Beatrice Hastings, as Alice Morning, contributes another installment of "Impressions of Paris," and as usual, it is the most interesting piece in this particular issue of The New Age. She dips into the surrealist mode that she used in stories between 1910-13, and which appears only occasionally in "Impressions." I think she's describing the struggles of having a maidservant (remember, Hastings wrote a column on how to live without servants a while back), but she figures her servant as a "patent doll that boils your tea-kettle" (611). It's not Hastings' finest moment, but it gives her space to pivot and reflect on the war and feminism, an intriguing glimpse into the past: " Do not expect any thoughts from me. I am become simply a suffering receptacle of the horrid comedy of things. The battle of a mechanised, over-feminised world against itself leaves me without any other excuse for existence." War, mechanized and over-feminized? One, but not the other, has become a cliche. I believe that for Hastings, feminized is equivalent to emotional, and the nominal manliness of the emotion doesn't exonerate it from being feminine, as opposed to intellectual. It's an old and invalid train of thought, and I wonder what her career would have been like if she had managed to avoid it.
She then pauses to look back at the suffrage movement, seemingly nostalgically:
"Only to think how, two or three years ago, nothing had a banner to its name save the Rights of Women, and now we are thankful to be out of reach of violation and slaughter ! Just when we were on the Point of leading men to Glory, getting the vote and putting everything right- just there and then they went frantic and spoiled it all. And they may very well stay frantic for another thirty years, settling what’s what and who’s who among themselves, while the real question as to who shall decide about vaccinating little Johnnie is left without a man behind it! And here is a case of one of those curious, bungling, partial conditions of Nature: it needs a man even to decide who shall decide. If Papa decide that Mamma shall decide, Mamma will decide; but if Papa decide to decide, Papa will decide."
The men have brushed aside the struggle for women's rights, which has revealed the unshakable patriarchy controlling the system. Hastings, who has been a collaborator with the patriarchy for years now, seems yet to see the tragedy of this system.
Turning abruptly to the lighthearted (and mean-spirited), TNA satirizes The Egoist's announcement of Pound's College of the Arts from last November's Egoist. In a similar announcement, it is dubbed "The College of Tea-hearts," where one can get instruction from Mr. Pound-Cake in the Cake Atelier, among other confectionery's delights. Check it at page 619.
Similarly, intellectual woman artists get satirized in "The Confessions of a Solitary Traveler," nominally by Anastasia Edwardes. It's probably a satire of someone in particular--but who, I'm not sure. She goes to the beach with Dostoyevsky and Hume, but ends up getting seduced by a man who buys her candy. The form, content, and boots lead me to guess that the author is actually Beatrice Hastings.
Quick Notes:
The issue has several anti-American articles. Not allies yet.
"Letters to a Trade Unionist" describes how clerks have shifted their alliance from the management to the proletariat and the unions.
Sol Davis's "The Mad City" is a transparent allegory of the war in Europe, told as a brawl between neighbors. Not that great
"Readers and Writers" complains of a press boycott, accusing the London publishers, except Macmillan, of ceasing to send him books to review. He also praises The Yale Review as the best magazine America has produced.
Llewelyn Powys contributes a story set in British East Africa, titled "Rubbish," about the tragedies of Africans under British colonialism. The story doesn't escape its own racism and sentimentality, but it fits into the genre of abolitionist writing turned to the colonial situation.
Lastly, I noticed a strange letter under the pseudonym "Ignotus Quondam" on why England might be better off losing the war. This is pretty radical, for the time and place.
Showing posts with label antifeminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antifeminism. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
The New Age, March 11 1915
Hello all: I skipped an issue of The New Age because none of my favorite authors appeared in it, and a lot of it was saddening or offensive--but if you are looking for patronizing antifeminism from the time period, do take a gander at March 4 for the first installment of Maurice Rickett's "Women in a Guild Socialist State." Unfortunately many of the arguments are very familiar and still alive.
"It is no secret to the foreign Press that large forces of French and British troops have been landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, and that the Greek army is mobilising for a march on Constantinople as soon as the Dardanelles are forced... it will be seen that the attack on the Dardanelles is probably the happiest solution of the problem which could have been devised... There will be the minimum loss of
life; the minimum destruction of property" (S. Verdad, 500).
The battle of Gallipoli has begun. This issue of The New Age is an almost-unbelievable testament to British confidence at the beginning of the battle. Even Marmaduke Pickthall, the unabashedly pro-Turkish writer at The New Age, seems to have given up on the Turkish Empire, hoping instead that Turkey preserves an independent state ("The Fate of Turkey," 503).
For his part, the military adviser Romney (never a favorite of mine) takes a cheap shot at his co-contributor: "Before long, one may hope, the fall of Constantinople will have given Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall something to cry about" (501).
Of course, they are all wrong. The campaign will last until next January, and fail, killing half a million people in the process.
Quick notes:
B. Hastings contributes another "Impression of Paris" as Alice Morning. The funniest moment comes when she is explaining that she's moved, rented out three rooms for herself, which is one too many. The extra room has become The Necropolis: "If anyone coming over here would bring me a parcel or two from THE NEW AGE office, I would reward them with a cup of tea and a view of my third room, the Necropolis, where I put masterpieces of dead art, and volumes of vers libre and Imagism, and yesterday’s milk bottle" (507).
And, under the heading of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, R.H.C. (presumably Orage) ends his "Readers and Writers" column with the below. Oh, for a vorticism-producing machine! Something went off deep in my memory, sending me to Ann Ardis' Modernism and Cultural Conflict, where I found that she discusses this passage on pages 167-8.
"It is no secret to the foreign Press that large forces of French and British troops have been landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, and that the Greek army is mobilising for a march on Constantinople as soon as the Dardanelles are forced... it will be seen that the attack on the Dardanelles is probably the happiest solution of the problem which could have been devised... There will be the minimum loss of
life; the minimum destruction of property" (S. Verdad, 500).
The battle of Gallipoli has begun. This issue of The New Age is an almost-unbelievable testament to British confidence at the beginning of the battle. Even Marmaduke Pickthall, the unabashedly pro-Turkish writer at The New Age, seems to have given up on the Turkish Empire, hoping instead that Turkey preserves an independent state ("The Fate of Turkey," 503).
For his part, the military adviser Romney (never a favorite of mine) takes a cheap shot at his co-contributor: "Before long, one may hope, the fall of Constantinople will have given Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall something to cry about" (501).
Of course, they are all wrong. The campaign will last until next January, and fail, killing half a million people in the process.
Quick notes:
B. Hastings contributes another "Impression of Paris" as Alice Morning. The funniest moment comes when she is explaining that she's moved, rented out three rooms for herself, which is one too many. The extra room has become The Necropolis: "If anyone coming over here would bring me a parcel or two from THE NEW AGE office, I would reward them with a cup of tea and a view of my third room, the Necropolis, where I put masterpieces of dead art, and volumes of vers libre and Imagism, and yesterday’s milk bottle" (507).
And, under the heading of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, R.H.C. (presumably Orage) ends his "Readers and Writers" column with the below. Oh, for a vorticism-producing machine! Something went off deep in my memory, sending me to Ann Ardis' Modernism and Cultural Conflict, where I found that she discusses this passage on pages 167-8.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
The New Age, October 30 1913
Highlights from this issue include:
Romney claims that the thing about modern armies is that they are good at having conclusive battles: "Almost as soon it becomes apparent that one side or the other is about to win, and Fortune, no longer fickle, seldom gives the under dog a chance to recover himself" (781). Hindsight makes his constant bloody-mindedness ridiculous. See also his descriptions of how airship combat might change all this. Very steampunk.
M. B. Oxon. contributes an interesting review of Jessie Weston's book The Quest of the Holy Grail, which from his description seems to be a version of the Waste Land-inspiring (or was it?) From Ritual to Romance (on page 790). Oxon's mystical critique of the book claims that Weston doesn't go back far enough, as the source for the grail legends is probably older than vegetation rituals. He's wink-wink nudge-nudging toward the fantastic. Anyway, I think Eliot would have been intrigued by the general goal of the review, which is to claim that materialism hasn't taken over at all.
There are, of course, lots of other things in the issue, but I'm going to finish this post with a few letters to the editor.
First, there's a clutch of the sort that praise The New Age and make it sound powerful, always written in the same New Age-y tone, almost as if Orage wrote all of them. The letter from repetition of his suggestion that the "National Guild" articles be bound as a book (made by Orage, who I think wrote the articles, while under pseudonym) by one "W.L." is suspect, especially as the letter does not refer to the earlier article at all. Hmm.
J.M. Kennedy and TNA continue their feud, with Kennedy asking for an apology before he will respond (and getting one, albeit a backhanded one).
Anti-feminism galore in the letter by Pallister Barkas, another pseudonym, naturally. Sorry I'm in conspiracy theory mode.
All for now...
Romney claims that the thing about modern armies is that they are good at having conclusive battles: "Almost as soon it becomes apparent that one side or the other is about to win, and Fortune, no longer fickle, seldom gives the under dog a chance to recover himself" (781). Hindsight makes his constant bloody-mindedness ridiculous. See also his descriptions of how airship combat might change all this. Very steampunk.
M. B. Oxon. contributes an interesting review of Jessie Weston's book The Quest of the Holy Grail, which from his description seems to be a version of the Waste Land-inspiring (or was it?) From Ritual to Romance (on page 790). Oxon's mystical critique of the book claims that Weston doesn't go back far enough, as the source for the grail legends is probably older than vegetation rituals. He's wink-wink nudge-nudging toward the fantastic. Anyway, I think Eliot would have been intrigued by the general goal of the review, which is to claim that materialism hasn't taken over at all.
There are, of course, lots of other things in the issue, but I'm going to finish this post with a few letters to the editor.
First, there's a clutch of the sort that praise The New Age and make it sound powerful, always written in the same New Age-y tone, almost as if Orage wrote all of them. The letter from repetition of his suggestion that the "National Guild" articles be bound as a book (made by Orage, who I think wrote the articles, while under pseudonym) by one "W.L." is suspect, especially as the letter does not refer to the earlier article at all. Hmm.
J.M. Kennedy and TNA continue their feud, with Kennedy asking for an apology before he will respond (and getting one, albeit a backhanded one).
Anti-feminism galore in the letter by Pallister Barkas, another pseudonym, naturally. Sorry I'm in conspiracy theory mode.
All for now...
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
The New Age, August 14 1913
This issue of The New Age contains the first protest against anti-Semitism that I have come across in my explorations, "The Folly of Anti-Semitism" by one of the editors (Orage, presumably?), starting on page 449. It's very disturbing, and very revealing, how much the author has to hedge their position. The main thrust of the piece is to discredit the Jewish international finance conspiracy theory, and further to discredit the idea that Jews have more money than is proportionate to their population. So far, so good. The author also defends Jewish intellectual culture, particularly their left-wing, to which The New Age is (at the moment) claiming alliance.
But then the bad: there's a lot of very-vintage backpedaling about "intermixture" and "purity of blood and spirit." This isn't shocking. I almost wrote about it in my piece on Rebecca West's "At Valladolid," (The New Freewoman, August 1)--but there's a throw-away aside in that story that has the narrator casually say, "We hate the Jews because of their habit of evaluation," going on to explain that Englishfolks are just as bad (67). Stuck in my craw. West has the fictioneer's excuse that she's writing characters and not her own views, but it says something about the audience. I remember a professor of mine during my undergraduate schooling telling the class that Pound was somewhat of a scapegoat--he was attacked by people who felt guilty for his public airing of their private thoughts. That seems likely, definitely possible, if not grounds for excuse.
At any rate, I'm glad The New Age has at least taken steps to combat the more-obviously-bullshit conspiracy theories then current.
Other moments:
I love it when the journals I read give me a shout-out. This time, Orage published the financials of The New Age "published, not as an appeal, but as a record for posterity, how soon to arrive I do not know" (458). They're losing one thousand pounds a year, pretty tough.
They also review John Gould Fletcher's Fool's Gold. Remember last New Age, when I was surprised to see him outright panned? They're just as surprised to really like his second book, going so far as to accuse the publisher of delaying the first one too long. So he's redeemed.
Satirical poet P. Selver makes fun of the vogue for villanelles, by writing a crappy one about villanelles. Ha.
There's a great surrealist urban short story by Arthur Thorne, "A Modern Metamorphosis," on page 466. I won't give away what the "organism" is--maybe I should have figured it out sooner, but I was happy when the moment of recognition came.
Beatrice Hastings, alas, continues "Feminism and Common Sense." This week's concern: how the decay of English hospitality has made it difficult to marry off daughters. Complete with totally square anger over dance parties.
But then the bad: there's a lot of very-vintage backpedaling about "intermixture" and "purity of blood and spirit." This isn't shocking. I almost wrote about it in my piece on Rebecca West's "At Valladolid," (The New Freewoman, August 1)--but there's a throw-away aside in that story that has the narrator casually say, "We hate the Jews because of their habit of evaluation," going on to explain that Englishfolks are just as bad (67). Stuck in my craw. West has the fictioneer's excuse that she's writing characters and not her own views, but it says something about the audience. I remember a professor of mine during my undergraduate schooling telling the class that Pound was somewhat of a scapegoat--he was attacked by people who felt guilty for his public airing of their private thoughts. That seems likely, definitely possible, if not grounds for excuse.
At any rate, I'm glad The New Age has at least taken steps to combat the more-obviously-bullshit conspiracy theories then current.
Other moments:
I love it when the journals I read give me a shout-out. This time, Orage published the financials of The New Age "published, not as an appeal, but as a record for posterity, how soon to arrive I do not know" (458). They're losing one thousand pounds a year, pretty tough.
They also review John Gould Fletcher's Fool's Gold. Remember last New Age, when I was surprised to see him outright panned? They're just as surprised to really like his second book, going so far as to accuse the publisher of delaying the first one too long. So he's redeemed.
Satirical poet P. Selver makes fun of the vogue for villanelles, by writing a crappy one about villanelles. Ha.
There's a great surrealist urban short story by Arthur Thorne, "A Modern Metamorphosis," on page 466. I won't give away what the "organism" is--maybe I should have figured it out sooner, but I was happy when the moment of recognition came.
Beatrice Hastings, alas, continues "Feminism and Common Sense." This week's concern: how the decay of English hospitality has made it difficult to marry off daughters. Complete with totally square anger over dance parties.
Friday, July 26, 2013
The New Age, July 17, 1913
I'm only going to report on Beatrice Hastings's editorial, "Feminism and Common-Sense." This is a recurring series of letters, and though it is good to have Hastings back, it's always depressing when she writes about feminism. Her thesis: the establishment feminists are attacking prostitutes because of the decline in the marriage rate, not for moral reasons (remember the White Slave stuff?). But it's not the prostitutes that are lowering the marriage rate--it's loose women who sleep around and try to be "pals" with men instead of getting married. Note how Hastings rails against herself. The fundamental flaw in her argument is that she takes it for granted that men will only marry virgins, though she acknowledges this as a disaster: "the unchangeable little tragedy is that the average man considers a temporarily loose woman a confirmed loose woman... wheras she is liable to prove an immaculate monogamist" (343). The solution? A capitulation before nature, a return to "virtue" by which she means sexy feminine mystique: "Mrs. Humphrey Ward was lately jeered at in 'Votes for Women' as suggesting a return to the poke bonnets and flounces, but a woman in a poke bonnet and flounces was a charming mystery... I should say that the craft of wearing clothes is pretty well lost to-day: we are all too busy putting them on!"
Of course, Beatrice Hastings was a fiercely independent woman who was "loose" enough to cut notches in her bed for every man who slept in it. The contrast is intense, almost too much. I am fascinated by Hastings--her rough start in life may be leading her to warn women away from her own path, a path that I tend to read as liberated? More on this as it develops.
Of course, Beatrice Hastings was a fiercely independent woman who was "loose" enough to cut notches in her bed for every man who slept in it. The contrast is intense, almost too much. I am fascinated by Hastings--her rough start in life may be leading her to warn women away from her own path, a path that I tend to read as liberated? More on this as it develops.
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