The New Woman - April Poetry

 What is now called the first wave of feminism occurred in a period that stretched from my great-great grandmothers' days to my grandmother’s childhood, a period from 1848 to 1920. The second wave occurred during my lifetime, starting in 1963, according to historians, through the 1980s. I remember when a woman mail carrier was such a novelty that it made the news, and led to a discussion between my mother, sister and I  – what were we going to call a woman who delivered the mail? A mailwoman? 

This 1895 illustration in the Chicago Tribune reflected fears of women dominating and emasculating men as they pressed for changing roles that did not limit them exclusively to the home.

     I remember being presented with a choice: being a wife and mother, or being a career woman. “Career woman” was often said with a sneer. This was a selfish choice, my friend's mother told us at age eleven. A woman could possibly, maybe, work and be married with children, but only as long as she stuck to the traditional women’s jobs - secretary, teacher, nurse, librarian, social worker, dietician. But then – those were jobs, not careers, right? And that was only if she absolutely had to out of economic necessity, like a disabled husband.

     For the record, my mother told her daughters we could be anything we wanted to be. She would helpfully point out a few women in town who had nontraditional “career” jobs - a city planner, perhaps, a professor of geology. But somehow, they were always single and childless, and so I continued to see it as a choice – have a love life and a family, or have an exciting career.

     During both of these “waves,” there was a lot of sneering and anger towards those who pushed for change. Women who wanted a wider role in the world or who had the audacity to suggest that legal rights should apply equally to women, or that women should receive the same pay for comparable work were “unsexed,” to use a word from the nineteenth century. In the second wave, they were derided as “women’s libbers.” This was said in such a derogatory tone that in newspaper article after article women who were the first females in any job typically said during interviews, “I’m not a womans libber but…” (Incidentally, I read dozens of articles from around the U.S. from about 1962 to 1972 reporting on the first women mail carriers in as many communities. Often men in supervisory positions were quoted saying it was a job women couldn’t possibly do. Carrying a 30-pound mailbag and driving a truck? Working outdoors in cold weather? Impossible.)

     To be pro-women’s rights in either era meant that one had to be an unattractive, unfeminine man hater, a sour old maid who just hadn’t managed to “catch” a man – or so its opponents claimed. In the Cult of Femininity of the nineteenth century, she wasn’t a True Woman. In the first wave, it especially meant that she wanted to emasculate men. What was next? She would speak in public – want to vote, go to college and ride a bicycle! She’d want to wear pants and have her husband help with housework and care for the baby! This became known as the New Woman. There were fears that this independent creature would no longer need men, and wouldn’t choose to be with them. 

    Poetry, which was so popular in the decades before World War II, reflected these concerns and controversies. So this month, here is a collection of nineteenth century newspaper poetry about this New Woman.        

This 1895 cartoon from the Chicago Chronicle presented a man's worst nightmare: the New Woman. They are wearing pants, riding bicycles, and carrying signs saying things like, "Marry me -- I'll reform you. Stop smoking. Quit the club. Stay home nights. Stop swearing. Love your mother-in-law. Nurse the baby." Most of the women are depicted as unattractive.

“When Women Vote,” Buffalo News, 23 May 1894, p. 9. 

I’m going to the caucus John,

So don't you go away;

But cook must come, for I suspect

We’ll need her vote today.

Now when you’ve made the beds, John,

And dusted all the rooms,

Go out and do the marketing,

But don’t buy meat at Vroom's!

Last caucus Vroom’s wife bolted,

And nearly spoiled my plan

By voting with the Anti-Snaps

To nominate a man!

Now mind you, put the kettle on,

And baste the meat yourself

And don’t forget the baby, John –

His bottle’s on the shelf!

The paregoric’s on the stand,

Now John, mind what I say!

Ten drops in water every hour –

Come cook! There, John, good day!

                   — New York Evening Sun

(Paregoric was one of the common patent medicines of the era, a tincture of opium. It was most commonly given to children, and most often for coughs and to rub on gums of teething babies. It could be purchased without a prescription at drugstores until 1970. It is still available with a prescription.)

"The Girl of '94," The Coffeyville Daily Journal, 7 Nov 1894, p. 2.

She can sing a ballad sweetly

And can fascinate completely,

With a look.

She can dance a waltz divinely

And can entertain you finely.

Can she cook?

She can write a poem esthetic,

And recite it so pathetic

That you weep.

To the women suffrage question

She has given much reflection.

Can she sweep?

But in spite of her endeavor

To become a maiden clever,

She's so sweet

That my heart she's fairly captured,

And I lay it down enraptured

At her feet.

"What Will She Do?" The Rising Sun (Sun River, Montana), 12 June 1895, p. 3.

The coming woman – will she leave

Her seat and offer it 

Unto a man who boards the car

And has no place to sit?

Or will she read a newspaper 

And fumble with her wrap

Ungallantly permitting him

To hang upon a strap?

      –From the Kansas City Journal

“Done Up In Rhyme. The Whole Problem,” The Chicago Chronicle, 4 August 1995, p. 24. 

When women cease to cuddle cats

And faint at sight of mice and rats;

When ‘neath the bed they cease to peer

In very agony of fear

Of burglars, bogies and what-not;

When they have learned an awful lot

About live issues of today,

When they the laws of sense obey;

When all the dears can reason, then,

Perhaps we may dispense with men.

When women can, without a row,

Discuss the thing to do and how;

When they will organize and stick

Throughout the thin as well as thick,

To resolutions duly passed,

And not demand the vote recast;

When jealousy has ceased to rule,

When they’ve adopted Reason’s school,

Perhaps they may dispense with men,

When that time comes, but not till then. 

Monsey, Mabel H. “The New Woman,” Western Rural and Livestock Weekly, 30 July 1896, p. 18.

What will the New Woman do?

Why, she’ll chop wood, of course;

She’ll get up and build the fires

And will also harness the horse.

She’ll plow the fields; sow the seeds,

And plant potatoes too,

In fact she’ll show to you and me

Just what a woman can do. 

She’ll become a dusky miner

Working underground,

Or as a jolly mariner, she’ll sail the world around.

She’ll dig the ditches that drain our land,

And milk the cows, too, understand. 

But this is what most puzzles me–

How she’ll kill a pig I cannot see;

And how can she cut off a chicken’s head

Or wring its neck until it's dead?

To me it would be a much prettier sight

To see her queen of the home so bright–

See her face aglow with mother love,

Her voice as gentle as a dove

As she softly sings her lullaby

To her baby girl or darling boy;

There’s no place in the world 

for the New Woman, I say —

In the end, the true woman will win the day. 

McKusick, Mrs. H.N. “Hail To the Woman So Proudly Advancing,” The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), 19 June 1904, p. 41. 

Hail to the woman so proudly advancing,

Eager for conquest to do or to dare

Peerless and fearless and blithely entrancing,

Bright as a sunbeam and free as the air

Silken and jeweled and highly resplendent;

Robed like a princess or garbed like a nun,

Lofty or lowly serenely transcendent;

Ready for anything under the sun.

     Four similarly effusive stanzas follow, with the noble woman routing evil in the world, using the moral superiority that women were assumed to have to improve the problems in society. She was still gentle and womanly, ruling as queen of the home, but “moving the world with her voice and her pen.”

     The poem concludes with this stanza:

Hail to this brave, irrepressible sister –

Type of a new and imperial race!

Potent and dauntless, we cannot resist her –

Claiming her birthright and taking her place.

Latter day heroine, blessings upon her!

Strength to her arms till her foes are undone!

Greet her and welcome her and crown her with honor.

Bid her Godspeed till her battles are won!

Sources:

MacPike, Loralei. “The New Woman, Childbearing and the Reconstruction of Gender 1880-1900,” NWSA Journal, Vol. 1 No. 3 (Spring 1989), pp. 368-397.