Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

         Much of the world was in financial distress after World War I, a time during which the editor of Poetry, Hariet Monroe, was vacationing in the United States southwest. Naturally, many of the modernist magazines during this era touched directly on the financial after affects of World War I in articles and advertisements, Poetry instead chronicles is a collection of Cowboy Songs, New Mexico Folk Songs, and Western Poems. This is in direct response, to the editors fishing trip to New Mexico as illustrated by her essay "In Texas and New Mexico: "While campaign oratory is loud in the land, and the nation is weighing it's two or three candidates in the balance and wishing it had more, what can most of us do but go fishing?"(September 1920 Vol.16 No.6 p.324). A bit of a trail-blazer, Monroe continually writes on a newer model typewriter than her contemporaries; she is forever bucking current social mores in her own manner.

         As a  woman of literary stature during the suffrage movement, she speaks nothing of the efforts of her fellow females until 1920, and when she does it is practially in opposition. In an article titled "Women or Men?" Monroe confirms what statistics of her era show: that men are superior to women in the field of poetry: 

                                             The controversy is amusing, but perhaps also enlightening.
                                             The editor had suspected masculine preponderance in
                                             the magazine, but by no means to such a degree as the figures
                                             prove. They confirm her impression that more men
                                             than women find in this art—for better or worse, for joy
                                             or sorrow—their friend and confidant.(June 1920 Vol.16 No.3 p.147).

As illustrated in the essay, "The Conflicted Role of Women During World War I," Hariet Monroe was an unconventional feminist: "In her editorial policy, Hariet Monroe exemplified the goals of the feminist movement by acting in a position of power, but she did it without affiliating her magazine with the movement" (June 2009). Instead, she focused primarily on the culture of poetry in America, which was at the time as unappreciated as the role of women in the workforce. It was her role as a woman in the magazine which caused her to play a role in the feminist movement. Likewise, the role of Poetry in initiating culture helped to bolster American nationalism after World War I. The subject of the southwest is present in her Editorial because it represents to her the roots of American poetry. It is for this reason that she quotes The Nation in her essay "Frugality and Depreciation" which argues to fund poetic endeavors (namely her magazine) in spite of financially trying times: "The pitiful amount of public or private assistance given to American artists, men of letters, scientists, is one of the scandals of our civilization."(October 1920 Vol.17 No.1 p.31). Hariet Monroe supports women insofar as she is a successful woman, similarly, she supports her country insofar as it funds her art-of-choice and her magazine.

A modern woman of the post-war world:

<!--StartFragment-->For my final paper I would like to continue looking at gender and how women were portrayed during the period. Pieces such as "The Enemy in the House" and "Changing Mirrors" in Wheels as well as "Feminine Fables: The Style of the Peri" in the New Age would prove to be central to my paper. I hope to prove the complexities of the female experience in the war and shed a positive light on women as strong even thought the general sentiment of misogyny was rampant during the period.

<!--EndFragment-->

 By Elsie Dwyer, Calgary Martin, and Abra Stokowski

Various magazines during and immediately following the first World War dealt with gender in a variety of ways, both subtle and explicit.  While publications like Blast  sought outright to affirm specific essentialist beliefs about both men’s and women’s roles during wartime, others, like The Owl, shied away from making overt political statements.  However, even within the pages of The Owl and similar magazines with a strictly literary mission, like Poetry and the Sitwells’ Wheels, gender roles were often explored and re-imagined.  While male poets like W.J. Turner depicted female objects as symbolic of the innocence and harmony which was lost as a result of the war, female poets like Edith Sitwell and Iris Tree defied Blast creator Wyndham Lewis’s view of women’s domestic roles during wartime, by writing poems with female speakers whose interior lives are far richer than Lewis’s or even Turner’s simplistic, essentialist vision would allow.  Further, essays in The New Age, such as Alice Morning’s piece “The Enemy in the House,” imagined roles for women as dissenters who could affect the war’s outcome despite being removed from the action and relegated to the home.
     Blast magazine, and Vorticism in general, was male dominated. The magazine’s general impression of the war was that it was a necessary fight for the country of England and for the freedom of art.  On the contrary, the magazine’s impression of women was that they had a very specific role in society, and very little to do with war, a concept that the editors believed women could not possibly understand due to the fundamental differences between the genders.  Blast’s July 1916 issue is called the War Number and is dedicated almost exclusively to World War I. It speaks openly about the war, discussing it explicitly and implicitly in essays and poems. The masculine magazine establishes a pro-war agenda immediately, and leaves no question of allegiance.
      In Wyndham Lewis’ piece “The European War and Great Communities,” he analyzes specifically what brought on the war. He also examines what makes men fight, deciding that it is a fundamental need for their gender, as they have had to fight for their lives for centuries and will continue to have to do so in the future. He explains that it does not matter what they fight about, or who is correct, because “they are as willing to fight for one immediate thing as another, under these circumstances; since, ‘life is the only thing that matters,’ and it is for life both sides fight, and therefore both are right,” (No. 2, page16).  He asserts that war will never go away, for as long as men vie for power as communities, which they inevitably will, there will always be war. In proclaiming this he begins to explore gender roles.

Murder and destruction is man’s fundamental occupation. Women’s function, the manufacturing of children (even more important than cartridges and khaki suits) is only important from this point of view, and they evidently realize this thoroughly. It takes the deft women we employ anything from twelve to sixteen years to fill and polish these little human cartridges, and they of course get fond of them in the process. However, all this is not our fault, and is absolutely necessary. We only begin decaying like goods kept too long, if we are not killed or otherwise disposed of. Is not this a proof of our function? (17) 

Ignoring the fact that women also age and “decay,” Lewis decides that this is a woman’s only role in war: to make male babies that will eventually entrench themselves in battle to serve their primary duty. He goes on to state that women, due to the basal differences between the genders and thus their different roles in society, will never understand war. “I overheard two ladies the other day conversing on this subject, and one, with an immense jaw, flabby cheeks, and otherwise very large, said: ‘It is such a waste of good human flesh!’” (17)  Other than in the production of soldiers, women have no role in war because they cannot understand the duty that drives men to fight.
     One of the few female Vorticists, Jessie Dismorr, writes about wartime London in the same July issue of Blast, in a piece entitled “London Notes.” She writes about the ways in which public meeting places in London were completely unaffected by the fighting that raged on around them. Describing the places and people in rather grotesque terms, she does not mention the war. She merely makes implications by ignoring it, in the same way that regular citizens tried to ignore it. The war was not an issue for The Reading Room or Fleet Street. These were not literally the battlegrounds. She describes Hyde Park saying,

[A]ll the morning women sit sewing and knitting, their monotonous occupation accompanying the agreeable muddle of their thoughts. In the Row. Vitality civilized to a needles-point; highly-bred men and horses pass swiftly in useless delightful motion; women walk enamoured of their own accomplished movements. (66)

Despite being a woman, Dismorr sticks to the agenda of the magazine. She describes women in wartime as being mostly useless, and all but thoughtless. The men are well bred and on horseback. Calling to mind images of battle, they are described as being almost heroic. Though they are not literally at war, they seem to possess the same qualities of the men at war. The women sit and knit, thinking frivolous things, and find it difficult to walk and think at the same time. They cannot understand the concept of war, if questions about war even occur to them at all. They stick to their sewing, and their subordinate role as the mothering twits of society.
     While there is little mention at all of feminism or suffrage in the English magazine Blast, American bred Scribner’s magazine has many essays and stories about the movement. These pieces, however, do not tend to coincide with anything about the Great War. It was evidentially the view of the editors of both magazines that a woman’s role in war was at home, where they desperately missed their husbands, who were fighting out of a sense of masculine duty.  “The Misgivings of a Male Suffragette” is an anonymously written piece appearing in the October 1915 issue of Scribner’s. It is about a male feminist wondering in which direction the suffrage movement is heading. He begins by explaining that his wife Mary is a suffragette. She convinces him to go to a parade in honor of their movement, telling him that a friend of hers, Mrs. Watson, is also going but has not told her husband. Mary hopes that the writer will come just in case Watson finds out what his wife is doing, as the writer will be able to calm the angry husband down. (He is, in fact, Watson’s superior at work, and also on a membership committee for a club Watson would like to be involved with.)  The writer explains how Watson’s wife eventually came clean about the scenario, and how Watson joined the cause.  Ultimately, the writer is impressed with the success of his wife’s plan. “As far as it goes it is stupendously efficient, the feminine way of doing things!”  (Volume 58, no. 4, page 494) The writer implies that diplomacy, the attempt to avoid conflict, is inherently feminine. Indeed later, when a policeman speaking to the writer says that he is willing to “give” women the vote, Mary becomes infuriated, saying that they will not have it given to them; they will take it. As the writer puts it, he had “never seen [his] wife look more handsome.” (496). When his wife demonstrates the will to fight, he begins to see her as masculine. He goes on to struggle with the fact that he thinks the same way that the policeman did. As a man, he envisioned himself giving the vote to women, who would otherwise not be allowed it. While the writer seems to embrace feminism as an ideal, he cannot wrap his mind around men and women being equal. To him their differences naturally and bodily prevent such a thing. They are not equal. Women have children and men fight. After a lengthy argument that higher taxes discourage women from having more children, he comes to the conclusion that children are work, and are in fact the work that women so desperately seek. He discusses this theory with Mr. Watson, who adds to the argument the dynamic of what war does to women:

‘It explains why in England they have militants. The colonization of the empire has drained the home country of its men, leaving upward of a million women who haven't a ghost of a show even for a husband.’ A slow grin wreathed his face. ‘And the real war-cry of the suffragettes, as they roll bombs beneath the great chair of the prime minister is: '’Give us back our husbands! Give us back our husbands!’ (500)

In their eyes even suffragettes find little value in their lives outside of their domestic lives, and with their husbands away they find little value in the war. Like the editors and contributors of Blast, this writer seems to find that women have one role in society in a time of war: to be home waiting for their husbands to arrive back. They have no concept of why the war is important, and they have no palpable role in battle.
     One of the most obvious roles of women on the battlegrounds is that of army nurse. With this in mind, one might expect to see some mention of these vital cogs in the war machine in a Scribner’s piece called “War-Time Sketches in France.”  Appearing in the June 1916 issue, the piece is an essay by Herbert Ward, accompanied by the writer’s drawings. The main subject is soldiers and the soldiers’ stories. A harsh look at the atrocities of battle, the writer often discusses the backdrop of the beautiful French countryside against which the dreadful fighting is taking place. Despite mentioning ambulances, doctors, and hospital shelters, there is no mention of women on the frontlines. In fact, there is only one mention of women at all throughout the entire essay, which comes after a description of the gorgeous land marred by battle: “I have had occasion to read some of the letters of these splendid, simple French soldiers, written under shell and rifle fire, wherein they actually described the beauty of the sunrise to their womenfolk at home” (Vol. 59, no. 6, page 679). Even when women were tangibly involved in the war effort they were ignored, and their rightful place was thought to be at home.
     While magazines like Blast and Scribner’s were defining or even ignoring women's roles during the war, the engagement of such issues in publications like The Owl and Wheels was less explicit.  The former, which distributed two issues at the close of the war in 1919, and another in 1923, purported itself to "ha[ve] no politics and lead[] no new movements" (The Owl, no. 1, page 5).  As such, the war, no doubt on the minds of both The Owl's authors and readership regardless of any mission statement, infiltrated the magazine in more subtle ways: various pieces expressed a longing for a return to innocence and carefree beauty, while others were characterized by feelings of darkness and fear.  "Petunia" by W.J Turner, from the October 1919 issue, relates the speaker/poet's vision of a future daughter he will call Petunia, who will

dance, her small face
So bright that no sorrow'll befall her.
From this dark pot of earth, from this sun-clouded hollow
Like a rainbow she'll spring and a blue sky shall follow"
(No. 1, pages 10-12)

This “dark pot of earth" and "sun-clouded hollow" may easily represent the climate of hopelessness and gloom created by the war; consequently, Petunia becomes an emblem of hope for a less complicated future, one that is "bright" and free of sorrow.  Turner also envisions Petunia to be a lover of the natural world, of a more primitive and carefree existence.  Imagining that he will teach his daughter "the songs of Apollo," he goes on to describe the cult of the sun god, whose disciples are "white-armed maidens/ Sing[ing] in the soft dusks of summer."  Contrary to a world marred by the violence and destruction of war, the picture he paints of his daughter represents not only the hope for a lighter, more joyful existence, but also for a return to the fertile simplicity of a life in harmony with nature.  The worshippers of Apollo with whom he associates Petunia and in “the green” of whose eyes and “tresses,/ The forests of ocean are blowing,” are further described as personifications of that harmony.  The fact that the poem has projected all this hope onto a female child rather than a male one is significant when one considers the masculinist attitudes (like those prevailing in Blast) which motivate war.  Petunia represents a kind of mystical femininity, a source of magic “that flows up at dawn/ Out of earth’s darkness leaping” (No. 1, page 11) which can renew the poet, who envisions himself “wrinkled and worn,” as a symbolic representative of the war-torn world.
     Another interesting example from The Owl 2, of feminine associations with nature, can be found in a drawing by Pamela Bianco entitled “Fairyland.”  This drawing affirms the Blast position of a woman’s place in times of war: Bianco depicts the two central figures, both female, as stereotypic earth mothers, attired in clothes adorned with details from the natural world, and as caretakers, surrounded by naked, unself-conscious babies with angel wings.  This is a scene of peace and tranquility, with absolutely no associations or references to war whatsoever.  However, as with Turner’s poem and any work published during a war, the violent climate at the time of publication must be considered.  While the war raged outside the pages of the magazine, this illustration represents an ideal in contrast with reality.  Additionally, as Turner’s vision of his future daughter Petunia expresses a desire to return to a less complicated, innocent state of being, the appearance of Bianco’s painting immediately following the poem suggests a relationship between the two.  Indeed, the painting may easily be viewed as a visual representation of the world Turner imagines for Petunia: that is to say, a place in the future, a kind of utopia, which embodies ideals from the past.  The gowns worn by the women in the painting are in the Victorian style and reference a less complicated time, of a pastoral lifestyle, of fertility and harmony with nature.  The absence of men in this utopia is significant: war, quite clearly depicted as the domain of men in magazines throughout the era, like Blast and even Scribner’s which aligned itself with suffragist/feminist politics, is inextricably linked with the masculine; as such, the female figures in Bianco’s painting, depicted in wreaths of flowers, with leaves traveling up their skirts and bodices, represent a rejection of masculinist ideals and the war.  Rather, the ideal is represented here as it is in Turner’s poem: a celebration of the mystical feminine, of joy and harmony in nature, of peace precluding discord.
     Although themes of female gender and the war were touched on opaquely in The Owl, the magazine noticeably lacked any female authorship to express the opinions and feelings of women themselves during the war.  Wheels, however, featured woman poets regularly, particularly the work of Edith Sitwell and Iris Tree.  Contrasting with the view of women as frivolous beings whose only occupation during wartime lies within the domestic sphere, Sitwell’s poem “The Mother”, from the March 1917 issue, presents a more complicated view of motherhood.  While the presence of children in Turner’s and Bianco’s work ostensibly represents fertility, growth, innocence, tranquility and is, for writers like Wyndham Lewis, emblematic of women’s true role in wartime, Sitwell both reaffirms this trope and destroys it.  She admits that the birth of her son was a time of great joy heralding “the spring,” “birds,” and blossoms,” and releasing streams from “winter run,” but goes on to lament the loss of the child as he grows to manhood (Vol. 1, page 48).  During their time together, in the boy’s youth, his “sunlit hair was all [her] gold,” but when he becomes a man, he leaves her empty and resentful of the female lover who has come to take her place in the child’s life.  This retelling of women’s roles in the lives of their children defies the simplistic, rather disdainful view taken by masculinist authors like Lewis, who saw women’s roles in the domestic sphere as inferior to the great acts performed by men in war.  While women were expected by society to devote their lives to the rearing of children, the speaker in Sitwell’s poem explores the interior world of the mother, and the physical and emotional realities of those expectations, which are characterized by feelings of abandonment and a lost sense of self.  When her child becomes a man, the poet imagines that her son plots to “kill her while [she] slept,” merely in his decision to leave her protection and take a lover.  “The Mother” is a poem which paints women’s lives during this period of war and upheaval as equally marred by violence and loss as those of their fighting male counterparts.  No longer occupied by the all-consuming demands of parenting, the speaker, as the mother of a grown child, must nagivate her way through a world in which she no longer serves any purpose: no longer actively functioning as a mother, she considers herself already dead, yet forever haunted by the memory of her beloved child, whose name her “pierced heart scream[s] …within the dark” of her barren existence (49).  Another possible reading of the poem casts the mother’s enemy, not as a female lover, but as the world itself, in which wars are fought and sons are murdered.  The poem closes with the mother’s lament that she has failed her child, whose body hangs like a “blackened rag/ Upon the tree—a monstrous flag” (50).  In this reading, the mother is consumed by her grief and feels responsible for her failure to protect the child she loved with so much of her being.  She says, “All mine, all mine the sin; the love/ I bore him was not deep enough.”  In this way, the death the mother experiences comes as a result of her child’s death; she has failed the son and thus finds no more joy in living.  Regardless of women’s expected or prescribed passivity during times when men fought for their countries and their homes, Sitwell’s poem makes explicit the anguish and violence that women experience, regardless, even as they are kept at a distance from the fighting.
     Another poem written by a female and published in the fourth cycle of Wheels, which came out in 1919, is Iris Tree’s “Changing Mirrors.”  Like Sitwell, Tree complicates conventional views of women in the post-war era.  Her poem depicts a scene in which the speaker (presumably female) sees herself “in many different dresses,” each representing different facets of her personality and desires (No. 4, page 48).  Interestingly enough, none of the speaker’s visions of herself include motherhood.  Instead, she constructs a female identity which consists of a variety of other types, specifically “poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses.”  Just as the above-mentioned authors in both Wheels and The Owl opaquely reference the dark climate of the world associated with the war, Tree’s speaker refers to a “grey” world “where solemn faces/ are silence to [her] mirth—a flame that blesses/ From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses.”  While the world around her is one of darkness, the female speaker is not consumed by it. Rather, the current of despair and oppression affects her just as it affects anyone, male or female, declaring: “Within my soul a thousand weary traces/ Of pain and joy and passionate excesses.” Like Sitwell, Tree imagines for her female speaker a deep interior life which belies the view that women were uncomplicated beings, incapable of fully understanding the ramifications of the war being fought by men.  Unlike Sitwell’s poem, however, Tree’s is rather universal, speaking of a world in which all people, not just women or men exclusively, experience the same kinds of happiness and sorrow.  Her speaker, shifting through different moods and feelings throughout her life, symbolized by her ever-changing dresses, considers not only herself but all beings when she names, in her conclusion, the “eternal beauty our [emphasis mine] brief life chases.”  By exploring, however simply, the interior life of a woman, otherwise neglected and simplified by male authors of the war and post-war era, Tree simultaneously equalizes her female subject with its male counterparts.  The poem asserts that joy and pain are emotions experienced by all creatures and contradicts the notion that either feeling is essentially male or essentially female. 
     In Poetry, as in The Owl and Wheels, gender and war are not topics addressed together directly at length, although both are ostensibly present in the minds of the poets whose writing filled the publication. When the two subjects are at play simultaneously, the consideration of both war and gender is very subtle: women often appear as caretakers, lovers, mothers, and subjects of adoration, which gives hints of how women’s roles were primarily defined, even in war times. So, in poems about female figures, the war is presented as a non-subject around which the woman’s role molds itself, but does not enter into. On the other hand, poems which do deal with the war directly, tend to be about men, and are written by men. One poem in which the female viewpoint of war’s effects can be seen in a January 1914 poem titled “A Woman and Her Dead Husband.”  The poem hauntingly describes a woman addressing her deceased husband directly, apparently from their own bed, with the cause of his death left entirely ambiguous. Perhaps his death was due to war.  If not, however, the focus in the poem is upon death, a war-time subject, and the poem is actually written by a male, D. H. Lawrence, who maybe imagines the reverberation of a soldier’s potential death through his household. The subject of this poem is a reflection of the idea, reiterated so often in Blast and Scribner’s, that a woman has no direct role in the battles herself, although her own role, as lover and wife, may be entirely destroyed by her husband’s death.  The pleas of the woman to her husband, asking if he is playing a joke on her, being so cold and pale, serves to magnify the horror and sympathy the reader feels for the woman.
     Another poem from Poetry was published in August of 1918, and is titled “To a Grey Dress.” In this poem, gender roles are more pronounced, and the subject of World War I is not present except for in the very conspicuousness of its absence. In the piece, a woman whose face is never seen is admired by a male as she walks through the trees: just a gray dress and the curves which fill the garment. The man watching her is thrown into fantasies based simply upon the femininity of her figure, although her identity is entirely unknown. The tone of the poem is one of happy distraction, and even the title itself is playful in its slight absurdity. This is another example of women’s perceived roles during World War I: as figures of joyous, simple preoccupation, creatures who stand apart from the violence of the battle, although nameless and faceless, without identities of their own.
     While Poetry considered the conflict in a more indirect and emotional fashion, another magazine, The New Age often featured articles which addressed the war in a more theoretical way. The New Age included opinion pieces, reviews, and creative writing, and two such articles in the magazine were published by Alice Morning. The first was included in January of 1916, and was a quite heavy-handed allegorical tale called “Feminine Fables: The Style of the Peri.”  The story describes a female angel who is banished from Paradise for one day, due to missing the closing of the gate at dawn. It was assumed that if an angel is late, he or she was committing an indiscretion while visiting the mortals. Rather than sulking over her temporary banishment, the angel declares, “I shall not walk in solitude around this idiotic style!” referring to the “distorting column” around which the excluded are expected to pace in distress (Vol. 7, no. 4, page 257). In the lone paragraph of the story which diverges from the symbolic tone, the author’s voice seems to shine through with passion, stating that similar punishments exist in the world of mortals: men, like the Peris--and like the devil, Morning adds--only punish what is detected. Had the angel been committing indiscretions, but returned on time, there would have been no punishment. Having missed the dawn, it is assumed that she was engaged in disallowed behavior. Whether this refers to lack of loyalty to one’s country is unclear, but it seems that a political and perhaps gender-based unfairness is being pointed out by Morning. The angel is described as exceedingly feminine, with a full bust, wide hips, jewelry, and the pouting tone of a spoiled child. In the end, however, the angel makes peace with her fate and feels “very good friends with herself.” (258) The independence of the angel is contrasted with the entitled and flippant attitude with which Morning generally characterizes this very feminine creature, suggesting perhaps a changing sense of female identity.
     Another article by Morning was published in June of 1916, an essay about the terrors of war, called “The Enemy in the House.”  In this piece, Morning argues that the so-called "impotent horror" (Vol. 8, no. 3, page160) of war needs to be transformed into “horror potent” (161). This outcry against war, she writes, most naturally comes from women themselves, who provide a kind of check on violence by voicing their objections. That, she argues, is a woman’s role during war: as a protester.  Under no circumstances should women mingle freely and routinely among scenes of violence. She believes that a woman’s horrified reaction to violence is the key to preventing barbarism. In writing this article, with confidence and an outspoken quality, the author asserts her ability to form her own opinions and hold them firmly. However, the role which she advocates for women is rather stereotypical. While the piece affirms a woman’s ability to think independently, ultimately her ideas about women’s roles away from the violence and action of war do not defy convention.
     Clearly, gender proved, as ever, to be a complicated, even contentious issue both during and after the Great War.  While some male authors persisted in their belief that women could not serve any useful purpose outside the home and were thus inferior to the valorous men who risked their lives to protect their countries, other writers sought to depict women in less benign ways: as symbols of the very peace and freedom of spirit which male soldiers fought for.  Less romantically, female authors depicted women as mere humans whose emotions and interior lives were as rich as their brave male counterparts.  Regardless, or perhaps as result of the divergent and often dichotomous positions taken by writers and artists of the time, the “little magazines” provide an interesting glimpse into the interplay between men and women as they struggled to reconcile their evolving roles in a world forever changed by the four-year war.  
 

Maja Vukosavljevic, Anna Chanie Istakhorova and Jenny Luczak

         The depiction of gender in modernist magazines during World War I can be deceivingly derogatory at first glance. In many of the magazines cataloged in the MJP from the war period there are poetry, narratives and essays which speak condescendingly of women. However, the topic of gender in the magazines should not be based on these instances alone. A closer examination of the world behind the publication shows the influence women had on the magazines during the era. Many of the magazines were edited solely by women, and many of the advertisements were directed towards female readers. This essay will illustrate that while the image of women in the modernist magazines may have been condescending, women were invaluable to the life of the modernist magazine.

          Wyndham Lewis' Blast was one of the more condescending magazines to woman. Its depicts females being solely in existence for reproductive purposes or being dumb and easily influenced by shiny objects. In it's second issue Wyndham makes his opinions about woman clear in "The European War and Great Communities" when he says: "Murder and destruction is man’s fundamental occupation. Women’s function, the manufacturing of children (even more important than cartridges and khaki suits) is only important from this point of view, and they evidently they realize this thoroughly" (July 1915 No. 2 16). He implies that a woman's sole role is in supporting the man's primeval urges for destruction by filling the ranks with fresh young blood; that there is no greater calling for women, in war or life, then to merely subordinate their male counterparts. Blast further carries on his negative attitude towards woman in short poems such as "Women Before A Shop" which is blatantly negative in it's views on woman. He recites "the gew-gaw of false amber and false turquoise attract them"(June 1914 No.1 49) this illustrates the author's belief that women are only interested in shallow and useless things. In this quote there is also the sense that the author believes women are incapable of comprehending anything in reality. The use of the word "false" in front of amber and turquoise particularly speaks to his thoughts on women not being in touch with reality and shallow. This sentiment of woman as being inferior and shallow is then further carried over in "Pastoral"(June 1914 No.1) a poem that depicts the appealing physical features of a woman but then quickly follows it up with an insult of her heinous laugh. As illustrated above, Blast depicts women as objects to be used by men but there is no appreciation for anything deeper.

            The Owl is another magazine that depicts women in a poor light such as being frivolous or inferior through drawings of women. One drawing in particular, above a fable called "Careless Lady," portrays a woman in a dress waving good bye to a beggar holding a child-her child. (May 1919 No 1 between pg 12 and 13, plate number IX) It also seems as though the lady was dancing up the stairs. The fable at the bottom of the page explains to the reader why this lady is shown in such a carefree manner: she gave her child away to the beggar when he came to her to ask for help. And after everything was said and done the lady tells the beggar "Bring her back...the next time you call." (May 1919 No 1 between pg 12 and 13, plate number IX) This fable along with the picture doesn't portray women in a very intelligent light, rather it's silly.

             Another literary work published in the same issue of The Owl  is called "The Sun," written by John Galsworthy. (May 1919 No 1 23-27) This is a play involving two men and a girl. It is implied that the girl was dating one of the men and then he was sent to fight in World War I, and she began to date another man. The play begins with the girl and her current boyfriend waiting for the old boyfriend to come back home. The girl wants to tell the old boyfriend that she no longer wants to date him. However, the girl's current boyfriend doesn't give her a chance to do so by coming out of hiding.

Soldier [old boyfriend]: ... Give us a kiss, old pretty.

The Girl: (drawing back) No.

Soldier: (blankly) Why not?

The Man with a swift movement steps along the hedge to the Girl's side.

The Man [current boyfriend]: That's why, soldier. (May 1919 No 1 26)

The man didn't give the girl a chance to tell the soldier what she wanted to say possibly because he thought that she was not smart enough to figure out how to do it herself.

            It seems that the man didn't want to even give the girl a chance to speak. After a little bit of bickering between the two men, the soldier says, "that's all right, then. You keep 'er." (May 1919 No 1 26) Basically, the girl's old boyfriend did not really care about her enough since he just gave her up so quickly. It also seems that the girl's current boyfriend only wanted her because he was able to steal her from someone else. "I don't want 'is charity. I only want what I can take." (May 1919 No 1 27) In the play, Galsworthy shows women as an inferior creature, and one that doesn't deserve to be loved. Rather, the woman is a sort of prize to be argued over. Both the fable and the play portray women negatively by showing their carelessness and showing how men treat them without respect.

           Unlike The Owl, The New Age did not have a specific agenda against women. This is not to say that women were not scolded for their poor behaviors. However, men were also scolded for their actions as well. There is a particular recurring article titled "Man and Manners. An Occasional Diary" that points out the mistakes that women AND men make. For instance, in the January 6, 1916 issue the author states, "Men are child-like too seldom. Women are childish too often." (Jan 1916 Vol 18 No 10 230) This is the first issue that this column appears in during the war and it seems that the author might criticize women and their ways in later columns as well as this one. In addition, in the February 24th issue the author rants about the way women carry themselves during the war. She states, "Woman herself will be to blame, for women are accompanying their war-services with manners that will surely forfeit their expected reward." (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 399) It seems that women were trying to do what men did by wearing khakis. However, "mens' khaki is to conceal them, so I'm told. Womens' is to attract?" (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 399) It seems that women are copying men just for the sake of copying them. The author asks women, "if the doing of mens' work involves the adoption of mens' manners and even their costume, how, please, shall we discover the superiority of women's ways?" (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 399) The author scolds women again by saying, "Women are on trial... women-your khaki manners will be used against you... it will have profited you nothing. Ridicule and worse-contempt and neglect." (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 399) Not only does the author scold women but while she scolds them she tries to make them see that they can be treated in a better way by changing their ways.

           Conversely, in another issue the author of this column relates a story to the reader in response to men "always complaining that women don't play the game with them." (January 1916 Vol 18 No 12 278)

Once upon a time there were two men who kept grumbling and grumbling that their wives-Heigho!-took up so much of their time they couldn't do any work. One fine morning the two wives went away for a holiday. "This is good," said their husbands. "Now, indeed, we shall get on with our work!" With these words the two men sat talking and talking and drinking and drinking till far into the dawn. "We will meet again to-morrow," and the elder of the tow as they parted long after the cockcrow. "With all my heart," cried his friend. "Then I will show you a photo of the little but of fluff I met when my wife-Heigho!-took up so much of my time I couldn't do any work!" On the morrow the two friends lay sleeping and sleeping till long past noon, but as soon as evening came they began talking and talking and drinking and drinking till far into the dawn. "To-morrow at the same hour," they agreed, as they parted long after the cock-crow. "Plenty of time to work when the wives come marching home!" (January 1916 Vol 18 No 12 278)

This shows a transition between the way women are viewed in The New Age.

            In another issue of The New Age the author attacks men and their rudeness for calling their waitresses "Miss" instead of just using the word "please." The author states, "The chief source of the trouble, I believe, is in the implication that no man takes a woman's work seriously." (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 326) The author continues to say that if women don't need to use the word "Miss" to get their waitresses' attention then why should men use that word. She ends off that thought with the following: "For me they are all settled by the general theory that the world is man's home, and his women visitors therein are his guests, while the paid officials, during their hours of office, are his servants. Would a man expect a woman whom he visits to curtsy to her servants? Servants should be directed without words. The more non-existent they become, the more perfect." (February 1916 Vol 18 No 14 327) In the February 10, 1916 issue the author relates her experiences in a cafe where she noticed that men mistreat women by not discussing important topics with women. "For ten minutes no one spoke more than the weather permitted. Then three of the men returned to a formulary philosophical discussion in which they were joined for an hour by a man who had left his woman-companion alone in another corner of the cafe." (February 1916 Vol 18 No 15 351) The author insists that men include women in their conversations. Basically, this column has something negative to say about the way men and women act and interact with each other. There are times when the author particularly blames men for the wrongs that she sees and there are times when the author says that women have dug their own graves by acting silly and childish.

        Although the previously mentioned magazines tended to portray women negatively in their content, Wheels serves as an example of the power women had as editors of modernist magazines. At first glance, the 1916 issue might be pegged as a woman's magazine since it illustrates a simple line drawing of a woman pushing a baby stroller (December 1916- Second Edition published March 1917 Vol. 1 Cover). This image has nothing to do with the poetry included, it's sun-shiny scene is actually antithetical to the publications poetry, which is consistently morbid. By the third volume, the editors had entirely revamped the magazines image, replacing simplistic images such as the woman and baby, with intense and angular futurist paintings such as "The Sky Pilot" (1918 Vol.3 Cover). The tone of this and further cover images continues the tone depicted here. It seems to be a move away from the feminine visual qualities of the first issue, yet the same issue which began this new trend also made it a point, for the first time in its  publication, to indicate that Edith Sitwell was the magazine's editor(1918 Vol.3). Throughout it's publication, the magazine was organized and edited by Edith and Osbert Sitwell, whereas issues in the past deferred to Osbert by publishing his poetry first, this issue indicated an editorial move in Edith's favor. In this way, Wheels serves as an example of the way masculine elements were often favored in the content of the magazine, while in the side-lines women were moving into positions of greater power.

            Another magazine illustrating the role of women in this way is Poetry, one of the longest running magazines in the MJP, for much of it's life it was predominately edited by two women. Hariet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson were the predominant editors, with Ezra Pound as a foreign corespondent. As the magazine's proprietor, Monroe made it her mission from the beginning not to espouse a particular political or literary opinion, but for the magazine to serve as means to foster the culture of poetry in the United States and abroad (October 1912 Vol.1 No.1 26-28). Monroe herself lived the life of a feminist (whether self-professed or not); she was a business woman, a poet, an essayist and a critic. Yet, Poetry's content gives little attention to the female role or the suffrage movement. Instead, Monroe continually uses her space for editorial commentary to publish opinion essays on the society of poetry and government policy. An example of such an essay is "Give Him Room" ( May 1915 Vol.6 No.2 81-84), which does not--as its title belies--give relationship advice to women, but speaks to the way society should treat their poets. Again in, "The City and the Tower" (April 1917 Vol. 10 No.1 36-39) Monroe extrapolates on linguistics and the spread of the English language as a result of the war. In this essay she makes biblical references and comments with authority on society, but again makes no reference to the feminist agenda.

           In her editorial policy, Hariet Monroe exemplified the goals of the feminist movement by acting in a position of power, but she did it without affiliating her magazine with the movement. Much like Edith Sitwell's Wheels, her magazine published predominately male authors, but did include female poets. The success of her magazine drew the attention of Ezra Pound, who, despite his involvement with Blast, a magazine which overtly demeaned women, worked with Monroe for many years, serving her magazine with poetry and criticism alike.

The powerful role of women within the magazine culture can also be seen in Scribner's advertisements. Scribner's devoted about half of it's pages to advertisements and many of which speak to the role of women in society during and before the war. The prominence of placement and quantity of advertisements geared towards women speak directly to the size and importance of the magazine's female readership. In February 1915 edition of Scribner's we're greeted by a full page advertisement for Tiffany's and Co. (Feburary 1915 Vol.57 No.2). The advertisement's placement on the 3rd page, second only to the context page, indicating the importance of grabbing the attention of the female patronage. Scribner's is peppered with advertisements promoting things such as "Royal Baking Powder," baker's cocoa (Feburary 1915 Vol.57 No.2), and Harper's Bazzar advertising Parisian Dress Makers (Janurary 1915 Vol.57 No.1). Each of these advertisements indicate the magazine's female readership. The opinions expressed throughout the various journals might vary in their view of women but through these advertisements we clearly see the role women did indeed play in the culture of modernist magazines. We see through these advertisements that woman not only helped the war effort by joining the work force but also by running the household. As a result of their contribution to both fields they became one of the chief demographics targeted by various advertisements indicating how indispensable they were to society.

            As this essay has illustrated, the role of women during World War I as seen through the modernist magazines, was a conflicted one. In many cases, women were in positions of power in the publishing industry, and often made up a strong portion of a magazine's readership. However, the content which the magazine's published predominantely depicted women in an unfavorable light. Seen in this way, the women's movement did not only assert influence by overtly proclaiming beliefs about human rights, but was also apparant in the more subtle way women were incorporated into the business of periodical literature.

Throughout many of the magazines that I have looked through I noticed that there are a lot of literary works that depict women in a frivolous or unsophisticated way. For instance, in the poem "WOMEN BEFORE A SHOP" Ezra Pound shows women as people who enjoy to look at shiny things. "The gew-gaws of false amber and false turquoise attract them." (Blast I, pg 49) Also, there is an article titled "Man and Manners. An Occasional Diary," that states "Men are child-like too seldom. Women are childish too often." (The New Age, 1/6/1916, pg 230) It clearly states that women do not behave like adults as men do. In another issue of The New Age, the recurring article "Man and Manners. An Occasional Diary," the author states, "The more women let themselves go the more men let them go!" (The New Age, 2/17/1916, pg 373) By this the author is trying to say that when women act in an inconsiderate way around men, men will resiprocate the actions. Before this partiular line the author was saying that women act with poor manners in a cafe, and so do men. In another magazine, there is a fable about a "Careless Lady," who gives her child away to a beggar. (The Owl, 5/1919, no page number) There is also a picture depicting the fable right above it, and in this picture the woman looks almost as if she is dancing back into her house. Basically, these three different magazines published during World War I had somewhat of a similar theme going on when publishing works about women-they are careless and are distracted easily by shiny things.

"The Old Houses of Flanders" by Ford Madox Heuffer was published in the second incarnation of Blast.  The houses in question are personified as a kind of witness to the destruction of the town as a result of the war.  The windows of the houses have eyes, "mournful, tolerant and sardonic, for the ways of men" which watch first as the cathedrals of Flanders burn, and then sort of lean into each together "drunkenly" before collapsing themselves.  With the destruction of not only the town, but these houses specifically, which have existed through many generations, there is a sense not only of physical lost but of the loss of memory, of something less tangible, and less easily duplicated/reconstructed.

From the first issue of Blast, I chose "To Suffragettes." which does not appear to have an author.  (Perhaps it was Wyndham Lewis?)  Like some of the poems we read in class, this one, a kind of open letter to woman suffragists, seems to take a didactic tone without fully explaining its logic.  Although the author admirably backs female suffrage, he also discourages suffragettes from participating in the creation of art.  One can't really tell from reading this piece alone if the author includes all women when addressing the suffragettes, or if he means suffragettes particularly.  In any case, the author ostensibly views the fight for suffragism as a violent act, one of tearing down conventions in order to promote equality.  Based on this, "suffragism," to the author, seems to equal "destruction."  As such, he asks that women "stick to what [they] understand" and refrain from participating in the creation of art, lest they "destroy" a great work of art also.  This is all a very muddled interpretation of an equally muddled text.  It probably needs more context for an accurate reading.

     While searching through the magazine achives for quite some time, I was able to come across two works that caught my attention. The very first one was an article written by Teresa Billington Grieg entitled "For Sex Equality". This article caught my attention because it focused on issues that I was familiar with. I have learned many times about the inferiority that women have in relation to men, and the struggles that they had to go through to get many of the same rights as men. While reading it I noticed that this article was in favor of women's suffrage, and the attempt to make their situation better. It stated in the article that women during this time, outnumbered men, and this scared the men because they did not want to be dictated by the voice of women, therefore they felt it necessary to silence women. They silenced them by not granting them certain rights, like the right to vote. I was upset when I read the first half of the article, but quickly became relieved when I realized that many men took the side of the women and made attempts to keep them on an equal playing feild. Many men wanted women to be equal and share the same rights as them. I was glad to see that both men and women were taking steps to advance the plight of women in society. 

     Another work that I came across was also in The New Age titled "The Master and the Leaves" by Thomas Hardy. This work was not an article but a poem. I often enjoy reflecting on poetry because poetry is subjective, and you can take from it whatever you feel is right. While I was reading this poem, it made me feel a little sad. Usually when one reads a poem about the changing of leaves or the changing of seasons, you tend to feel happy and enlightened. At first I felt this way, but quickly felt saddened when I realized that no one was noticing this change, or cared to acknowledge its existence. When a poet writes about the seasons changing, it indicates a life cycle or life, death and rebirth. This poem is told from the point of view of the leaves on a tree, the leaves are actaully the ones experiecing such changes, but those around them, seem not to notice this, the "master" in particular for that is who it is addressed to. I tried to dig deeper into the meaning of this poem in relation to the modernist era, and came to the conclusion that while a change in art was occurring, many people of higher power did not seem to care or take part in the beauty was that evolving. The modern era was an introduction of new things, just like the seasons are, but sadly, many of these changes went unseen.

Norelia Arroyo
Eugenia Ghartey
Christina Massie

As a group we decided to look into how women influenced The New Age. We divided the time span into 3 blocks of five years each, each of us taking one block of years. Therefore, we will each explain how we individually attack this project and describe the lens that we were looking through. As you read, you will notice that we each came up with different issues due to the changes that occurred during the passing of time.

Years from 1907 to 1912 :

As I first skimmed through the journals I notice that there were a hand full of articles that had to do with women’s suffrage only in the first 4 volumes. For example in the first volume in number 2 and number 4, written in 1907, there were articles on the women’s right to vote. The writer of these articles was Teresa Billington-Greig. She was strongly believed in equal rights and her articles were very clear on that.  In 1907 ‘Women in Finland was published’. This article spoke about the victory that women in Finland had because they were given the right to vote and they voted 200 deputies into the Finnish Parliament. The writer of this article, Dora B. Montefiore, pointed out that the women in Finland took advantage of their privilege to vote and voted women into power.

Another female writer that has also written several articles in the early part of the journal’s life was Florence Farr. She believed that “intelligent women” should not have children until the prevention of disease, and the feeding of starving children are dealt with. Florence also believed that men should pay a tax and organize a system that would support mother’s of young children. She believed that the state should look into helping the family economically because the family was the backbone of society.

Volume 3 # 13, written in July of 1908, had an interesting article titled, ‘The Other Women’. This article criticizes how “Other Women” are messing things up for women who are fighting for the right to vote. They describe the “Other Women” as being ignorant of the issues that are going on around them, such as poverty and starvation.  This article was written by “A reluctant Suffragette”. Another article in volume 3 talked about Socialism and Women, which claims that sex dominance is evident in socialist’s men. The suffragettes did not believe that socialism was going to give them the rights that they were fighting for.

In 1909 I came across two articles in volume 5# 19 and 23 written by W.L. George, the titles were the same, ‘Woman’s Suffrage – A Lost Cause?’ George states that, “The obstinate demand by a minority of women, backed by the sympathy of a large number, actively opposed by a smaller number, is deadened and almost nullified by the apathy of most British women.” He claims that 1 adult woman out of 20 takes any interest in voting.

After 1909, I did not come across many other articles written on this topic, which made me wonder why? Therefore, I looked into the history of Britain during that era to see what was going on. I learned that between the years of 1910 and 1912, the sufferagettes were being imprisoned by the hundreds due to violent and destructive crime. They were setting fires and destroying thousands of letters and they were committing militancy acts against the government. I question whether this type of militancy behavior made the editors of The New Age stop publishing articles about women and their right.  I also notice that many of the early female writer’s who favored suffrage no longer were found after 1910.

Years from 1913- 1918:

During the period of 1907- 1922 there were many issues that had risen, such as WWI , women’s movement, etc.. I narrowed in on the dates 1913-1918 from volume 13- volume 18. In each of the volumes I perused; there were more male representation than women. Since there were very few women representation in the magazines, many of the women’s names appeared in many of the other volumes.

Based on the small group of women that wrote in this magazine I concluded that the women who wrote for the New Age had to either belong to a particular group or made connections that allowed them to become part of this elite group.
It appeared that many of the women who wrote in the magazines wrote poetry, about women literature, issues of slave trade, and issues concerning womanhood. Alice Morning wrote the Impression of Paris. In this article, she criticizes people, “for not devoting their time to discovering one another’s literature during the time of the war.”

She also expresses her critique of another writer and in her writing expresses herself as a woman and a mother. Another writer that I came across a few time was Beatrice Hastings. I found what she wrote about interesting.

She was as most women were a literary critic. She wrote about issues concerning the white slave traffic (which I was unfamiliar with and did a little more research about it). She also used her platform to what I saw as belittling or making sure that women stayed in their place. In Tesserae she stated that, “ women are moved by their feelings and not by their intellect.” This article puts women down and somewhat praises men for using their intellect. I believe Beatrice Hastings wrote articles similar to this in order to continue with her literary recognitions.

As mentioned previously, there were very few women who wrote in the New Age. After researching a little more, I found out that Beatrice Hastings was the pen name of Emily Alice Haigh. Beatrice also had other pen names such as Beatrice Tina, D. Triformis, Alice Morning, Robert a Field, and others. The various women’s names that were seen in the New Age could have been written by the same person; also articles that were written by men or where the initials of the first name were provided could have also been written by a women.

Years from 1918-1922 :

My approach was somewhat overwhelming because when I first looked on the website I looked at everything. What I noticed was that the font changed through the years, the advertisements disappeared and the actual articles were less in number than the earlier years. There was a distinctive format and there were numerous repetitive authors. I specifically narrowed in and then looked at the volumes twenty two through thirty. I found that a woman more frequented the magazine in 1918, but it was not until the 1920’s that more than one woman author wrote more consistently in the New Age. Not that this hadn’t been done at all earlier by one woman, however it was rare and I did not see evidence of more than one woman author in the volumes I skimmed through. Having two women at once was a huge feat, for the entire magazine was male dominated.

I approached the New Age in a vast variety of ways. I first looked at the pages and then the index to see if any issues were being written about  women. I also looked at the thumbnails to find a certain article and also go to the author page to distinctively find what women were writing in that volume. Some of the  names were unisex like Frances or Jan that was hard to determine which sex was writing  the article. Although after reading the articles I can’t imagine they were written by a  woman but you never know. In these articles I am talking about, for example, are about  the woman’s labor movement. The tone is that the women are just getting in the way  and making things worse for the men. These were some articles I chose based on their  title relating to woman’s issues. When the men were writing on these issues they voiced  that women should leave it to the men.

It seemed to me that the women authors who  were writing in this periodical were often the same few group of ladies like Ruth Pitter, Rachel Fitzpatrick and Dorothy Ireland to name a few. The articles of these women were mainly at the end of the volume, nearly if not the last page. Their pieces were artsy and consisted of poems or reviews that could relate to the art going public. When there was amore serious topic in the volume these women authors seem to only give a rebuttal of what was already printed. And again it was mostly a small article stuck in the back and mixed between other articles or reviews. There was a sense you did not even know what the woman’s complaint was about until you back tracked the rest of the entire periodical.

My guess is that is why it is put in the paper that way.  For instance, Elizabeth Gerard Smith’s letter to the editor on the article Woman gives her definitive disgust over the article. But she seems on a rampage and you do not quite know why. She then becomes depicted as a hysterical woman. Some of the reviews I found to be bland and too much plot summary. It may be the lack of space provided in the magazine and the precedence a woman’s review has under a male reviewer. Hence when one of the ladies such as Valerie Cooper in her review of Anna Pavlova and her Ballet are given the space in which to write, the writing of the review is then precise, descriptive and objective to her eye. The Pastiche was nearly in each edition of the New Age. Found at usually the last page, the Pastiche or mixed bag of information focused on a common topic of music and poetry. Ruth Pitter in my research was the most consistent writer to appear in this section. Her poems and tales had rhythm, iambic pentameter and alliteration. Some of them seemed romantic and light. She also had a few with a tone of sadness and depression. This section I think is to mainly entertain the audience. Women were bunched together whether they were writing a letter to the editor, review or Pastiche. They were enabled to have some voice to what was going on around them but not much.

I sensed that they were often given this voice only to have it shot down with the more male dominated writer voice. The question then really becomes did woman really read the New Age or not? The same women who were sporadically writing throughout all the years were probably hoping that they were reading. The input may have been minute at the time but that voice has grown from nineteen twenty-two on with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment.

In summary, what we noticed is that the editors in the beginning of the journal’s life were more open minded to liberal women writers.  We suppose that after several women’s groups became more militant in their approach for equal rights the editor’s took on a change of heart. Therefore, censoring The New Age and doing away with the pro-suffrage writers and allowing only a few female writer’s who were happy writing artsy articles and poems. Apparently, the male editors were not ready to step aside and give women equal power or equal say for that matter.

Ashley Carlisle, Courtney Fenner, and Wycliffe Mcallister

Feminism & 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.