to Dutch and Flemish authors such as Lidy van Marissing, Lucienne Stassaert, Monica van Paemel, Margaretha Ferguson, Sonja Prins, and many others, translated prose and poetry by Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton, Rite Mae Brown, and Fay Weldon, among others, were also presented.
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Chrysallis, no. 3, 1979
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Chrysallis, no. 5, 1980
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Chrysallis, no. 6, 1980
Chrysallis also tried to stir up the debate in the Netherlands itself. The editors, for example, focused on literature education in secondary schools, where female authors fared poorly, which also has all sorts of consequences for reading girls. Women learn to read about the lives of men, but the reverse rarely happens:
But girls who start reading have to identify with boy heroes if they want to experience exciting things, at all, and for adult women it is not much better: we always read about men, and in men's lives women usually play a subordinate and often a stereotypical role. The image of women presented in literature is appalling.
Criticism
De kritiek liet niet lang op zich wachten. Chrysallis kreeg al gauw de wind van voren van allerlei kanten die vonden dat het blad zwakke kwaliteitscriteria hanteerde en vrouwen alleen naar voren schoof omdat ze vrouw waren. Onder de criticasters bevonden zich bijvoorbeeld Maarten ’t Hart en Renate Rubinstein. Die laatste schreef in Hedendaags feminisme uit 1978 over Chrysallis:
Literature is brought to market for no other reason than that a woman is responsible for it; other women rise up en masse to clap their hands: bravo – a book, the little lady can already write letters, the little lady has made her own little book!
Stamperius responded to the fierce criticism of Chrysallis in the second issue of 1978 with the article ‘On sexist “literary criticism”’, in the ‘Garbage Can’ section. In it, she refutes, among other things, the argument of Chrysallis’s opponents that women are not treated any differently in literary criticism, ‘as long as they are just as good’ as men. Stamperius says about this:
But who decides that? The wording alone is rather paternalistic, implying that a group of quality experts is willing to take someone seriously and admit them to that group—on *their* terms. However, as soon as conditions are set, we are dealing with consent, and whoever can consent can also refuse—so there is power at play in the "equally good" argument. And then, why isn't it actually self-evident that women are just as good: what kind of idiotic assumption is it, really, that women are still not “just as good”!
Andreas Burnier is also cited. He stated that it is very strange that women who write very differently are lumped together, while this does not happen with men. Burnier’s work was discussed in a magazine featuring the work of four other women under the title ‘Five Female Writers’. ‘And this without any question of literary or even psychological kinship. We were reviewed en bloc as literary figures solely on the grounds that our sexual reproductive organs are similar. This is discrimination of the most ridiculous kind. And if you do not believe that, just imagine a review of new books by, for example, Remco Campert and Den Doolaard under the common heading: “Two Men Have Their Say”.’
A short existence
Chrysallis was discontinued after the eighth issue. The editors stated: ‘Publisher Elsevier has decided to cease publication for commercial reasons. This means that Chrysallis did not achieve the (financial) success that was initially hoped for at the time of its inception. That is, of course, unfortunate, but fortunately it does not mean that a literary magazine by and for women in the Netherlands is impossible. We hope that someone will take up the torch and continue our initiative.’
Hannemieke Stamperius, alias Hannes Meinkema, wrote in a retrospective on her own blog: ‘As a writer, you do so much on your own that it is special to make books together with others. That is why I was perhaps prouder of Chrysallis than of my own books from that time.’ And even though the magazine was short-lived, the torch was indeed later taken up by many women (and a few men) striving for greater gender equality in Dutch literature.
Chrysallis in the KB
Chrysallis is available in full digitized form in the DBNL. The original editions can be requested from the KB, request number T 7078.
