http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=130382138...

For this blog assignment I read through and looked at a lot while trying to decide what to post about. The thing I found to be most interesting, although there was an awful lot of other things that were interesting as well, deals with the issue of marriage and race, rather than suffrage, and does not make any specific reference to WWI. However, I still think it is extremely interesting and deserved to be looked at in the context of what we have discussed in class about WWI and gender issues. The piece is an essay from The Egoist titled "Women Who Did and do Yet." It can be found on pages 16 and 17 of the January 1st, 1914 edition of The Egoist. The essay is about Haldane Macfall, a writer and British Naval officer who had been stationed in Jamaica. According to the author of the essay, Macfall led the way in first discussing marriage for blacks in a very nontraditional manner in "The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer." This novel was not received well at its time of publication, in 1898, and he was one of the only people at this time willing to talk about such "sex problems." The essay also explains marriage in other cultures, showing how they differed greatly from the idea of marriage in London at the time. 

The reason I find this to be so interesting is because this essay talks about how these things simply weren't spoken about at the time of its publication, but in 1914 a new edition of the novel was coming out. In a rather long quotation from the novel, marriage is called into question. Dyle asks Jezebel to marry him, and she refuses, saying that while she wants to be with him, it would be easier if they did not marry. What if one of them finds someone new? She finally agrees to live with him and consider marriage later on. A book with such content was not received well when it was first published, because this kind of content couldn't be accepted. However, as we have seen in many of the readings we have done, the war was changing things. Things that previously had been ignored were now being discussed, particularly in journals and magazines such as this one. The book was not accepted at its publication, but there was a new interest in these sorts of things and issues, it seems, just prior, during, and certainly following the war. 

Although this is not exactly an issue of woman's rights, it is the woman who poses the questions about marriage. She questions whether it is necessary, and she seems not to care what other things, she is doing what she pleases as an individual. I believe this ties in with what we've read and discussed, as it shows that woman are thinking and acting for themselves, and questioning the institutions that are in place. I found this to be a very interesting essay.