The New Woman, New Modernisms, and New Motherhoods

Podnieks, Elizabeth

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-08911-4_2

Elizabeth Podnieks²

201 Accesses

Abstract

In The Woman Movement (1909), Swedish feminist Ellen Key reports on the “continual inner struggle” faced by Western women since at least the late 1800s. She observes that “literature with woman as its subject has for some decades been filled with the great conflict of modern woman’s life: the conflict between vocation and parents, between vocation and husband, between vocation and child”. Historian Ann Taylor Allen similarly suggests that a particularly weighty “maternal dilemma” manifesting at the turn of the twentieth century involved a (white, middle-class) woman’s decision to stay home with her child or take up jobs outside the domicile. This conflict, or dilemma, resonated within matrifocal texts of modernism.

In this chapter, I provide an overview of the contexts for understanding how late nineteenth and early-to-mid-twentieth-century Anglo-American motherhood was constructed in gendered, class, and racialized terms; how debates about home and work unfolded within the public consciousness; and how women’s movements, feminism, and eugenics influenced personal and national discourses on maternal choice and duty. In so doing, I build upon the themes and topics mentioned in Chap. 1, strengthening links between the New Woman, new motherhood, and new modernism. Such detail will inform and facilitate the close textual readings in the remaining chapters.

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Notes

1.
Key, The Woman Movement, 183.
2.
Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 1.
3.
Eliot quoted in Lee 439; Pound quoted in Scott, Refiguring Modernism, 79.
4.
Scott, Refiguring Modernism, 79.
5.
Hanscombe and Smyers, Writing for their Lives, 7.
6.
Ibid., 10.
7.
Ibid., 11–12.
8.
Scott, “Introduction,” The Gender of Modernism, 2.
9.
Ibid., 4.
10.
Ibid., 14.
11.
Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb, 6.
12.
Rosner, Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life, 2.
13.
Olson, Modernism and the Ordinary, 3–4.
14.
O’Reilly, “Introduction,” Maternal Theory, 1.
15.
Ibid., 1.
16.
Hirsch, The Mother/Daughter Plot, 163.
17.
Ibid., 165–67.
18.
Ibid., 167.
19.
Ibid., 4–5.
20.
Daly and Reddy, Narrating Mothers, 1–2.
21.
The exception is Wharton’s The Mother’s Recompense, which I, too, examine in Chap. 2.
22.
Van Buren, The Modernist Madonna, 1.
23.
Ibid., 2.
24.
Hill, Mothering Modernity, 3–4.
25.
Ibid., 4.
26.
Ibid., 6.
27.
Schlossman, Objects of Desire, 3.
28.
A salient example is the comprehensive series The History of British Women’s Writing, especially Volumes 7 (1880–1920), 8 (1920–1945), and 9 (1945–1975).
29.
Heilmann and Beetham, “Introduction,” New Woman Hybridities, 1.
30.
Patterson, “Introduction,” The American New Woman Revisited, 2.
31.
Heilmann, “Introduction,” Feminist Forerunners, 2.
32.
Gilman, Women and Economics, 64–65.
33.
Ibid., 65–66.
34.
Ibid., 67.
35.
Welter, Dimity Convictions, 21.
36.
Ibid., 21.
37.
Ardis, New Women, New Novels, 1.
38.
Ibid., 21.
39.
Kerber, Women of the Republic, 11.
40.
Ibid., 12.
41.
Ibid., 228.
42.
Pykett, The ‘Improper Feminine,’ 12
43.
Ibid., 16.
44.
Ibid., 12.
45.
Ibid., 13.
46.
Rich, Of Woman Born, 13.
47.
Ibid., 14.
48.
McMahon, “My Own Dear Sons,” 192–93.
49.
Ibid., 194.
50.
Rosenman and Klaver, “Introduction,” Other Mothers, 2.
51.
Ledger, The New Woman, 64.
52.
Ibid., 68–69.
53.
Ibid., 64.
54.
Tate, Domestic Allegories, 3–4.
55.
Ibid., 7–8.
56.
Ibid., 5.
57.
Stavney, “Mothers of Tomorrow,” 538.
58.
Ibid., 538–39.
59.
Quoted in ibid., 539.
60.
Ibid., 539.
61.
Berg, Mothering the Race, 9.
62.
Ibid., 17–18.
63.
Rosenman and Klaver, “Introduction,” Other Mothers, 1.
64.
Ibid., 9.
65.
Ibid., 9.
66.
Ibid., 11.
67.
Ibid., 19.
68.
Ibid.,12.
69.
Heilmann, New Woman Fiction, 22.
70.
Pykett, The ‘Improper Feminine,’ 5.
71.
Quoted in Tusan, “Inventing the New Woman,” 169.
72.
Tusan, “Inventing the New Woman, 169–70.
73.
Ibid., 170–71.
74.
Grand, “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,” 30.
75.
Ibid., 33.
76.
Ibid., 34, 30.
77.
Ouida, “The New Woman,” 36.
78.
Ibid., 38–39.
79.
Tusan, “Inventing the New Woman,” 175.
80.
Ibid., 175.
81.
Willis, “Heaven Defend Me,” 56–57.
82.
Patterson, “Introduction,” The American New Woman Revisited, 5.
83.
Ibid., 1–2.
84.
Schaffer, “Nothing But Foolscap and Ink,” 39.
85.
Willis, “Heaven Defend Me,” 54.
86.
Fawcett, “Romance, Glamour and the Exotic,” 145–46.
87.
Patterson, “Introduction,” The American New Woman Revisited, 2.
88.
See Fluhr 243; Ledger and Luckhurst (“The New Woman”) 75–76.
89.
Heilmann, New Woman Fiction, 1. She borrows the phrase “sexual anarchy” from Showalter, Sexual Anarchy.
90.
Ledger, The New Woman, 5.
91.
Heilmann, New Woman Fiction, 2.
92.
Ledger, The New Woman, 11.
93.
Ibid., 10.
94.
Ledger, The New Woman, 3–4.
95.
Schaffer, “Nothing But Foolscap and Ink,” 45.
96.
Ibid., 49.
97.
Heilmann, New Woman Fiction, 5.
98.
For example, the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act (1857); the Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882); Cambridge University women’s colleges Girton (1869) and Newnhan (1871) and Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville (1879); suffrage campaigns (1860s on); birth control pamphlets (late-nineteenth century on).
99.
Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 8.
100.
Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 4.
101.
Ibid., 9–10.
102.
Ibid., 4–5.
103.
Cott traces the rise of the specific “woman movement” (3), a term I likewise employ; I use “women’s movements” when referring to more general and diverse forms of collective activism.
104.
Ibid., 16.
105.
Ibid., 18–19.
106.
Ibid., 20.
107.
Ibid., 13–14.
108.
Ibid., 49.
109.
Marsden, “Notes of the Week,” 3.
110.
Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 22.
111.
Ibid., 22.
112.
Ibid., 15.
113.
Ibid 15; Kenton, “Feminism,” 17.
114.
Kenton, “Feminism,” 17.
115.
Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 8.
116.
Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World, 2.
117.
Ibid., 6.
118.
Ibid., 29.
119.
Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 8.
120.
Ibid., 1, 2.
121.
Ibid., 13.
122.
Ibid., 63.
123.
Davis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 314.
124.
Gilman, “As to ‘Feminism,’” 45.
125.
Gilman, Women and Economics, 246.
126.
Ibid., 16–17.
127.
Ibid., 62.
128.
Ibid., 148. The Gibson Girl refers to the pen-and-ink drawings made by Charles Dana Gibson (1867–1944), American illustrator. As described by Patterson, “Tall, distant, elegant, and white, with a pert nose, voluminous upswept hair, corseted waist, and large bust, the Gibson Girl offered a popular version of the New Woman that both sanctioned and undermined women’s desire for progressive sociopolitical change and personal freedom” at the fin de siècle (“Introduction” 3). Mary, the Duchess of Tower, is the New Woman protagonist of George du Maurier’s novel Peter Ibbetson (1891).
129.
Ibid., 178–79.
130.
Gilman, “The New Motherhood,” 609.
131.
Key, The Woman Movement, 173.
132.
Ibid.,176.
133.
Ibid., 181.
134.
Ibid., 197.
135.
Ibid., 200.
136.
Schreiner, Woman and Labour, np.
137.
Quoted in Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 63.
138.
Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 63.
139.
Anthony, “Diary.”
140.
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 7.
141.
The speech was published posthumously in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, 1942. Citing this talk, Maroula Joannou states: “Organizations such as the London and National Society for Women’s Service which sought to further the employment of women were important to those wishing to establish careers for themselves in the professions of medicine, teaching, the law, journalism, and local government” (“Introduction” 10).
142.
Woolf, “Professions for Women,” 236–237.
143.
Ibid., 237, 238.
144.
Ibid., 241.
145.
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 122.
146.
Allen notes that between 1880 and 1930, “birthrates declined in England by 52%” (11). Moreover, “A task that in the nineteenth century had consumed much of a woman’s adult life was now compressed into a much shorter period: the number of children born to the average British woman had decreased from six in the mid-nineteenth century to about two a century later, and time spent in pregnancy and lactation fell from fifteen to four years” (14).
147.
Wilson, Conceived in Modernism, 11.
148.
Ibid., 10.
149.
Craig, When Sex Changed, 5.
150.
Ibid., 15–16.
151.
Ibid., 10.
152.
Turda, Modernism and Eugenics, 19.
153.
Craig, When Sex Changed, 13.
154.
“The New Motherhood,” 610.
155.
Key, The Woman Movement, 187.
156.
Ibid., 177.
157.
Ibid., 192.
158.
Grand, “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,” 34.
159.
Richardson and Willis, “Introduction,” The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact, 13.
160.
Ledger, The New Woman, 18.
161.
Quoted in Berg, Mothering the Race, 1.
162.
Berg, Mothering the Race, 1.
163.
Ibid., 2.
164.
Ibid., 110.
165.
Stott, “‘Scaping the Body,” 150.
166.
Ibid., 151.
167.
Quoted in Stavney, “Mothers of Tomorrow,” 537.
168.
Berg, Mothering the Race, 6.
169.
Ibid., 146 note # 6.

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Department of English, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Elizabeth Podnieks

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Podnieks, E. (2022). The New Woman, New Modernisms, and New Motherhoods. In: Maternal Modernism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08911-4_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08911-4_2
Published: 02 December 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-08910-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-08911-4
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