Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

 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.  
 

Rosanna Cinquemani

Angela Provenzano

Blast magazine's second issue, entitled the War Number, deals almost exclusively with the Great War. The plain cover of the first issue is replaced by a violent, Vorticist look at battle as drawn by Wyndham Lewis. The magazine begins with its usual manifestos and explanations of conflict in terms of the magazine's publication. Its "Editorial." sums up their excitement about the war, and their look at art's relevance in war time, both of which the writers of the magazine elaborate on tirelessly throughout the rest of the issue. Lewis' position is that violent times call for important art, and that people are more interested in art during these times. (Interest in Vorticist art did indeed dwindle over the next couple of years.) Delighted by the fighting, Lewis explains that the war is not just a war against the German govenrment. It is also a war against German art, which is too traditional and romantic. England is fighting for England, as well as their newest brand of modern, unsentimental art brought forward by Blast. This two front war is vitally important the the future of art, the future of England, and the future of Blast, which he to thinks will live on long past this second issue. It, as we know, does not live on, and evidentally England did not think it was fighting a war against German art, but simply a war against German soldiers.

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.

Since the 2009 Digital Humanities Conference is currently taking place at the University of Maryland, I decided to add its Twitter feed to the aggregator on our website. You can now peruse the updates by following the Feeds link at the top of the site, or by going directly to http://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/material-modernism/aggregator.

At the digital humanities conference, leading minds in the use of technology and information science for humanistic inquiry are presenting projects, ideas, theories, etc., many of which directly impinge on our work here. Feel free to blog any questions or observations, or to make comments on this post.

Check out participants' lightning interviews and other media here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=dh09&aq=f

You might also wish to look at the leading journal in the field, Digital Humanities Quarterly.

The impact of World War I is something that becomes evident in international culture through literature during the time of its run. The toll it took on the human race becomes prominent in the poetry and literature of the magazine Wheels. Published annually, Wheels first began putting out issues in 1916, in the middle of the great calamity that was the war. The effect of the tremendous casualties is emphasised particularly in the work of fallen soldier Wilfred Owen, to whom the 1919 issue was dedicated after his death in combat, once the war had ceased and the caliber of the tragedy became eminent. Seven of his poems were premiered in this issue, after his demise. His poems are dark depictions of the dreariness that war the battleground. They instigate imagery that intrigues the senses in terms of what death, in all its apparency must be like: its odor, its soiled appearence, and the melancholy awareness that comes in and of mortality. In "The Show", Owen writes: "My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,/ As unremembering how I rose or why,/ And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,/ Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow dearth." In "Strange Meeting", he dicatates such blunt tragic imagery again: "The pity of war, the war distilled./ Now men will go content with what we spoiled,/ Or discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled." No line of his poetry is spared of the feeling. Shells and scenes of foxholes are prominent throughout each poem, all seven filled with the somber sorrow of life in vain, being cut short. Owen's poetry invokes the primal need to be human and alive, when that very notion is violated by an act such as war.

It is truly sad that his works should be published only after his own death in action. It is as if his poetry possessed a certain cognizance to what his own fate held. His words are almost expectant, as if to question why he should be spared among soldiers, but mostly, it brings to light the idea of man in a life of pleasure and normalcy, and how, to soldiers like him, that instinct was left on the backburner. To share his works after his own demise, and after the War itself gives the reader, in context of the time period, a great deal of appreciation and awareness for what had been the international situation the year prior, and how it affected the livelihood of people and soldier's like Owen. It makes one wonder what else such an author could have achieved in a less trying circumstance, or had he lived beyond the war. It is one of those reminders of our own mortality, a concept that is almost impossible for the living human to grasp, in the midst of the live experience.

       A colorful way to chart the progression of a magazines' ideals, is through their choice of cover art. While not all the modernist magazines cataloged in the MJP change the tone of their cover over the course of publication, those that do are rich with insight into the magazine's political and artistic stance as well as the time in which they are publishing. Wheels is one such magazine, the cover of which changes dramatically from 1916 when it was first published until 1921 when it ran it's last issue. Over the course of these years, the imagery moved from a simplistic line drawing to intricate futurist paintings depicting images of soldiers and mechanized men. Through the shift in the magazine's identifying cover, appears the progression of change in response to World War I.

       The first cover of Wheels published in 1916 depicts a simple image of a woman pushing a baby carraige (March 1916 Vol.1). The war was, at this point, already in progress, but judging by the cover, the magazines particular artistic and political sentiments had not yet formed in it's first issue. The second issue offers a more sophisticated design from the first line drawing, it depicts a variety of circular shapes repeated over the cover(1917 Vol.2). In stark contrast, the third issue is illustrated by an angular futuristic painting of a bird like machine titled at the bottom, "The Sky Pilot" (1918 Vol.3). This image begins a new phase of cover art for Wheels; the following year, the magaine published a cover depicting fucia colored men using machienery of the same huge, causing the men and their equiptment to be indeciperable from one another (1919 Vol.4). The year this cover was published the war ended, but Wheels continued on to published two more covers of sarkly different character from those previous. Even the most artistically illiterate individual (like myself) can see a progression of thought in the artistic editing over the final years of the war. Influenced by futurist painters, the covers of Wheels illustrate the effect the war had on individuals relationship to machines.

Created as a "miscelleny", literary magazine The Owl addresses no particular sect or movement of Modernism, nor does it claim to take any political view. The contents of each of its three issues are organized in a relatively similar fashion: the first half generally contained a great deal of poetry, followed by a story, and a play of sorts. The issues are dispersed with illustrations, some with handwritten poetry or fables written out beneath them. The Owl possesses a sense of imagery that is somewhat cartoonish and imaginative. The illustrations seem to observe people in an exaggerrated, but genuine state, almost emphasizing the world and life as would be observed by a child, or youth. These articles contain flowery, loopy typescript that appears to be handwritten, and pages are headed with small drawings of paper scrolls and flourishes. Each issue displays the written names of the authors therein on the cover, beneath a bold illustration of an Owl, all possessing strong dark lines that mimic the writing of the contents, and each contains various portraits of people in an unusual, enlivened state. Careless Lady, in the May 1915 edition, as well as Vain Man, in the October 1919 issue, both contain illustrations of high spirited people, acting in a childlike sense; in addition, both pictures are followed by a short, almost Mother Goose type rhyme about these adults acting in an enigmatic, youthful fashion. The poetry of the magazine has a tendency to discuss light hearted topics such as nature, and love. A sense of freedom, happiness, and a certain ignorance of sadness is prominent throughout. The magazine almost seems geared towards forgetting, and holding life and carelessness to a high standard, much obliged by the illustrative titles and covers of the text throughout The Owl.

There are an abundance of essays and articles that focus on the war within the many issues of "Scribner's Magazine". One of the essays that stood out to me was "War and the Artist" by Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, which appeared in Vol 57, No.1 in January 1915. The author tried to connect war with art. He explained that the essence of war gives inspiration to the artist. He says that from the beginning of time there have been countless depictions of war from many different artist. We have evidence of it from ancient egyptian times. He feels that the emotions that come along with war, such as: "Patriotism and treason, courage and cowardice, self-sacrifice and ambition, love and hatred", have always been apart of war. These emotions are what inspire the best artist to do their work. I think this essay was placed in the magazine as a sort of inspiration to artists of the time. The author praises English and American Modern artist for "dealing with actual condtions instead of the fanciful and pretentious" in their portrayal of scences of war. I felt that he was trying to get more artist to be involved and to create artwork about the war. Although he doesn't really address his politic opinion about the war, I still got the sense that he was for any kind of war because of what it brought to the aesthetic world.

After looking through some of the other issues of the magazine, I saw that there was one essay that appeared twice in two different issues. The essay "A Bomb Thrower in the Trenches" by Lieutenant Z of the British Army, appeared in Vol. 60 No.1 from July 1916, as well as Vol. 60 No.2 from August of the same year. The essay is a series of letters written "from the trenches by an Englishman who enlisted as a trooper in one of the new calvary regiments at the outbreak of the war". The letters vividly describe different scenes from the war, witnessing of deaths all around him, and the exhaustion that comes along with war. I believe it had to be an essay of great importance for it to show up twice back to back. The essay seems very nationalist in the sense that he never gave up. He was always trying to do better and to help out in anyway that he could. This was probably the message that they were trying to send by publishing this essay. They wanted to show people that even though it was a difficult war, it was important that everyone contributed wholeheartedly.

As noted by the MJP, the editors of The Owl were explicit in their foreword to the first issue that their publication "has no politics, leads no new movement and is not even the organ of any particular generation."  As such, materials within the magazine's pages directly covering the war are scarce.  A large portion of content in both of The Owl's issues deal with the nature of people and things, and of relationships between people, snippets of conversations and happenings or observations.  Many drawings depict bucolic images such as hillside picnics and wreathed women, dressed in clothes with ornaments from the natural world (leave-adorned skirts, flowers blooming on a bodice), surrounded by children and babies.  Illustrated fables also appear throughout both issues. 

The tone of the magazine, however, changes often, from whimisically observant to expressive of some darker current, as in "Everyone Sang" by Siegried Sassoon, from the second issue.  The Owl 2 was published the year after the end of the war, and this poem in particular seems to remark upon its end or, in the very least, the end of an event with comparative significance.  Sassoon likens the joy he experiences in this end to that "as prisoned birds must find in freedom" and goes on to describe "horror/ Drift[ing] away," and a "wordless" song which will "never be done."  Although not directly naming the war or its effects on the poet's life and the world in general, The Owl's readers would no doubt associate such a poem, a year after the war's end, with their own feelings of lifted heaviness/ relief in its wake.