Modernism

In my courses this semester, I have been learning a lot about philosophical movements. It seems as though this course revolves around modernism, as we discuss the changes we see in the writing and its content, comparing and contrasting texts based on their relationship to modernism. Literary modernism began in the ate 19th century and ended in the early 20th century, mostly confined to Europe and North America. According to Wikipedia, the Literary Modernist Movement was an effort to "overturn traditional modes of representation." The Price of Salt is a beautiful example of this definition, as it changes the way that a lesbian relationship is portrayed in a text, while still keeping some of the ideas about relationships in general (societal ideas about heterosexual relationships), as well as the ideas of relationships between an older individual and someone younger than them. As we discussed in class, homosexual relationships in texts very rarely have happy endings, usually, the only two options being that someone dies or the couple separates, and lives out the rest of their days in unhappiness. The relationship in The Price of Salt, other than the fact that it is between two women, is pretty consistent with some of the troubles faced in a heterosexual relationship, and the happy-ish ending goes against the idea that all homosexual relationships must burst into flames at the end of a novel. I think by keeping most of the elements of this novel typical of any love story, aside from the homosexual relationship, Patricia Highsmith is working to not overwhelm her readers, readers that may not be completely comfortable with homosexual relationships at the point in time that the novel was written. By introducing lesbians but leaving most other elements about the same, Highsmith gets representation for lesbian women, without hindering other people from wanting to read the book.