life in the shadow of a painter
DESCRIPTION
Yehudit Hendel was the first female Israeli writer to achieve national acclaim in the decade following the establishment of Israel in 1948. Her writings deal with traumatic loss --of a homeland, community, family members and loved ones --in wars and other calamities. Her first works took for granted gender equality and the lack of a need for a specific female voice. Only in mid-career did Hendel find a voice of her own and her work began to exhibit feminist characteristics. The fact that Hendel’s early writing career suffered from extended hiatus has rarely been discussed by her or any of her critics. This article sheds light on a feasible explanation for the gaps in Hendel’s prolificacy. Was it due to innocent bouts of writer’s block, or was it the result of other factors, such as the unpredictable and turbulent nature of her marriage to a modernist painter, who was obsessed with death and dying?TRANSCRIPT
