World War I

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The journal I've chosen for this week's assignment is "The Masses", a radical socialist monthly which features socialist fiction and poetry alongside impassioned diatribes and calls to action. The 12th issue of volume one is themed around feminism and suffrage, and contains many interesting tidbits, including ads for "Karl Marx Cigars" and a product called "Sargol" which promises to "put pounds and pounds of healthy flesh on your frame". But the main point of interest for me when I read this magazine was how similar the two movements, suffrage and socialism, appear to be within the magazine. This juxtaposition is perfectly exemplified by the column "Women Suffrage: Why?" on page 12 of the magazine. Author Lida Parce equates feminism and socialism with a similarly progressive agenda, and argues that the movements should support one another: "for every extension  of justice and every application of  the principle of a square deal is a step in advance for  all those who are suffering from social wrongs and are struggling to right them." Given their eventual divergence and relative successfulness, it's interesting to consider how similar these two movements once were.

    The main article of  this special issue of "The Masses" continues the trend of linking socialism to feminism, by framing the oppression of women in capitalist rhetoric. Titled "The Cheapest Commodity on the Market", this article argues that the capitalistic fixation on money as a signifier of worth has degraded the value of human life, women in particular. "What is the matter with a world that searches land and sea for a new jewel," cries the author, "yet stands calmly by while women sell their lives to a machine and sell them for only enough to buy food and bed?" This argument has a particular poignancy in retrospect, before the outbreak of the Great War would devalue individual human lives to an unprecedented level. Clearly, pre-war society was already beginning to struggle with questions of individual worth and identity; the war exacerbated these problems to their breaking point, magnifying an ideological issue for the oppressed into grim reality for every member of society.

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=129242853...

Catt, Carrie Chapman. "Votes for All: A Symposium." The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races. Vol 15 No. 1. November, 1917. pp 19-21

Surprisingly, I found it difficult to locate an article where discussions of the war and of women's issues explicitly intersect. Hence, the lateness of this post. Much more common, especially in looking through issues of The Crisis, are writers linking the struggle for gender equality with the struggle for racial equality. The argument frequently advanced is that women's rights activists worked tirelessly during the Reconstruction era in support of racial equality, culminating in the Fifteenth Amendment, but that black men failed to repay the favor by supporting women's right to vote. Catt clings to this idea as well, although her angry accusation that all men, regardless of race, are "wonderfully alike when it comes to counting women out in any scheme for the political salvation of the world" seems more than a touch unfair when one considers the persistent arguments made by men in favor of female suffrage in many earlier issues of The Crisis. The publication's editors clearly agreed that the racial and gender problems were bound inextricably together. Catt goes further, however, by associating both issues with the contemporaneous Great War. Each of these, she argues, is a battle for democracy, for the "faith that is sustaining alike the men of the Allied Armies on the battlefields of Europe, the women of the world waging their own double struggle to meet the new economic demands upon them while trying to secure a voice in their own government, and the Negro facing the selfsame problem and often refusing to see that through the Negro women his race is as vitally involved in the woman suffrage question as race can be." This couching of the suffrage question in terms of conflict and struggle is not at all unusual in the texts that we've looked at. The analogy with the Great War thus seems clear, and for Catt the object of the campaigns for racial/gender equality, like the object of the European war, is nothing less than "the political salvation of the world."

The alternative, she suggests, is dehumanization itself: "We could, of course, forswear democracy and herd together under an autocracy that would whip us into a grand machine, efficient as Germany's." This  is the pervasive fear of modernism: the automated coldness of modern warfare and technology, the mechanization of the human spirit. But invoked in this way it seem to complicate Catt's argument. After all, isn't that exactly what "total war" does, converting the population into parts of a mechanized whole? "Everybody counts in applying democracy," she says, just as wartime propaganda hammered home the message that everybody counts in winning a war. I would argue that Catt's analogy betrays a still-naive understanding of this war as a heroic quest for Justice, like the domestic civil rights issues which she's concerned with. She does not suggest a view of the war as itself mechanizing, itself dehumanizing, but rather as a tool of liberation, like women's suffrage. What I interpret from this is that our current understanding of this war as a uniquely traumatic and horrific event developed gradually. This is probably attributable in large part to the fact that Catt was American rather than European, and so had briefer experience of her nation's involvement with the conflict.

The article I chose comes from The Freewoman’s Vol. 2, No. 39 issue page 7-9, and is titled “Will Men Govern when Women have the Vote?"

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What I found odd about this article is the fact that, despite being published in a radically progressive journal, it is essentially anti-suffragist.  Just from the title, I had expected it to be about the need for women representatives within the British government. I was wrong.The author, C. H. Norman, begins the article by proposing that women’s suffrage is attractive to people because of its revolutionary nature, not the practical reasoning behind it.

Norman supports the argument against women’s suffrage by using two societal examples of the unequal treatment of men and women under British systems. First, married men were required, under penalty of law, to financially support their wives. The author believes this to be special treatment of women, and considers it a luxury that men don’t have. To support this point, the author uses an anecdote of a woman whose husband owed her a good sum of money in support payments and was essentially able to keep her him imprisoned indefinitely. I also suspect that this story of female spite was meant to play on the contemporary belief that women were rash and overemotional (another anti-suffrage argument)

The second example of “female favoritism” under the British economic system was the one that I found the strangest. Norman names off a couple of statistics of labor wages, which showed that women were paid 1/3 to 2/3 the amount that men were for the same industrial jobs. This made it much more likely for employers to hire women. Norman states that these women (who were usually single) were displacing men (who had to support families); so women workers were essentially ruining families with their easy employability. The fact that women had no union protections is also mentioned, though the author doesn’t really do anything with that information. Norman basically uses these to argue that women really shouldn’t be in the workforce. Also, the phrase “the evil of married women workers” describes what the author views as one of society’s biggest problems.

Anyway, Norman concludes by saying that since women are so well treated, that no one shouln’t support the “swamping of the male democracy by the sex of privilege”

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HD's Circe may not be strictly a women's issue in the way that essays on suffrage and women's rights are, but I found it intriguing and curiously haunting; I believe what really caught my attention was the way it echoes the tension between the traditional female role and women's newfound power.  

The speaker in the poem is Circe, a witch or minor goddess from Homer's Odyssey who is famous for her ability to bewitch men and change them into beasts.  In the Odyssey, she manages to enchant Odysseus' men when they stop at her island to rest.  Odysseus, however, is intercepted by Hermes and given a plant which will allow him to resist her power.  In addition, Hermes warns Odysseus not to sleep with Circe unless she swears not to take his manhood.  Circe proves unable to outwit him despite her best efforts, and for the next year serves as host to him and his men.  The struggle here between male and female dominance is undeniable, and feeds into the atmosphere into the poem.

The poem opens with a statement of power, saying "It was easy enough / to bend them to my wish / it was easy enough / to alter them with a touch," referring to Circe's exploits over Odysseus' men.  It quickly turns, however, to a very traditional vulnerability in the interjected words, "but you."   Circe laments that, though she has countless other men subject to her wiles, saying she lacks the power to call Odysseus back to her.  The imagery of him "adrift on the great sea" (179) is very easily related to the young men crossing the English channel to fight on the continent, far from home.  The parallels are almost too easy to make.  On one hand, the women left in Britain have made their way into the workplace and positions of some influence, yet against the loss of the men of their generation, this seems a paltry gain.  Their power will not bring the boys back.

Without the context of the war, this poem might seem blandly traditional, upholding women's traditional roles, emphasizing the inevitability of the female figure's helplessness with respect to the right man—in Circe's case, Odysseus.  Yet against the backdrop of the Lost Generation, the poem takes on a different tone.  Circe seems not so much helpless as lamenting the loss of the good men.  She is, no doubt, a figure of significant influence and independence, not personally weakened by Odysseus departure, but sexually barren.  Those men who are easily turned to beasts, who are enticed by feasting and easily swayed from their duty as soldiers, are not worthy of her.  The issue is not so much one of gendered submission and dependence, but one of thwarted potential, for the best soldier is gone, is snatched away by the waves.  The poem becomes a reflection of Eliot's wasteland, barren and robbed of potential.

I used an advertisement with a header of Girls! Do You Want More Money? from p.16 of the Everybody's Magazine, vol. 24, No.  published in 1911-03.

This ad is interesting in the way it catches the reader's eye. Obviously it was geared towards women who, at the time, needed/wanted much more in life. In short it was trying to sell the feeling of liberation as well as independence to women. They could work for "money that does not have to be asked for nor accounted for to a single soul." which was not a common practice (unless one was part of the poor working class) and frowned upon during this period. The ad presents itself as having all the perks of a club, working without needing any experience.

this was also important to many women as men controlled most of the money of a household.  even if a woman was an heiress, her money reverted to her husband and his use during their marriage.  This was also important because even if a husband was generous with his wife, she was usually only given an allowance for such petty stuff such as dresses or houshold expenses.  This ad promised women the advantage of being 'in control of one's own money' and the luxury that came with that.

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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. 

This image depicts three men working in a factory and a quote at the bottom saying "Be warned by our plight, ask Prussia for justice only when you are strong enough not to need to ask for it." While the quote is a very strong statement, I believe the strongest statement of who this picture is trying to reach is within the image itself. It is in black and white but still shows the hard working conditions and what these men looked like. Much of what it meant to be a man at this time is shown in this image. Strong and hard working. It seems like the image of the factory worker is a reach back into the past to show that manliness is not defined in the rich artistocratic way, but in duty and hard work. It seems this is also a reach to European men, something we havent really looked a whole lot at. Compared the British and American images it is a lot darker and seems to convey a different message to men.

I like to compare this image to the one that was presented in Special Collections last week. The image was the bright colorful one with the soldier walking back from battle with the quote "And they thought we couldnt fight." It is a different image of what men in American society were depicted as. War heroes coming home from war. The Americans were proctecting home and the society they knew. The Message image shows men in a dark, factory, almost to say this is what the new man is meant to be. It is interesting to look at two different images with different meanings of what manilness is to different people.

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In this review of Harold Owen's book "Woman Adrift" (on page 368 of the issue of Freewoman we read for class), Rebecca West uses the venue of the feminist magazine to deliver a scathing criticism of the opinions of Mr. Owen. This criticism is extremely sarcastic and caustic: she herself admits, in claiming that something Owen wrote is inaccurate, "It would be easy to prove that such is not the general rule by citing the opinion of greater legal authorities than Mr. Owen. But that would spoil the fun. So let us concede him his point." West is treating Owen as if he were a little boy and the two of them were playing a game. But instead of letting him win, her concession of his point is completely mocking. Since she has already determined in the first paragraph that "a steam-engine ought not to crush a butterfly", she is free to spend the rest of the article making her own point, and she does this by using her own rhetorical wit to slander Owen and his lack thereof.

Owen had apparently stated in his book that "Woman is wholly superfluous to the state save as a bearer of children and a nursing mother." This heavy-handed rhetoric contrasts with West's freer, more sophisticated prose. Her lighter style suggests that she is relishing in the sense of freedom that writing for the journal gives her. And with that freedom, she aggressively takes on Owen's book. An established feminist throughout her career, West exemplifies here the aggressive spirit of feminism in the early twentieth century. Her mechanism for carrying out this transgression is an inversion of traditional gender roles; if Owen says that a woman's only function is to reproduce, then she proves him wrong by her mere publishing of this article, as well as the fact that she dismantles his arguments as if he were a two-year old. She is replacing the old Victorian ideals that Owen represents with the new modern values of freedom and equality, and the fact that she is doing so with writing is indicative of this change.

For this blog, I chose a Red Cross war relief ad in The Seven Arts, Volume 2, Issue 2, from 1917. The link to the image is http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=134919259093751&view=pageturner&pageno=136, and the Red Cross ad I chose can be found on page 136.

In this ad, the Red Cross asks readers “What Can You Do to Help Your Country?”

The answer to this question is presented inside the Red Cross icon – the cross itself. At the top of the cross are the words, “IF YOU ARE A MAN YOU CAN. . .” This information is presented boldly and in all capital letters. The importance of the man’s position is emphasized by the position of the text inside the cross. The man is then told he can either:

• Join the Red Cross Ambulance Unit
• OR
• Join the Red Cross Sanitary Unit

Both of these options are He-man options. In a sense, the man who wants to help his country can make a huge difference by himself. He can contribute substantially to the war effort. In fact, he can be a superhero.

Below this information are the words, “IF YOU ARE A WOMAN.” The options for a woman are presented in cramped, small text. These options are:

• take a training course in nursing
• learn to make bandages
• organize the men at the front

Not only does the text size and placement make it obvious that the women’s roles are far less “important,” the options they are given are in support of the men’s roles. They basically can serve as  “helpers” to the superhero men out there driving ambulances.

This particular ad would be shocking by today’s standards, but I am sure few people noticed the difference in 1917.

For this assignment, I examined an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine from June 1911. Aside from being astounded that, at one time, Cosmopolitan printed intelligent articles, poetry, and fiction, I came across a very interesting comic on page 180, drawn by E.W. Kemble, and titled “Votes for Wimmin.” The six-slide comic details an amusing exchange between a husband (Silas) and his wife (Maria), Silas refusing to support women’s suffrage until he’s in the “henpeck class.” He quickly changes his mind when a hen attacks him, and the comic ends with him standing at the fence wearing a sign saying “Votes for Wimmin” with Maria standing smugly in the background.

I believe that there are at least two different ways to read this comic. On one hand, it could be viewed as derogatory towards women and making fun of the women’s suffrage campaign. With all of the references to being “henpecked” it paints a picture of women as annoying nags who refuse to relent until they get their way. Also, neither Silas nor Maria is a classy or modern-looking individual. They both are older, a bit frumpy, and very much country people. Even though they end up on board with women’s suffrage, they are not the type of charismatic people you would find at the forefront of the movement. They aren’t physically attractive, and therefore, not the best possible advertisements.

On the other hand, one can also view this cartoon as a positive portrayal of women and women’s suffrage. Maria, though she often seems to let Silas have his way, is the one in charge. She has to come shoo away the hen when it attacks Silas, an act that makes her the protector in the relationship and Silas a very un-manly man in need of help. Maria is also portrayed holding a newspaper in the first scene, showing that she is literate and aware of current events. Even though she is not the most beautiful, charismatic woman, she is strong, intelligent and has the capability to hold her own in their marriage.

I tend to believe that this comic is in favor of women’s suffrage. Though there is very little on the web or even in McFarlin about E.W. Kemble (aside from the fact that he illustrated a number of books, including Huckleberry Finn), I did find confirmation that Cosmopolitan’s primary readership has always been women. With this in mind, I’m not totally sure why the magazine editor would print a comic that was likely to offend many of his readers. As such, I do think that “Votes for Wimmin” is a cartoon in favor of women’s suffrage. 

For the full issue of Cosmopolitan, use this link: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&view=pagetur...