Ashley Carlisle, Courtney Fenner, and Wycliffe Mcallister – Gender in The New Age
The New Age magazine tackled several issues over the course of it somewhat lengthy lifespan. One topic of note was that of gender in America. While the magazine in its early days vigorously supported women’s rights, featured nonfiction pieces written by women, and tackled hisotrical notions of women in the home, it became a magazine that appeared to place women on the back burner after the height of the suffragist movement. Perhaps this made The New Age far less modern and inventive than it purported itself to be.
In a random sampling of four issues (always including the first and last issues) during the years 1907, 1909, 1910, and 1912, one can get a general sense of attitudes towards women in the early years of The New Age. The early stages of The New Age demonstrate a keen awareness of gender/feminist issues as well as a general support of women’s equity. Though obvious promoters of women’s rights, the magazine struggled with its own very modernist equitable goals and the culturally learned practice of relegating women, predominantly married, to domestic life. What emerges from this push and pull over “a woman’s place” is a desire to keep women the mistresses of their domains—houses—while beginning to afford them the same rights as their husbands. However, by the end of the early period, around 1912, there was a significant drop in the number of women-focused articles. In addition to the absence of women from the magazine’s landscape, there was also a shift in the attitudes towards women. While the magazine seemed to believe women to be equals in its earlier days, it turned toward trivializing women.
For example, in the first year’s volume (1907), second issue, hosts an article promoting women’s voting rights—written by a woman—while just a few pages later is an ad entitled, “A Woman’s Question.” The ad persuades mothers to subscribe to The Daily News which, unlike other newspapers, does not print any horse racing statistics, and, therefore, does not invite the evils of gambling into the home. The conflict is between moving toward the future with women having just as much a say as men and holding on to the past with women reigning over hearth and home.
As the issues in this first volume progress, we see a series of opinion pieces on proposed bills that would have affected women (“Married Women and the Vote,” “Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill”). In issue #18, one of the featured poems is “Mary Magdalene,” in which the woman poet uses Mary Magdalene’s tolerance and understanding as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the plight of women. Issue #26 touts a reading of Euripedes’ Medea that sympathizes with the title character as a woman who performed all of her husband’s heroic acts while he received all the glory: a not so thinly veiled nod, again, to women’s roles of the period.
In the volume’s final issue, #26, there is a critique of artist H. John Collier’s rendering of Lady Godiva (criticized for being to realistic and not “imaginative”), an ad for “a boarding and day school for girls and for younger boys” (meaning that girls can go to school with younger boys but not with boys their own ages), and a letter in response to an article on Hedda Gabbler (claiming that Gabbler is not as heroic and thus not worthy of the canonization afforded to her). By the end of the first issue, there is a clear sense that women have a role in the magazine, that they are involved both as subjects worthy of evaluation and as contributors entrusted to write across a range of political and social issues.
A few years later, though, The New Age tells a different story. In a random sampling of issues during 1909, there were only four pieces even mentioning women. One letter to the editor in issue #26 was from a Eugenist who believed that there should be fewer mothers and more birth control in order to prevent the onslaught of more dictators, Hitler is cited as one example of someone who had a mother.
In another random sampling from 1910, we found only two articles about or by women. This issue also introduces the notion of women writing fiction pieces for The New Age. Between 1909 and 1910, there are fewer women writing about world news events as there were compared to women contributors in 1907. By 1912, there are only two gender-focused pieces. One, contributed by a woman, is short fiction, and the other is a satirical send-up of life in the Garden of Eden, written by a man. By the end of The New Age’s early years, women had pulled slowly from the magazine’s fabric, and along with this absence came a near misogyny or at the very least a reverting to viewing women as frivolous.
Between the years 1913 and 1915, two debates about women issues were given prominence and currency in The New Age publication. The debates surrounded the suitability and prudence of women for the workforce and women’s right to vote.
It seemed apparent that The New Age editorial position was that women in the workforce and women suffrage were absurdities. However, The New Age was not alone in its position against women in the workforce and right to vote. Several contributors to the Letter to the Editor section of the publication expressed their opinion with regard to these issues, but much of it was in response to articles generated by New Age journalists. The letter contributors were divided in their stance, some for and some against.
The debates seemed to have been enraged by the New Age Notes of the Week (which today we may refer to as the editorial) of January 23, 1913. In that article the author wrote “We ourselves admit that one class of women, as things are, is perhaps entitled to the vote: the class of unmarried or widowed women who are economically independent; but even this class we hope to see one day abolished, and we would not, for a temporary misfit of society, abandon a whole principle.”
Following the publication of this statement embodied in an article about women’s suffrage letter to the editor addressing the issue of women’s suffrage and women suitability for the workforce began to stream in, resulting in the author of New Age Note of the Week column having to repeated clarify and defend his position.
One letter writer wrote, “Politically, my delightful husband and myself (sic) have scarcely an idea in common. As an individual, ‘the unit of the State,’ I claim the right to express my own opinion.”
The debate about women suitability for the workforce seemed to have gathered added momentum from the debate about women’s suffrage. By-and-large women felt that they had a right to determine their own economic destiny, but it seemed that men generally felt that the woman place was in the house. In response one woman wrote “Mr. Kerr really cannot convince me that he understands what women want and need better than I do.
Another female contributor to the debate wrote, “If women are to have a chance of freedom and development equal with the men in the new society, they must have an equal share in the ownership of the means-of life. They will lose this by their banishment from industry, so I take my stand for women in industry and the abolition of sex-bondage along with that of wagebondage (sic).
However, between the years, 1915 and 1919 the debate seemed to have subsided. Random searches during this period failed to provide evidence of a continued public debate. We suppose the onset of World War 1 may have been responsible for that.
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As The New Age entered its final years of publication, material dealing explicitly (and even implicitly) with feminism and gender issues continued to decline. A document search of the years between 1918 and 1922 using the words “women,” “woman,” “female,” “feminine,” “feminism,” “suffrage,” “marriage” and “gender” yielded a total of eight items that meaningfully addressed the aforementioned themes. Half of these items were “dialogue” pieces (our term), meaning that that they were either “prompts” or “responses” in a conversation between contributors. Of these items, the most fascinating focused on women’s burgeoning social and political freedoms. For the sake of brevity, we will concentrate on two such pieces from this period, and discuss further findings during tomorrow’s presentation.
Appearing in vol. 24, no. 19, is Henry E. O’Keefe’s “The First Lost Ideal in Woman Suffrage,” an essay that details woman’s “inappropriateness for the things of strength, intellectual and physical,” while lamenting the decline of her “feminine splendour.” O’Keefe explains that “modern woman” has been stoked into a frenzy of “self-assertiveness” by disingenuous, vote-seeking politicians; that she, governed by her emotions rather than her intellect, is dangerously susceptible to political manipulation. After setting up an analogy that essentially compares “modern woman” to a “glowworm” and “the woman of bygone times” to a “star,” O’Keefe asks his readers to entertain the unsettling possibility women’s suffrage is more than a passing phase. In this case, he queries, “Will the feminine ideal eventually die and the people perish? Will our youth no longer see visions or dream dreams?”
Initially, one might suppose that A. R. Orage included this essay solely to inflame minds and generate productive debate. However, considering women’s comparatively dramatic and abrupt acquisition of power resulting from WWI and the suffragist movement, one cannot help but sympathize (at least a little) with O’Keefe’s angst. His essay practically shrieks with the anxiety born of a massive shift in the nature of what was to him a fundamental, even primordial relationship; the relationship between the sexes. While O’Keefe’s outlook, when considered from a Eurocentric, 21st century perspective, seems not only patronizing but also blatantly misogynistic, a “Letter to the Editor” from a female subscriber (appearing in vol. 25 no. 2) confirms that his concerns were a natural reflection of the values of his era.
The composure with which Mary Cuthertson responds to “The First Lost Ideal” is almost more shocking than the essay itself. If Cuthertson feels at all outraged by O’Keefe’s positions, she betrays no sign of it, but rather offers an even-handed, incredibly cogent counterpoint. Though she concedes that there is some truth to the statement that “woman approaches the problems of life with her heart and not her head,” she maintains that her gender also possesses a “substratum at once hard and ruthless.” A distinction should be recognized, she claims, between woman’s often “sentimentalist” pursuit of “trivial things,” and her attitude towards “the great things in life.” Moreover, in what could be considered either a subtle dig or a brilliant tactical maneuver, she asserts that men -- especially “very masculine men” -- frequently allow the “promptings of their hearts” to inform their minds and shape their decisions.
Cuthertson highlights an interesting parallel between the sacrifice of “Art to Economics” (a theme she identifies as central to previous issues of The New Age) and the sacrifice of “Motherhood to Industry.” Acknowledging the costs inherent in the realization of a new feminine ideal, she nonetheless contends that a woman’s initiation into the labor force, and her exposure to the “foul winds” that blow through the public sphere, will ultimately enrich and glorify her former incarnation. Unfortunately, O’Keefe offers no rebuttal.
Prior to beginning our research, we imagined we would come across a great deal of ardent, if not radical, feminist thought. A publication called The New Age would surely represent the new age that was dawning for women across Europe and the United States during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The plurality of perspectives touted by loyal devotees of the magazine and its editor would offer a dynamic snapshot of the deconstruction of Victorian gender norms. And certainly, female writers would have their works published in ever increasing numbers. What we discovered instead was a “multivocality” much more baritone than soprano (be forgiving). As the ratio of female to male contributors continued to fall, the magazine began to take on the feel of a "Good Old Boys Club" -- Modernist-style. This left us wondering: did former female contributers to The New Age leave for greener pastures, or were they edged out by a semi-misogynistic coterie of males who didn't want to share the stage?