Abstract
Actress and author Florence Farr exemplified the free-spirited bohemian society of the fin de siècle avant garde. The prototype for George Bernard Shaw’s “New Woman,” Farr was also active in the esoteric revival of the period. Through her close friend William Butler Yeats, she joined the occult Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890, and within seven years had risen through the grades to become de facto head of the Order. While the elaborate ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn appealed to Farr’s sense of the dramatic, it was the esoteric principle of female and male spiritual equality that resonated with her. For Farr, women’s emancipation and esotericism converged, the alchemical self-fashioning of her own life serving as an example for modern women on how to “use their imaginations to alter all the conditions which life has imposed upon them, to transcend all the limitations of incarnation.”
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Notes
- 1.
Florence Farr, Modern Woman: Her Intentions (London: Frank Palmer, 1910), 7. It is likely that Farr’s book was written in part as a rejoinder to several facetious sections in Gilbert K. Chesterton’s, What’s Wrong with the World?. One example of Chesterton’s florid objection to women’s suffrage reads: “one Pankhurst is an exception, but a thousand Pankhursts are a nightmare, a Bacchic orgie, a Witches Sabbath. For in all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.” Chesterton here is clearly expressing some of the misogynistic sentiments identified by Bram Dijkstra in Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
- 2.
On the complex transformations occurring in Edwardian Britain see: Paul Thompson, The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975); Jonathan Rose, The Edwardian Temperament, 1895–1919 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986); Naomi Carle, Samuel Shaw, and Sarah Shaw, eds., Edwardian Culture: Beyond the Garden Party (New York: Routledge, 2018).
- 3.
For the classic—and contentious—account of the tumult in Britain on and around 1910 see: George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: Constable, 1936).
- 4.
On Western Esotericism see: Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (New York: Oxford, University Press 2008).
- 5.
Farr, Modern Woman, 92.
- 6.
Josephine Johnson, Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw’s ‘New Woman’ (Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1975). See also Barbara Bellow Watson, “The New Woman and the New Comedy,” The Shaw Review 17, no. 1 (January 1974): 2–16; Ruth Brandon, The New Women and the Old Men: Love, Sex and the Woman Question (London: Secker & Warburg, 1990); Sally Ledger, “The New Woman and the Crisis of Victorianism,” in Cultural Politics at the Fin De Siecle, ed. by Sally Ledger and Scott McCraken (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995), 22–44; Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis, eds., The New Woman in Fiction and Fact: Fin-de Siècle Feminisms (London: Palgrave, 2002).
- 7.
Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 132.
- 8.
Farr, Modern Woman, 78.
- 9.
For more on William Farr as a founding figure in medical statistics see: John M. Eyler, Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).
- 10.
Johnson, Florence Farr, 5–17, 22–24.
- 11.
For an excellent overview of the varying attitudes towards marriage among Victorian women and the longstanding avant garde rejection of sexual mores and conventions see: Joan Perkin, Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 2002), especially 207–232.
- 12.
Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (London: Pandora Press, 1985).
- 13.
George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism: Analysis of Playwright Henrik Ibsen and his Critical Reception in England (London: Walter Scott, 1891), 30–45.
- 14.
Clifford Bax, ed., Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats: Letters (London: Home & Van Thal Ltd., 1946), ix.
- 15.
Florence Farr, The Dancing Faun (London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1894), 34.
- 16.
Jane Spirit, “‘She Who Would Refine the Fabric:’ Contexts for Reading the Embroidering and Writing of Florence Farr and Una Taylor,” E-rea 16, no. 1 (2018), https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.6722. According to Mary K. Greer, Farr “gladly accepted an embroidery commission from Frederick Garner, a relatively new but enthusiastic Golden Dawn member,” in Mary K. Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses (Rochester: Park Street Press, 1995), 152. See also: Jan Marsh, Jane and May Morris, A Biographical Story 1839–1938 (London: Pandora, 1986).
- 17.
William Butler Yeats, Trembling of the Veil (London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1922), 13. See also: Johnson, Florence Farr, 34–37; William Brooks, “Historical Precedents for Artistic Research in Music: The Case of William Butler Yeats,” in Artistic Experimentation in Music: An Anthology edited by Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 185–197.
- 18.
For a reconsidering of the Ibsen revolution in drama and his subsequent influence on Modernists see: Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 19.
Johnson, Florence Farr, 47.
- 20.
“The Playhouses,” Illustrated London News (London: February 27, 1891), quoted in Johnson, Florence Farr, 48. See also: Gail Finney, “Ibsen and Feminism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen edited by James McFarlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 97; Jennifer Hedgecock, The Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature: The Danger and the Sexual Threat (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2008).
- 21.
Letter, March 29 1894, holograph, Burgander Collection at Cornell University, quoted in Johnson, Florence Farr, 61 and 126.
- 22.
Michael Holroyd, “George Bernard Shaw: Women and the Body Politic,” Critical Inquiry 6, no. 1 (1979): 17–32; Charles A. Carpenter, “Homo Philanderus as Created and Embodied by Bernard Shaw,” Shaw, 29 (2009): 4–16.
- 23.
See Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Peter J. Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Peter Harrison, “Science and Secularization,” Intellectual History Review 27, no. 1 (2017): 47–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2016.1255460.
- 24.
Laura Schwartz, Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women’s Emancipation, England 1830–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 18–21. On the central role played by women in nineteenth century esoteric religions see Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 (Oakland: University of California Press, 1999).
- 25.
In 1877, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky published her landmark Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877). On Spiritualism see: Ann Deborah Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England (London: Virago Press, 1989). On Blavatsky’s new brand of occultism see Mark Bevir, “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 747–767.
- 26.
I am indebted to Amy Hale for alerting me to this note. See: S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Kabbala Denudata: The Kabbalah Unveiled (New York: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1912), 335. On Sprengel see: Christopher McIntosh, “‘Fräulein Sprengel’ and the Origins of the Golden Dawn: A Surprising Discovery,” Aries 11, no. 2 (2011): 249–257; Henrik Bogdan, “Women and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: Nineteenth Century Occultist Initiation from a Gender Perspective,” in Women’s Agency and Rituals in Mixed and Female Masonic Orders, ed. Alexandra Heidle and Jan A. M. Snoek (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 245–263. See also: Ellic Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order, 1887–1923 (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1972), 7; R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1983).
- 27.
Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 49. It is not insignificant then that the first two initiates admitted into Isis-Urania in the spring of 1888 were women. “Miss Mina Bergson (‘Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum’), later Mrs. MacGregor Mathers, and Miss Theresa Jane O’Connell (‘Ciall agus neart’).” As Howe has recorded, these were joined soon after by Mrs. Alexandrina Mackenzie (‘Cryptonyma’), widow of an important Mason and Rosicrucian, K. R. H. Mackenzie, and in July by Anne Ayton who became a member with her husband, Rev. W. A. Ayton. Artist and author Isabelle de Steiger, a close friend of spiritual alchemist Mary Anne Atwood, joined in that first year, while another of the earliest members was Mrs. Constance Mary Wilde, wife of the Irish playwright, who was admitted along with Anna, Countess de Brémont, in November, 1888. See: Franny Moyle, Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde (London: John Murray, 2011); Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, Oscar Wilde and his Mother: A Memoir (London: Everett & Co. Ltd., 1911).
- 28.
Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 99.
- 29.
R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order (York Beach: Weiser, 1997), 140–148.
- 30.
Alison Butler, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 162–179.
- 31.
Allison P. Coudert, “There’s Not Much Room for Women in Esotericism, Right?,” in Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions About Western Esotericism, ed. by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Peter J. Forshaw, and Marco Pasi (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 70–79.
- 32.
Farr and fellow Golden Dawn member Annie Horniman (1860–1937), were actively involved in the English theatre scene during the 1890s. Unlike Horniman, who used her personal fortune to support a series of productions at London’s Avenue Theatre staged by Farr, in addition to subsidizing Yeats and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin before reviving the Manchester Gaiety Theatre, Farr’s theatrical endeavors were less political than aesthetic. There is no evidence that she ever participated in the efforts of thespian suffragists to use theatre in the service of their cause. See Sheila Gooddie, Annie Horniman: A Pioneer in the Theatre (London: Methuen, 1990). See also: Elaine Aston, “The ‘New Woman’ at Manchester’s Gaiety Theatre,” in The New Woman and Her Sisters: Feminism and Theatre 1850–1914, ed. by Vivien Gardner and Susan Rutherford (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 205–220; Sheila Stowell, A Stage of Their Own: Feminist Playwrights of the Suffrage Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992).
- 33.
Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 147.
- 34.
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “How Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World,” Religion 33, no. 4 (2003): 357–380; Michael T. Saler, “Modernity, Disenchantment, and the Ironic Imagination,” Philosophy and Literature 28, no. 1 (April 2004): 137–149; Gary Lachman, “New Age Fin de Siècle,” in The Fin-De-Siècle World, ed. by Michael Saler (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 611–622.
- 35.
Arthur Machen, Things Near and Far (London: Martin Secker, 1923), 154, quoted in R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn, 35–36.
- 36.
David Gange, Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–52; Ronald H. Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy (London: Reaktion Books, 2016); Diana Lipton, Longing for Egypt and Other Unexpected Biblical Tales (Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2008).
- 37.
Yeats, Trembling of the Veil, 12–13.
- 38.
Florence Farr, Egyptian Magic (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1896), 1.
- 39.
Farr added a footnote to the text here directing readers to Westcott’s article on Qabbala in Lucifer, May 1893: 294; See Farr, Egyptian Magic, 2.
- 40.
Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “Aristotle and Woman,” Journal of the History of Biology 9, no. 2 (1976): 183–213.
- 41.
Dennis Denisoff, “Performing the Spirit: Theatre, the Occult, and the Ceremony of Isis,” Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens, 80 (Autumn 2014), https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.1552. See also: Caroline J. Tully, “Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers and Isis,” in Ten Years of Triumph? Academic Approaches to Studying Magic and the Occult, ed. by Dave Evans and Dave Green (Harpenden: Hidden Publishing, 2009), 62–74.
- 42.
Farr, Egyptian Magic, 26
- 43.
Farr, Egyptian Magic, 41; Sandra Stanley Holton, “‘To Educate Women into Rebellion’ Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Creation of a Transatlantic Network of Radical Suffragists,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (October 1994): 1112–1136. A further influence may be Frances Swiney’s The Esoteric Teachings of the Gnostics (London: Yellon, Williams & Co., 1909), published the year before Farr’s Modern Woman.
- 44.
Florence Farr, “Superman Consciousness,” The New Age 1, no. 6 (June 6, 1907): 92. See also: Florence Farr, “Innocent Enchantresses,” The New Age 1, no. 8 (June 20, 1907): 118–119.
- 45.
Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, 233–251. See also Caroline Tully, “Egyptosophy in the British Museum: Florence Farr, the Egyptian Adept & the Ka,” in The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875–1947 ed. by Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 131–145.
- 46.
Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn, 260–265; Darcy Kuntz, ed., The Serpent’s Path: The Magical Plays of Florence Farr (Sequim: Holmes Publishing Group, 2002), Appendix I, 47.
- 47.
Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn, 268.
- 48.
Johnson, Florence Farr, 177; Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn, 341–342.
- 49.
Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn, 344; Johnson, Florence Farr, 180–185.
- 50.
William Wynn Westcott, “A Recent Spiritual Development,” S.R.I.A. Transactions of the Metropolitan College, 1917, 18–25, quoted in in R. A. Gilbert, ed., The Magical Mason: Forgotten Hermetic Writings of William Wynn Westcott, Physician and Magus. (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1983), 294–295. According to Westcott, “The Rosicrucian mode of attaining supra-normal powers was, I have learned, by the mental faculties, by meditation, concentration and by force of will; this system also was conducted by seven methods: (1) Intellectual studies; (2) Cultivation of the imaginative faculty; (3) The means of attaining to intuition; (4)The preparation of the physical Stone of the philosophers; (5) Realization of the Microcosm as a representation of the Macrocosm; (6) The merging of the Ego into the realm of Macrocosmic beings.
- 51.
Johnson, Florence Farr, 209.
- 52.
Farr, Modern Woman, 88.
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Draper, M. (2021). The Crucible of Modernity: Florence Farr and the Esoteric Woman. In: Hale, A. (eds) Essays on Women in Western Esotericism. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76889-8_9
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