The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article to refer to independent women seeking radical change. In response the English writer Ouida (Maria Louisa Ramé) used the term as the title of a follow-up article. The term was further popularized by British-American writer Henry James , who used it to describe the growth in the number of feminist, educated, independent career women in Europe and the United States. The New Woman pushed the limits set by a male-dominated society. Independence was not simply a matter of the mind; it also involved physical changes in activity and dress, as activities such as bicycling expanded women's ability to engage with a broader, more active world.
186-904: Writer Henry James was among the authors who popularized the term "New Woman," a figure who was represented in the heroines of his novels—among them the title character of the novella Daisy Miller (serialized 1878) and Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady (serialized 1880–81). According to historian Ruth Bordin, the term New Woman was: intended by [James] to characterize American expatriates living in Europe: women of affluence and sensitivity, who despite or perhaps because of their wealth exhibited an independent spirit and were accustomed to acting on their own. The term New Woman always referred to women who exercised control over their own lives be it personal, social, or economic. Peggy Meyer Sherry notes in her article: "Telling Her Story: British Women of Letters of
372-428: A women's activist , educator and dress reformer, found traditional kimono to be too restrictive, preventing women and girls from moving and taking part in physical activities, harming their health. While Western dress was being adopted at the time, she also believed corsets to be restrictive and harmful to women's health. Utako Shimoda had worked as lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōken from 1871 to 1879. She adapted
558-403: A Chinese woman receiving an education out of interest is an anomaly of the time. The second is marital status. Kahn never married and instead devoted her life to the cause of medicine and healing others. Kahn remained single her whole life, breaking away from the tradition of marrying and establishing a family. Lastly, Kahn worked as a physician for the majority of her life. Kahn devoted her life to
744-640: A book claiming that only clothing made of animal hair, such as wool, promoted health. A British accountant named Lewis Tomalin translated the book, then opened a shop selling Dr Jaeger's Sanitary Woollen System, including knitted wool union suits. These were soon called "Jaegers"; they were widely popular. It is not clear how many women, in either the Americas or on the Continent , wore these so-called "reform" bodices. However, contemporary portrait photography , fashion literature , and surviving examples of
930-581: A central figure of the dress reform movement. Sweden was a leading nation of the dress reform movement, as the movement came first to Sweden of all the Nordic countries and spread from there to Denmark, Finland and Norway. In 1885, professor Curt Wallis brought with him the English language dress reform book Dress and Health from abroad, which was translated to Swedish by Oscara von Sydow as Reformdrägten: En bok för qvinnor skrifven af qvinnor . After
1116-818: A commentary of the Swedish dress reform movement in which he himself also participated; the Swedish dress reform society successfully exhibited their reform dress in Oslo, the Norsk Kvinnesaksforening became interested, and the movement thereby started in Norway the same year as in Sweden. Johanne Biörn held lectures in the Oslo schools, and the Norwegian designer Kristine Dahl experienced success not only in her home country of Norway but also in Sweden, becoming
1302-602: A cousin of the James family came down to the house in Fourteenth Street and, one evening during his stay, read the first instalment of David Copperfield aloud to the elders of the family: Henry Junior had sneaked down from his bedroom to listen surreptitiously to the reading, until a scene involving the Murdstones led him to "loud[ly] sob," whereupon he was discovered and sent back to bed. Between 1855 and 1860,
1488-616: A dramatisation of his popular novella Daisy Miller in 1882. From 1890 to 1892, having received a bequest that freed him from magazine publication, he made a strenuous effort to succeed on the London stage, writing a half-dozen plays, of which only one, a dramatisation of his novel The American , was produced. This play was performed for several years by a touring repertory company, and had a respectable run in London, but did not earn very much money for James. His other plays written at this time were not produced. In 1893, however, he responded to
1674-674: A freelance writer in Rome and then secured a position as Paris correspondent for the New York Tribune through the influence of its editor, John Hay . When these efforts failed, he returned to New York City. During 1874 and 1875, he published Transatlantic Sketches , A Passionate Pilgrim and Roderick Hudson . In 1875, James wrote for The Nation every week; he received anywhere from $ 3 to $ 10 for brief paragraphs, $ 12 to $ 25 for book reviews and $ 25 to $ 40 for travel articles and lengthier items. During this early period in his career, he
1860-401: A greater amount of social mobility. The feminist Annie Londonderry accomplished her around-the-globe bicycle trip during this decade, becoming the first woman to do so. Elizabeth Robins Pennell , who started her writing career with a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft , pioneered bicycle touring with her travelogues around England and Europe in the late nineteenth century. Due to the price and
2046-580: A handful of other male intellectuals, were the minority pushing for women’s involvement in society. Influenced heavily by the New Culture movement, which emphasised condemning the “slavish Confucian tradition which was known to sacrifice the individual for conformity and force rigid notions of subservience, loyalty, and female chastity," the New Woman who emerged in the 1910s were far less progressive than their later 1920s counterparts. New Women during
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#17327765074072232-461: A house, 58 West Fourteenth Street , in Manhattan. A painting of a view of Florence by Thomas Cole hung in the front parlor of this house on West Fourteenth. His education was calculated by his father to expose him to many influences, primarily scientific and philosophical; it was described by Percy Lubbock, the editor of his selected letters, as "extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous." Once,
2418-489: A joke by Max Beerbohm (1872–1956), "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain" (an allusion to the birth of Athena ). Bram Stoker 's Dracula makes prominent mention of the New Woman in its pages, with its two main female characters discussing the changing roles of women and the New Woman in particular. Lucy Westenra laments she can not marry several men at once, after she has been proposed to by three different men. Her friend, Mina, later writes in her diary that
2604-415: A largely English movement led by Mary Eliza Haweis sought dress reform to enhance and celebrate the natural shape of the body, preferring the looser lines of the medieval and renaissance eras. A historic nostalgia for more forgiving fashions, the aesthetic dress movement critiqued fashionable dress for its immovable shapes, and sought the 'fashioning and adorning of a robe' as tastefully complementary to
2790-482: A living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of prejudice that then and later accompanied suspicions of his homosexuality. Edmund Wilson compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's: One would be in
2976-806: A long visit, James refers jocularly to their "happy little congress of two". In letters to Hugh Walpole, he pursues convoluted jokes and puns about their relationship, referring to himself as an elephant who "paws you oh so benevolently" and winds about Walpole his "well-meaning old trunk". His letters to Walter Berry printed by the Black Sun Press have long been celebrated for their lightly veiled eroticism. However, James corresponded in equally extravagant language with his many female friends, writing, for example, to fellow novelist Lucy Clifford : "Dearest Lucy! What shall I say? when I love you so very, very much, and see you nine times for once that I see Others! Therefore I think that—if you want it made clear to
3162-416: A necessary physical structure for moral and well-ordered society, these dress reformists contested that women's fashions were not only physically detrimental, but "the results of male conspiracy to make women subservient by cultivating them in slave psychology." They believed a change in fashions could change the whole position of women, allowing for greater social mobility, independence from men and marriage,
3348-512: A new fashion for women which could be not only attractive but also comfortable and healthy at the same time. While there were no separate dress reform societies founded in Norway, the women's rights society Norsk Kvinnesaksforening actively addressed the issue under the influence of the Swedish Dress Reform Society from the 1880s; they collaborated with Stockholm and Copenhagen with the design of reform costumes and
3534-568: A number of weeks in Italy in 1887, and his shock and grief over her suicide in 1894, are discussed in detail in Edel's biography and play a central role in a study by Lyndall Gordon . Edel conjectured that Woolson was in love with James and killed herself in part because of his coldness, but Woolson's biographers have objected to Edel's account. James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from
3720-430: A once-familiar paradigm in biographies of homosexuals when direct evidence was nonexistent. Novick also criticised Edel for following the discounted Freudian interpretation of homosexuality "as a kind of failure." The difference of opinion erupted in a series of exchanges between Edel (and later Fred Kaplan filling in for Edel) and Novick, which were published by the online magazine Slate , with Novick arguing that even
3906-489: A position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century— Racine and Molière , whom he resembles in form as well as in point of view, and even Shakespeare , when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy , writers of melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like Balzac , nor prophets like Tolstoy : they are occupied simply with
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#17327765074074092-632: A reform of women's underwear, particularly the corset. The Swedish reform dress movement corresponded with their equivalent in Great Britain as well as the American dress reform movement of Annie Jenness Miller . The dress reform movement did achieve some success in Sweden; by the 1890s, corsets were no longer accepted for the pupils of the Swedish girls' schools, and the leading Swedish fashion designer Augusta Lundin reported that her clients no longer subjected themselves to tight lacing. Although
4278-609: A remote, pre-industrial land. Authors like Yu Kwang-Yeoul argued that the Korean masses were so “blinded by the glittering, seductive products” of Japan that they failed to recognize Japan’s “assault on Korea’s economy.” Criticisms of female consumerism also reveal men’s underlying fear of losing their status and social position, for women’s economic involvement challenged traditional gender roles and centuries of Confucian practice. Henry James Henry James OM ( ( 1843-04-15 ) 15 April 1843 – ( 1916-02-28 ) 28 February 1916)
4464-409: A repeated exposure of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest freedom of development, unimperiled by reckless and barbarous stupidity. Philip Guedalla jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James I, James II, and The Old Pretender," and observers do often group his works of fiction into three periods. In his apprentice years, culminating with
4650-573: A request from actor-manager George Alexander for a serious play for the opening of his renovated St. James's Theatre, and wrote a long drama, Guy Domville , which Alexander produced. A noisy uproar arose on the opening night, 5 January 1895, with hissing from the gallery when James took his bow after the final curtain, and the author was upset. The play received moderately good reviews and had a modest run of four weeks before being taken off to make way for Oscar Wilde 's The Importance of Being Earnest , which Alexander thought would have better prospects for
4836-663: A series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was engendered by James's shifting from writing to dictating to a typist, a change made during the composition of What Maisie Knew . In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work foreshadows extensive developments in 20th-century fiction. Indeed, he might have influenced stream-of-consciousness writers such as Virginia Woolf , who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them. Both contemporary and modern readers have found
5022-405: A serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives, while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin, who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art". James
5208-457: A ship and sneaked them through customs, allowing her to bury him in their family plot. James regularly rejected suggestions that he should marry, and after settling in London, proclaimed himself "a bachelor". F. W. Dupee , in several volumes on the James family, originated the theory that he had been in love with his cousin, Mary ("Minnie") Temple, but that a neurotic fear of sex kept him from admitting such affections: "James's invalidism ...
5394-568: A speech by Anne Charlotte Leffler held at the women's club Nya Idun , the Friends of Handicraft gave Hanna Winge the assignment to design a reform costume, which was produced by Augusta Lundin and exhibited in public, which gave further publicity to the issue, and in 1886, the Swedish Dress Reform Society was founded. After an initial attempt to launch a reform costume, the Swedish dress reform movement focused on
5580-598: A study by Na Kyong-Hui, more than 230 editorials on the “women question” appeared in the Choson Ilbo and the Tonga Ilbo, two of the most widely circulated newspapers during the colonial period, from 1920-1940. One of the main characteristics of Modern Girls criticized in these newspapers was New Women’s trend towards consumerism. Who who, unable to prioritize necessary items and exercise self-control in their shopping, wore expensive clothing beyond their means, perhaps to
5766-503: A stutter, which seems to have manifested itself only when he spoke English; in French, he did not stutter. In the summer of 1857, the James family went to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they set up house at No. 20 Rue Neuve Chaussée, and where Henry was a regular customer at an English lending library. In the autumn of that year, Henry Senior wrote from Boulogne to a friend that "Henry is not so fond of study, properly so-called, as of reading...He
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5952-438: A way to escape what they saw as the probabilities of male domination inherent in a heterosexual relationship". For others, it may have been the case that economic independence meant that they were not answerable to a guardian for their sexual or other relationship choices, and they exercised that new freedom. The New Woman was a result of the growing respectability of postsecondary education and employment for women who belonged to
6138-560: Is a devourer of libraries, and an immense writer of novels and dramas. He has considerable talent as a writer, but I am at a loss to know whether he will ever accomplish much." William recorded in a letter to their parents in Paris, while the boys were staying in Bonn, that Henry and Garth Wilkinson would wrestle "when study has made them dull and sleepy." In 1860, the family returned to Newport. There, Henry befriended Thomas Sergeant Perry , who
6324-459: Is exercised well or badly. His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary Theodora Bosanquet remarked in her monograph Henry James at Work : When he walked out of the refuge of his study and into the world and looked around him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of doomed, defenseless children of light ... His novels are
6510-400: Is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th-century fiction. Roderick Hudson (1875) is a Künstlerroman that traces the development of the title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted favourable comment due to
6696-464: Is no corset at all." The "emancipation union under flannel" was first sold in America in 1868. It combined a waist (shirt) and drawers (leggings) in the form we now know as the union suit . While first designed for women, the union suit was also adopted by men, and is still sold and worn today, by both men and women, as winter underclothing. In 1878, a German professor named Gustav Jaeger published
6882-511: Is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, The Portrait of a Lady is described as a psychological novel , exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science, exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds. The second period of James's career, which extends from
7068-462: Is that her boss lost her money on the stock market causing her to be put in a hard financial situation. The second reason, which Bryna Goodman believes to be most likely was that Xi's boss, whom she was having an affair with, asked her to be his concubine. As Margery Wolf points out, “suicide was considered a proper response for women whose honour had been tampered with”. This also relates to virtue, chastity, or rumours about either. In this case, Xi who
7254-580: Is the subject of contention among James's biographers, but the letters to Andersen were occasionally quasierotic: "I put, my dear boy, my arm around you, & feel the pulsation, thereby, as it were, of our excellent future & your admirable endowment." His numerous letters to the many young homosexual men among his close male friends are more forthcoming. To his homosexual friend Howard Sturgis , James could write: "I repeat, almost to indiscretion, that I could live with you. Meanwhile, I can only try to live without you." In another letter Sturgis, following
7440-443: Is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I don't think I regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth". The interpretation of James as living a less austere emotional life has been subsequently explored by other scholars. The often intense politics of Jamesian scholarship has also been the subject of studies. Author Colm Tóibín has said that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 's Epistemology of
7626-601: The New Youth journal, Chen Duxiu called for gender and family reforms and pushed for the emancipation of women and the dismantling of the restrictive Confucian family system. Chen, like other radical-minded male intellectuals of his time, believed “women’s equality to be the hallmark of a modern civilization” and the strength behind a nation. Thus “customs of concubinage , foot binding , widow chastity , and female seclusion”, from these male intellectual's view points, needed to be eliminated to allow women to freely participate in
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7812-660: The 54th Massachusetts . In 1864, the James family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to be near William, who had enrolled first in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and then in the medical school. In 1862, Henry attended Harvard Law School , but realised that he was not interested in studying law. He pursued his interest in literature and associated with authors and critics William Dean Howells and Charles Eliot Norton in Boston and Cambridge and formed lifelong friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ,
7998-526: The Atlantic Monthly . The novel was later published in book form in 1878. During a 14-month trip through Europe in 1869–70, he met John Ruskin , Charles Dickens , Matthew Arnold , William Morris , and George Eliot . Rome impressed him profoundly. "Here I am then in the Eternal City", he wrote to his brother William. "At last—for the first time—I live!" He attempted to support himself as
8184-488: The Ewha Womans University . The New Woman's Movement is often seen to be connected with the Korean magazine New Women ( Korean : 신여자 ; Hanja : 新女者 ; MR : Sin yŏja ), founded in 1920 by Kim Iryŏp , which included other key figures such as Na Hye-sŏk . Originally, the term ‘New Woman’ was associated with education, enlightenment, and social consciousness, while
8370-582: The Modern Girl , who also emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s, came to signify "commodified, glamorous, and individualist women". Each of these two types of women in China came to exemplify very different styles and beliefs. The New Woman both in literature and in real life were "associated with leftist and progressive intellectuals, equated with positive aspects of modernity" and seen as educated, political and nationalistic in her view points. The New Woman
8556-499: The New Woman magazine, noted how women wished to remain single and thus able to “pursue their own personal fulfilment and livelihood”, becoming “active participants in civic life”. Another New Woman writer, Ding Ling, by using fiction, wrote about the lives of women, their sexuality, and the “complications they faced making a life for themselves in a modernizing society”. Influenced by her single-mother, Ding Ling presented herself as
8742-541: The Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilisation that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive , and embody the virtues of the new American society—particularly personal freedom and a more exacting moral character. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power
8928-418: The early Republican period had to contend heavily with the ‘woman question’ a question regarding how to "address issues of modernity and the nation" and women's role in both. During this period, women's education was promoted, but as a tool to create women who would be equipped to “raise healthy and morally sound sons”, who would then help build a new China. So even though education was encouraged for women, it
9114-474: The " New York Edition ", a 24-volume collection of his works. In 1910, his brother William died; Henry had just joined William from an unsuccessful search for relief in Europe, on what turned out to be Henry's last visit to the United States (summer 1910 to July 1911) and was near him when he died. In 1913, he wrote his autobiographies, A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother . After
9300-474: The "future strength of the nation was the ultimate goal, and that women's rights were only a means" to meet that goal, not the end of it. Furthermore, the New Women of China during this time drew heavily on American and European literature, feminist movements, and female missionaries along with Japanese feminists and New Women too. Both Chinese men and women looked to the United States, which was believed to be
9486-516: The 1850s through the 1890s. The movement emerged in the Progressive Era along with calls for temperance , women's education, suffrage and moral purity. Dress reform called for emancipation from the "dictates of fashion", expressed a desire to "cover the limbs as well as the torso adequately," and promoted "rational dress". The movement had its greatest success in the reform of women's undergarments , which could be modified without exposing
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#17327765074079672-472: The 1880s was The Tragic Muse . Although he was following the precepts of Zola in his novels of the '80s, their tone and attitude are closer to the fiction of Alphonse Daudet. The lack of critical and financial success for his novels during this period led him to try writing for the theatre; His dramatic works and his experiences with theatre are discussed below. In the last quarter of 1889, "for pure and copious lucre," he started translating Port Tarascon ,
9858-602: The 1920s and 1930s to "exemplify familial and national devotion" however. With that said though, not everyone shared this sentiment. For example, during the late 1910s and early 1920s, the Ladies' Journal promoted ideas of individualism and romantic love relationships and marriages instead of arranged. Other writers believed a strong Chinese nation would arise only when "education, suffrage, social freedoms, and economic independence" were granted to women. Thus, while women seemed to gain more freedom in their choice or marriage partner and
10044-564: The 1920s, the New Woman's Movement arose among educated Korean women who protested the Confucian patriarchal tradition. During a period of Japanese imperialism , Christianity was seen as an impetus for Korean nationalism and had been involved in events such as the March 1st Movement of 1919 for independence. Hence, in contrast to many Western contexts, Christianity informed the ideals of Western feminism and women's education, especially through
10230-420: The 19th century, as it was an integrated part of the great health reform movement Lebensreform , which spoke for a health reform in clothing for both women and men supported by medical professionals and scientists such as Gustav Jaeger and Heinrich Lahmann , and freedom from the corset and trousers for women was advocated for already. The women's movement, however, did not engage in the issue until after
10416-423: The 27-year-old Andersen in Rome in 1899, when James was 56, and wrote letters to Andersen that are intensely emotional: "I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul". In a letter of 6 May 1904, to his brother William, James referred to himself as "always your hopelessly celibate even though sexagenarian Henry". How accurate that description might have been
10602-526: The Atlantic. It drew notice perhaps mostly because it depicted a woman whose behaviour is outside the social norms of Europe. He also began his first masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady , which appeared in 1881. In 1877, he first visited Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, home of his friend Charles Milnes Gaskell , whom he had met through Henry Adams. He was much inspired by the darkly romantic abbey and
10788-461: The Chinese state and its people. Kahn was later turned into a symbol of national reform by Liang Qichao who, noting the anomaly she posed as a female figure in China, morphed Kahn into a "central image of modernity". The 1920s to 1930s New Woman in China from the page to real life shared similarities and differences both with each other and with the early New Woman, Ida Kahn. For example, Ding Ling,
10974-530: The Closet made a landmark difference to Jamesian scholarship by arguing that he be read as a homosexual writer whose desire to keep his sexuality a secret shaped his layered style and dramatic artistry. According to Tóibín, such a reading "removed James from the realm of dead white males who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary." James's letters to expatriate American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen have attracted particular attention. James met
11160-526: The Cricket ", published in 1863. About a year later, " A Tragedy of Error ", his first short story, was published anonymously. James's first literary payment was for an appreciation of Sir Walter Scott's novels, written for the North American Review . He wrote fiction and nonfiction pieces for The Nation and Atlantic Monthly , where Fields was editor. In 1865, Ernest Lawrence Godkin ,
11346-455: The English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady . His later works, such as The Ambassadors , The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in
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#173277650740711532-442: The French writers that he had studied assiduously. Critical reaction and sales were poor. He wrote to Howells that the books had hurt his career rather than helped because they had "reduced the desire, and demand, for my productions to zero". During this time, he became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson , John Singer Sargent , Edmund Gosse , George du Maurier , Paul Bourget , and Constance Fenimore Woolson . His third novel from
11718-774: The International Women's Congress in Berlin in September 1896. Two weeks later the German dress reform association, Allgemeiner Verein zur Verbesserung der Frauenkleidung , was founded. Its first exhibition took place in April 1897 in Berlin. 35 manufacturers had submitted reform proposals. Since 1899 there was even a permanent exhibition in Berlin with examples of "improved women's clothing". Like their equivalents in Austria,
11904-513: The James household travelled to London, Paris, Geneva , Boulogne-sur-Mer , Bonn , and Newport, Rhode Island , according to the father's current interests and publishing ventures, retreating to the United States when funds were low. The James family arrived in Paris in July 1855 and took rooms at a hotel in the Rue de la Paix. Some time between 1856 and 1857, when William was fourteen and Henry thirteen,
12090-554: The Modern Girl as an embodiment of the transition from old traditions to new practices and recognized that, while the trend could focus on material consumption, New Women and Modern Girls also strove to cultivate a moral vision and higher knowledge. Nonetheless, the majority of representations of New Women and Modern Girls in mass media reduced them to caricatures with short hair, make-up, and Western clothing, while ignoring their strides in knowledge, skill, and identity. According to
12276-503: The Netherlands and the Nordic countries, the German dress reform association focused on the reform of women's undergarments as the most realistic goal, mainly on corsets. The German movement managed to affect public opinion to such a degree that one of its leading figures, Minna Cauer , was able to report in 1907 that the German corset industry experienced hardships because of a drop in the use of corsets. Utako Shimoda (1854-1936),
12462-475: The New Woman and their ideals began after the May Fourth Movement. While the movement emerged from the context of World War I ( Treaty of Versailles ), its new ideas regarding the economy, education, politics, and gender roles had a profound effect on the New Women in China and the direction of the movement. Where previous New Women during the early twentieth century had been influenced by women in
12648-533: The New Woman as a threat to traditional womanhood and the social order. The Church cited past accomplished Catholic women, including saints, to critique the New Woman. By citing those women, the Church also argued that it was the Church, not the New Woman movement, that offered women the best opportunities. Others also critiqued the New Woman for her implied sexual freedom and for her desire to participate in matters that are best left to men's judgment. As Cummings writes,
12834-432: The New Woman was accused of being "essentially uncatholic and anti-catholic". The New Woman of China began to emerge off of the pages of Chinese literature beginning mostly in the 1920s. However, ideas surrounding feminism , gender equality, and modernization began in China long before the 1920s New Woman emerged from its context. The New Woman of China and the movement itself went through various incarnations, changing with
13020-537: The New Woman would do the proposing herself. Feminist analyses of Dracula regard male anxiety about the Woman Question and female sexuality as central to the book. The term was used by writer Charles Reade in his novel A Woman Hater , originally published serially in Blackwood's Magazine and in three volumes in 1877. Of particular interest in the context are Chapters XIV and XV in volume two, which made
13206-630: The New Woman: Mary Heaton Vorse put her compromise this way: "I am trying for nothing so hard in my own personal life as how not to be respectable when married." It was clear in the novels of Henry James that however free his heroines felt to exercise their intellectual and sexual autonomy, they ultimately paid a price for their choices. Some admirers of the New Woman trend found freedom to engage in lesbian relationships through their networking in women's groups. It has been said that for some of them, "loving other women became
13392-628: The New York edition of The American , James describes the development of the story in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on the response of this wronged man. The Portrait of a Lady may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales, characters seem to exemplify alternative futures and possibilities, as most markedly in " The Jolly Corner ", in which
13578-661: The Rhode Island shore, at Portsmouth Grove ; he took walks and had conversations with numerous soldiers and in later years compared this experience to those of Walt Whitman as a volunteer nurse. In the autumn of 1861, James received an injury, probably to his back, while fighting a fire. This injury, which resurfaced at times throughout his life, made him unfit for military service in the American Civil War. His younger brothers Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, however, both served, with Wilkinson serving as an officer in
13764-481: The United States and Great Britain to the Nordic countries in the 1880s and from Germany to Austria and the Netherlands. The issue was internationally addressed at the International Congress for Women's Work and Women's Endeavors in Berlin 1896, in which Germany, America, Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Hungary participated. In Austria the dress reform movement
13950-413: The United States was participating in post-secondary education in larger numbers by the turn of the 20th century. Autonomy was a radical goal for women at the end of the 19th century. It was historically a truism that women were always legally and economically dependent on their husbands, male relatives, or social and charitable institutions. The emergence of education and career opportunities for women in
14136-481: The United States, Europe, and Japan, the New Women of China began during the 1920s to using their own stories and ideas as their inspiration. In this, while Western literary figures and writers such as Nora in Hendrik Ibsen 's A Doll's House (1879) still had massive popularity and influence, male and female writers of the time used these writings as templates but applied Chinese societal problems and themes to
14322-624: The United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka , Melville , and Bloy ; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James." James
14508-500: The Victorian Era": "[It was] Sarah Grand who invented the "New Woman," saw society as her laboratory and her novels as case studies." The "New Woman" was also a nickname given to Ella Hepworth Dixon , the English author of the novel The Story of a Modern Woman . Although the New Woman was becoming a more active participant in life as a member of society and the workforce, she was most often depicted exerting her autonomy in
14694-488: The Victorian dress reform movement itself failed to enact widespread change in women's fashion , social, political, and cultural shifts into the 1920s brought forth an organic relaxation of dress standards. With new opportunities for women's college , the national suffrage amendment of 1920 and women's increased public career options during and after World War I , fashion and undergarment structures relaxed, along with
14880-399: The Victorian era , any sexual activity outside of marriage was judged to be immoral. Divorce law changes during the late 19th century gave rise to a New Woman who could survive a divorce with her economic independence intact, and an increasing number of divorced women remarried. Maintaining social respectability while exercising legal rights still judged to be immoral by many was a challenge for
15066-426: The ability to work for wages, as well as physical movement and comfort. Dress reformers promoted the emancipation waist, or liberty bodice , as a replacement for the corset. The emancipation bodice was a tight sleeveless vest, buttoning up the front, with rows of buttons along the bottom to which could be attached petticoats and a skirt. The entire torso would support the weight of the petticoats and skirt, not just
15252-433: The ankles, like the trousers worn by Middle Eastern and Central Asian women, topped by a short dress or skirt and vest (waistcoat). She displayed her new clothing to temperance activist and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton , who found it sensible and becoming, and adopted it immediately. In this garb, she visited yet another activist, Amelia Bloomer , the editor of the temperance magazine The Lily . Bloomer not only wore
15438-445: The brooding conscientious mentor. In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. The narrative
15624-479: The case for the equal treatment of women. In fiction, New Woman writers included Olive Schreiner , Annie Sophie Cory (Victoria Cross), Sarah Grand , Mona Caird , George Egerton , Ella D'Arcy and Ella Hepworth Dixon . Some examples of New Woman literature are Victoria Cross's Anna Lombard (1901), Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman and H. G. Wells 's Ann Veronica (1909). Kate Chopin 's The Awakening (1899) also deserves mention, especially within
15810-602: The clothing worn by ladies-in-waiting at the Japanese imperial court to make a uniform for her Jissen Women's University . During the Meiji period (1868–-1912) and Taishō period (1912–-1926), other women's schools also adopted the hakama . It became standard wear for high schools in Japan , though it was later mostly replaced with Western sailor-style uniforms. Inokuchi Akuri also designed sports clothes for children. At
15996-463: The coming season. After the stresses and disappointment of these efforts, James insisted that he would write no more for the theatre, but within weeks had agreed to write a curtain-raiser for Ellen Terry . This became the one-act "Summersoft", which he later rewrote into a short story, "Covering End", and then expanded into a full-length play, The High Bid , which had a brief run in London in 1907, when James made another concerted effort to write for
16182-711: The context of narratives derived from Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), both of which chronicle a woman's doomed search for independence and self-realization through sexual experimentation. The emergence of the fashion-oriented and party-going flapper in the 1920s marked the end of the New Woman era (now also known as First-wave feminism ). By the late 19th century, art schools and academies had begun to offer more opportunities for artistic instruction to women. The Union of Women Painters & Sculptors , founded in 1881, supported women artists and offered exhibition opportunities. Women artists became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of
16368-512: The costume, she promoted it enthusiastically in her magazine. More women wore the fashion and were promptly dubbed "Bloomers". A dress reform was supported by a campaign of the National Dress Reform Association , which was founded in 1856. They put up a fight for a few years, but were subjected to ridicule in the press and harassment on the street. The more conservative of society protested that women had 'lost
16554-432: The dangers of ill-fitting corsets, and some doctors even designed corsets themselves. Roxey Ann Caplin became a widely renowned corset maker, enlisting the help of her husband, a physician, to create corsets which she purported to be more respectful of human anatomy. Inès Gaches-Sarraute designed the straight-front corset in response to her patients' gynecological issues which were attributed to wearing corsets. The design
16740-560: The deaths of those closest to him, including his sister Alice in 1892; his friend Wolcott Balestier in 1891; and Stevenson and Fenimore Woolson in 1894. The sudden death of Fenimore Woolson in January 1894, and the speculations of suicide surrounding her death, were particularly painful for him. Leon Edel wrote that the reverberations from Fenimore Woolson's death were such that "we can read a strong element of guilt and bewilderment in his letters, and, even more, in those extraordinary tales of
16926-559: The design of reform costumes and the exposition of them, notably during the Nordic Exhibition of 1888 . While there were no separate dress reform societies founded in Finland, the women's rights society Suomen Naisyhdistys actively addressed the issue under the influence of the Swedish Dress Reform Society in the 1880s; they held lectures in many Finnish cities, managed to have the reform costume accepted as sports wear in
17112-577: The detriment to their families were ridiculed. Modern Girls were also seem as being hypersensitivity to fashion trends, and there was a shift in the power dynamic between husbands and wives, with men now groveling to meet their wives’ demands. However, this condemnation of consumerism went beyond gender: it was rooted in Korea’s relationship with Japan. Consuming Japanese goods was believed to inadvertently contribute to Korea’s colonial subordination to Japan while framing Japanese oppressors as progressive and Korea as
17298-612: The discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting . His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as " The Jolly Corner ". James published articles and books of criticism, travel , biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in
17484-455: The domestic and private spheres in literature, theatre, and other artistic representations. The 19th-century suffragette movement to gain women's democratic rights was the most significant influence on the New Woman. Education and employment opportunities for women were increasing as western countries became more urban and industrialized. The " pink-collar " workforce gave women a foothold in the business and institutional sphere. In 1870, women in
17670-441: The emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman". In the late 19th century, Charles Dana Gibson depicted the "New Woman" in his piece, The Reason Dinner was Late , which shows a woman painting a policeman. Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries about 88% of
17856-519: The end due to a lack of economic independence. Demonstrating Lu Xun's belief that China had not created ways for women to survive outside of their family or husband's homes. While not from the 1920s and 1930s, an incredibly early example of the archetype of the Chinese New Woman was Ida Kahn /Kang Aide/Kang Cheng (December 6, 1873 – November 9, 1931). An early New Woman in the context of the Chinese New Woman movement, Ida Kahn, born in China,
18042-443: The epitome of a New Woman as she was starkly against foot-binding, chopped her hair into a short bob cut, went to male and female schools, and refused an arranged marriage. Her most influential work, Miss Sophia's Diary , inspired by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , details a New Woman's journey with "sexual and emotional frustrations of romantic love as a 'liberated' women in a patriarchal society". Ding Ling's writing focused on criticizing
18228-625: The expanding potential for women in English society date back at least to Maria Edgeworth 's Belinda (1801) and Elizabeth Barrett's Aurora Leigh (1856), which explored a woman's plight between conventional marriage and the radical possibility that a woman could become an independent artist. In drama, the late nineteenth century saw such "New Woman" plays as Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1890), Henry Arthur Jones 's play The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894) and George Bernard Shaw 's controversial Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893) and Candida (1898). According to
18414-402: The exposition of them, notably during the Nordic Exhibition of 1888 . Norway is in fact described as one of the countries were the interest and success for the issue was greatest. The physician Lorentz Dietrichson , a prominent participant for the abolition of the corset in the corset controversy in both Sweden and Norway, held a lecture in Norway in favor of dress reform already in 1886, as
18600-446: The extremists who wantonly disown the obligations and offices with which nature has honored them, you do the earnest, progressive women great wrong. In the early 1890s, daughters of middle class Catholics expressed a desire to attend institution of higher education. Catholic leaders expressed their concern as studying at these "Protestant" schools, as the Church described it, might threaten the women's Catholic faith. The Church also viewed
18786-441: The family and from their male partners. This talk given by Lu Xun , a revolutionary writer concerned with women’s issues amongst many other things, cautioned women against idealizing Western female literary figures such as Hendrik Ibsen's Nora in A Doll's House (1879) . Lu Xun noted that while her actions were bold, Nora did not have any means to support herself once she left home, leaving her with limited options of survival. Lu Xun
18972-406: The female writer, exemplified the ultimate New Woman both in her visual appearance and in her ideas and stories. As noted earlier, Ding Ling's physical appearance aligned with other New Women as she "had her long, braided hair cut short", a typical style of the New Woman. Her ideas and literature also aligned with 1920s New Woman as her stories depicted female sexual desires and women's liberation from
19158-413: The flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works. I hate that phrase "New Woman." Of all
19344-483: The founder of The Nation , visited the James family at their Boston residence in Ashburton Place; the purpose of his visit was to solicit contributions from Henry Senior and Henry Junior for the inaugural issue of the journal. Henry Junior was later to describe his friendship with Godkin as "one of the longest and happiest of my life." In 1871, he published his first novel, Watch and Ward , in serial form in
19530-501: The future Supreme Court justice, and with James T. Fields and Annie Adams Fields , his first professional mentors. In 1865, Louisa May Alcott visited Boston and dined with the James family; she was to write in her journals that "Henry Jr....was very friendly. Being a literary youth he gave me advice, as if he had been eighty, and I a girl." His first published work was a review of a stage performance, "Miss Maggie Mitchell in Fanchon
19716-544: The garments, or buy them directly. Fashion in the 1850s through the 1880s accented large crinolines , cumbersome bustles , and padded busts with tiny waists laced into 'steam-moulded corsetry'. ' Tight-lacing ' became part of the corset controversy : dress reformists claimed that the corset was prompted by vanity and foolishness, and harmful to health. The reported health risks included damaged and rearranged internal organs, compromised fertility; weakness and general depletion of health. Those who were pro-corset argued that it
19902-613: The girls' schools of the capital by 1887, and was awarded the grand silver medal for their reform costume for school girls in the exhibition of the Russian Hygienic Society in Saint Petersburg in 1893. There were no separate dress reform societies founded in France. While the issue was adopted and discussed by several of the existing French women's rights organisations, the issue was not given priority and it
20088-560: The idea of arranged, loveless marriages. Lu Xun was another male writer of the time who created literature using these New Women characters. As mentioned above, Lu Xun gave a speech in 1923 noting how Nora had no economic means to turn to when she left home. His talk and subsequent story on the topic, demonstrated that in Chinese society, women lacked the economic funds needed to be able to survive outside of her family and husband. As Nora did not have any means to generate an income for herself once she left, and because she lacked an education, she
20274-474: The imperial court, simplified keiko replaced more cumbersome garments. In the Netherlands, interest for the issue was aroused after the foundation of a dress reform society in neighboring Germany, and in 1899 the Dutch dress reform society Veereeniging voor Verbetering van Vrouwenkleeding (V.v.V.v.V.). The dress reform society held lectures, participated in exhibitions and worked with designed to produce
20460-442: The improved social standing of women. Embodying the New Woman idea, women donned masculine-inspired fashions including simple tailored skirt suits, ties, and starched blouses. By the 1920s, male-style garments for casual and sporting activities were less socially condemned. New fashions required lighter undergarments, shorter skirts, looser bodices, trousers, and praised slender 'boyish' figures. As Lady Duff Gordon remarked, in
20646-401: The late 19th century, as well as new legal rights to property (although not yet the vote), meant that they stepped into a new position of freedom and choice when it came to marital and sexual partners. The New Woman placed great importance on her sexual autonomy, but that was difficult to put into practice as society still voiced loud disapproval of any sign of female licentiousness. For women in
20832-677: The late style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton , who admired him greatly, said that some passages in his work were all but incomprehensible. James was harshly portrayed by H. G. Wells as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that had got into a corner of its cage. The "late James" style was ably parodied by Max Beerbohm in "The Mote in the Middle Distance". More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate , and in other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from
21018-789: The latter introducing him to the Travellers' and the Reform Clubs . He was also an honorary member of the Savile Club , St James's Club and, in 1882, the Athenaeum Club . In England, he met the leading figures of politics and culture. He continued to be a prolific writer, producing The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), a revision of Watch and Ward (1878), French Poets and Novelists (1878), Hawthorne (1879), and several shorter works of fiction. In 1878, Daisy Miller established his fame on both sides of
21204-464: The main proponents were the writer Oscar Wilde and his wife Constance, both of whom gave lectures on the subject. In 1881 The Rational Dress Society was founded in London. The Society advocated divided skirts as a more practical form of clothing, but its president and co-founder, Lady Florence Harberton, went further - when cycling, she wore full 'Rational' dress, which was a shorter skirt worn over voluminous trousers. The dress reform movement spread from
21390-404: The masterwork The Portrait of a Lady , his style was simple and direct (by the standards of Victorian magazine writing) and he experimented widely with forms and methods, generally narrating from a conventionally omniscient point of view. Plots generally concern romance, except for the three big novels of social commentary that conclude this period. In the second period, as noted above, he abandoned
21576-432: The meanest intelligence—I love you more than I love Others." To his New York friend Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones : "Dearest Mary Cadwalader. I yearn over you, but I yearn in vain; & your long silence really breaks my heart, mystifies, depresses, almost alarms me, to the point even of making me wonder if poor unconscious & doting old Célimare [Jones's pet name for James] has 'done' anything, in some dark somnambulism of
21762-469: The most advanced in regards to women's rights, as a source of inspiration. Education and economic opportunities, such as those that Chinese male intellectuals of the time promoted for women, were considered to be the hallmark of a free and independent women. These ideas of economic independence and educational opportunities were promoted by both the male and female intellectuals of the time, but both promoted them for different reasons as noted above. Changes to
21948-411: The most part, only be attained by white middle-class women. The bicycle had a significant impact on the lives of women in a variety of areas, not least in the area of Victorian dress reform , also known as the "rational dress movement". The greatest impact it had on the societal role of women occurred in the 1890s during the bicycle craze that swept American and European society. The bicycle gave women
22134-409: The mystery and attractiveness as they discarded their flowing robes." Amelia Bloomer herself dropped the fashion in 1859, saying that a new invention, the crinoline , was a sufficient reform and that she could return to conventional dress. The bloomer costume died—temporarily. It was to return much later (in a different form), as a women's athletic costume in the 1890s and early 1900s. In the 1870s,
22320-531: The nation's rebuilding. While Chinese men at this time backed the idea of the dismantling the Confucian system, they did not do so solely for women to be freed from it. Chinese male intellectuals backed women's emancipation from the system, but not their emancipation as individuals. The hope was that women could be freed from Confucianism's confines and then mobilized for the cause of nationalism. This can be seen by such reformers as Liang Qichao who believed that
22506-438: The natural body. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and other artistic reformers objected to the elaborately trimmed confections of Victorian fashion with their unnatural silhouette based on a rigid corset and hoops as both ugly and dishonest. Some women associated with the movement adopted a revival style based on romanticised medieval influences such as puffed juliette sleeves and trailing skirts. These styles were made in
22692-509: The next half-dozen years, " The Altar of the Dead " and " The Beast in the Jungle ". The years spent on dramatic works were not entirely a loss. As he moved into the last phase of his career, he found ways to adapt dramatic techniques into the novel form. In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, James made several trips through Europe. He spent a long stay in Italy in 1887. In 1888, he published
22878-562: The old Confucian tradition of female suicide as a means to get their message across to the general populace. According to Margery Wolf, women's suicide in China was less about “Why?” and more about “Who? Who drove her to this? Who is responsible?”. This can be seen with the case of Xi Shangzhen, an office employee who in 1922 committed suicide for reasons that are still contested. Xi was an unmarried office employee who, disgruntled at her boss hung herself in her place of work. There are two possible reasons for her decision that are known. The first
23064-436: The opportunity to engage in more social contact with men. While these changes led to greater female freedom, Modern Girls and New Women drew severe criticism from male intellectuals who argued that these modern women were consumed with Western capitalism, were consumer-oriented and hypersensitive to trends and fads, morally depraved, and sexually promiscuous. However, more moderate authors like Yu Kwang-Yol and Song So-In described
23250-838: The outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he did war work. In 1915, he became a British citizen and was awarded the Order of Merit the following year. He died on 28 February 1916, in Chelsea, London , and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium . A memorial was built to him in Chelsea Old Church . He had requested that his ashes be buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts. This was not legally possible, but William's wife smuggled his ashes onboard
23436-484: The patriarchal family, the marriage system, concepts of female chastity, and the double standards women faced. Male writers of the time too, used Ibsen's story as inspiration for their own versions to the Nora tale. For example, Hu Shi's play Zhongshen dashi (The greatest event in life; 1917), stars a Nora-influenced character whose story highlights the idea of free love relationships for both men and women, moving away from
23622-628: The patriarchal family. New Women, according to Barbara Molony, emerged in the late 1920s, out of the New Culture Movement and were viewed as the "educated, patriotic embodiment of a new gender order working to overcome the oppressions of the Confucian family system and traditional society". New Women were usually female students who in appearance wore eyeglasses, had short bobbed hair, and unbound feet, and in practice usually lived on their own, had open, casual relationships, and aimed to be economically independent from their family. However,
23808-468: The permission of James's family. Edel's portrayal of James included the suggestion he was celibate, a view first propounded by critic Saul Rosenzweig in 1943. In 1996, Sheldon M. Novick published Henry James: The Young Master , followed by Henry James: The Mature Master (2007). The first book "caused something of an uproar in Jamesian circles" as it challenged the previous received notion of celibacy,
23994-461: The perspective of European polite society), he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working-class to aristocratic , and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends. He worked for
24180-446: The possibility of working outside of the domestic realm, the rhetoric and meaning behind these new choices for women, hidden behind modernist vocabulary, remained the same: establishing a family or devoting oneself to the nation. An important lecture, "What Happens After Nora Leaves Home", was given at Beijing Women's Normal College in 1923 which discussed women in Chinese society and their inability to become truly independent from both
24366-415: The presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life. Many of James's stories may also be seen as psychological thought experiments about selection. In his preface to
24552-418: The privileged upper classes of society. University education itself was still a badge of affluence for men at the turn of the 20th century, and fewer than 10 percent of people in the United States had a post-secondary education during the era. The women entering universities generally belonged to the white middle class. Consequentially, the working class, people of color, and immigrants were often left behind in
24738-589: The professions comprised only 6.4 percent of the United States' non-agricultural workforce; by 1910, that figure had risen to 10 percent, then to 13.3 percent in 1920. More women were winning the right to attend university or college. Some were obtaining a professional education and becoming lawyers, doctors, journalists, and professors, often at prestigious all-female colleges such as the Seven Sisters schools: Barnard , Bryn Mawr , Mount Holyoke , Radcliffe , Smith , Vassar , and Wellesley . The New Woman in
24924-460: The protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternative American and European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors, an older James seems fondly to regard his own younger self facing a crucial moment. The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait of a Lady , concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels
25110-637: The publication of The Portrait of a Lady through the end of the 19th century, features less popular novels, including The Princess Casamassima , published serially in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885–1886, and The Bostonians , published serially in The Century during the same period. This period also featured James's celebrated Gothic novella, The Turn of the Screw (1898). The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three novels published just around
25296-558: The publication of The Europeans , Washington Square , Confidence and The Portrait of a Lady . The period from 1882 to 1883 was marked by several losses. His mother died in January 1882, while James was in Washington, D.C., on an extended visit to America. He returned to his parents' home in Cambridge , where he was together with all four of his siblings for the first time in 15 years. He returned to Europe in mid-1882, but
25482-479: The race to achieve this new feminist model. Woman writers belonging to these marginalized communities often critiqued the way in which their newfound freedom regarding their gender came at the expense of their race, ethnicity, or class. Although they acknowledged and respected the independence of the New Woman, they could not ignore the issue that the standards for a New Woman of the Progressive Era could, for
25668-405: The result of a kind of self-analysis, expressed in fiction, which partly freed him from his fears. Other biographers and scholars have not accepted this account, with the more common view being that of F.O. Matthiessen, who wrote: "Instead of being crushed by the collapse of his hopes [for the theatre]... he felt a resurgence of new energy." Victorian dress reform Victorian dress reform
25854-600: The serialised novel and from 1890 to about 1897, he wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most noticeably in the third; he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page, in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then preceded by
26040-439: The short novel The Aspern Papers and The Reverberator . In 1897–1898, he moved to Rye, Sussex and wrote The Turn of the Screw ; 1899–1900 had the publication of The Awkward Age and The Sacred Fount . During 1902–1904, he wrote The Wings of the Dove , The Ambassadors , and The Golden Bowl . In 1904, he revisited America and lectured on Balzac. In 1906–1910, he published The American Scene and edited
26226-513: The social and political landscape it emerged from. It was during the early years of the New Culture Movement and pre- May Fourth era that the term "New Woman" first emerged in China. This term, used by Hu Shi (1891-1962) during a 1918 lecture, suggested that women were more than just " good wives and wise mothers " and instead pushed for women's freedom and individuality in the larger national framework. However, Hu Shi along with
26412-417: The soft colors of vegetable dyes , ornamented with hand embroidery in the art needlework style, featured silks, oriental designs, muted colors, natural and frizzed hair, and lacked definitive waist emphasis. The style spread as an "anti-fashion" called Artistic dress in the 1860s in literary and artistic circles, died back in the 1870s , and reemerged as Aesthetic dress in the 1880s , where two of
26598-472: The spirit, which has ... given you a bad moment, or a wrong impression, or a 'colourable pretext' ... However these things may be, he loves you as tenderly as ever; nothing, to the end of time, will ever detach him from you, & he remembers those Eleventh St. matutinal intimes hours, those telephonic matinées, as the most romantic of his life ..." His long friendship with American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson , in whose house he lived for
26784-439: The stage. He wrote three new plays, two of which were in production when the death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 plunged London into mourning and theatres closed. Discouraged by failing health and the stresses of theatrical work, James did not renew his efforts in the theatre, but recycled his plays as successful novels. The Outcry was a best-seller in the United States when it was published in 1911. During 1890–1893, when he
26970-453: The start of the 20th century: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). Critic F. O. Matthiessen called this "trilogy" James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. The second-written of the books, The Wings of the Dove , was the first published because it was not serialised. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with
27156-474: The status quo, the New Woman was more accepted as she was believed by men, even though she advocated for free love and economic independence, to still uphold family and national values. Even with these apparent newfound freedoms (ability to work outside the domestic domain, economic stability, and choice in marriage partners), some New Women still felt constricted by the system and thus, unheard. To make their opinions about this system heard, some New Women followed
27342-399: The storylines and characters. So while they had a connection to these original works, they featured both larger global struggles of women, such as free love relationships, and more individual problems for Chinese women, such as dealing with the Confucian family system and filial piety. The New Women in China, both as women living in China and literary figures in books, still faced pressures in
27528-405: The subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depicted the world through a woman's perspective. Successful illustrators included Jennie Augusta Brownscombe , Jessie Wilcox Smith , Rose O'Neill , Elizabeth Shippen Green , and Violet Oakley . The new woman, in the sense of the best woman,
27714-414: The suggestion of celibacy went against James's own injunction "live!"—not "fantasize!" A letter James wrote in old age to Hugh Walpole has been cited as an explicit statement of this. Walpole confessed to him of indulging in "high jinks", and James wrote a reply endorsing it: "We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours & mine, what we are talking about—& the only way to know it
27900-578: The surrounding countryside, which feature in his essay "Abbeys and Castles". In particular, the gloomy monastic fishponds behind the abbey are said to have inspired the lake in The Turn of the Screw . While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the French realists, Émile Zola in particular. Their stylistic methods influenced his own work in the years to come. Hawthorne's influence on him faded during this period, replaced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev. The period from 1878 to 1881 had
28086-405: The tawdry, run-to-heel phrases that strikes me the most disagreeably. When you mean, by the term, the women who believe in and ask for the right to advance in education, the arts, and professions with their fellow-men, you are speaking of a phase in civilisation which has come gradually and naturally, and is here to stay. There is nothing new or abnormal in such a woman. But when you confound her with
28272-426: The term ‘Modern Girl’ carried connotations of frivolity and excess. While these terms continue to carry some of these original meanings, they eventually came to be used interchangeably. New Women included female students and workers, and as women started working, they formed a new urban working class, endowing them with economic power, the ability to participate in modern consumerism, independence from their families, and
28458-459: The third volume of Daudet's adventures of Tartarin de Tarascon . Serialized in Harper's Monthly from June 1890, this translation – praised as "clever" by The Spectator – was published in January 1891 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington . After the stage failure of Guy Domville in 1895, James was near despair and thoughts of death plagued him. His depression was compounded by
28644-520: The two brothers visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace. Henry studied primarily with tutors, and briefly attended schools while the family travelled in Europe. A tutor of the James children in Paris, M. Lerambert, had written a volume of verse that was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve. Their longest stays were in France, where Henry began to feel at home and became fluent in French. He had
28830-520: The undergarments themselves, all suggest that the corset was almost universal as daily wear by women and young ladies (and numerous fashionable men ) until the 1920s, when girdles began to take over. The primary result of the dress reform movement seems to be the evolution, rather than elimination, of the corset. Because of the public health outcry surrounding corsets and tightlacing, many doctors took it upon themselves to become corsetieres . Many doctors helped to fit their patients with corsets to avoid
29016-411: The various payment plans offered by American bicycle companies, the bicycle was affordable to the majority of people. However, the bicycle impacted upper and middle class white women the most. This transformed their role in society from remaining in the private or domestic sphere as caregivers, wives, and mothers to one of greater public appearance and involvement in the community. Literary discussions of
29202-404: The vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson, superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening femmes fatales . The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and
29388-442: The waist (since the undesirability of hanging the entire weight of full skirts and petticoats from a constricted waist—rather than hanging the garments from the shoulders—was another point often discussed by dress reformers). The bodices had to be fitted by a dressmaker ; patterns could be ordered through the mail. Physician Alice Bunker Stockham railed against the corset and said of the pregnancy corset, "The Best pregnancy corset
29574-453: The wearer to social ridicule. Dress reformers were also influential in persuading women to adopt simplified garments for athletic activities such as bicycling or swimming. The movement was much less concerned with men's clothing, although it initiated the widespread adoption of knitted wool union suits or long johns . Some of the movement's proponents established dress reform parlors , or storefronts, where women could buy sewing patterns for
29760-477: The world alone, was used as an ideal archetype by female and male Chinese writers in their own stories and essays. When looking at female Chinese writers of the time, Ding Ling and Chen Xuezhao were both heavily influenced by the New Women and their message. Chen Xuezhao, a Chinese feminist of her time, advocated for women to be liberated from the patriarchal system allowing them the ability to contribute more wholeheartedly to society. Her 1927 essay published in
29946-418: Was a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1911. What is unique about this, other than the fact that she received a degree in medicine in the first place, was that this second degree was done solely out of personal interest for the topic. While later New Women were encouraged to receive an education, it was not for one's personal benefit but instead to become better wives and mothers, so this early example of
30132-459: Was adopted by an American female missionary who took her in 1892 to the United States to receive a college education in medicine. There are a few reasons Kahn stands out as an early archetype of the eventual 1920s New Woman. The first is the education she received. Kahn received two degrees. The degree she received was in medicine, which she put to work back in China when she became a doctor in the early nineteen hundreds. The second degree Kahn received
30318-416: Was all things positive in relation to modernity and "symbolized the vision of a future strong nation" but with aspects of modernity and revolution. So while the New Woman expressed the positive changes that came with modernity, the Modern Girl "expressed men's disillusionment with modernity and their fears of female subjectivity". While neither of these two women were necessarily beloved by males wishing to keep
30504-449: Was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism , and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James . He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans,
30690-435: Was an educated woman working a job, felt her virtue had been infringed upon and insulted, and thus made a bold decision to make her case of insult known to the general public. The death of Xi was shocking as it showed a conflict between the modern and Confucian value systems. As noted by Barbara Molony, Xi embodied the typical New Woman as she was an "educated, unmarried woman and supporting herself with an independent career". Xi
30876-524: Was an objective of the Victorian dress reform movement (also known as the rational dress movement ) of the middle and late Victorian era , led by various reformers who proposed, designed, and wore clothing considered more practical and comfortable than the fashions of the time. Dress reformists were largely middle-class women involved in the first wave of feminism in the Western World, from
31062-630: Was associated with the Wiener Werkstätte . In Denmark, the bloomer costume was adopted for girls' sports wear during ice skating already in the 1860s. While there were no separate dress reform societies founded in Denmark, the women's rights society Dansk Kvindesamfund actively addressed the issue under the influence of the Swedish Dress Reform Society in the 1880s; they published their own brochure , Om Sundheden og Kyindedraegten by J. Frisch, collaborated with Stockholm and Oslo with
31248-497: Was back in America by the end of the year following the death of his father. Emerson, an old family friend, died in 1882. His brother Wilkie and friend Turgenev both died in 1883. In 1884, James made another visit to Paris, where he met again with Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt. He had been following the careers of the French "realist" or "naturalist" writers, and was increasingly influenced by them. In 1886, he published The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima , both influenced by
31434-532: Was born at 21 Washington Place (facing Washington Square) in New York City on 15 April 1843. His parents were Mary Walsh and Henry James Sr. His father was intelligent and steadfastly congenial. He was a lecturer and philosopher who had inherited independent means from his father, an Albany banker and investor. Mary came from a wealthy family long settled in New York City. Her sister Katherine lived with her adult family for an extended period of time. Henry Jr.
31620-727: Was connected to the Arts and Crafts movement , when the Wiener Secession was founded in 1897 by progressive artists in opposition to the Künstlerhaus . Josef Hoffman , Koloman Moser , Otto Wagner , Alfred Roller and Hermann Bahr supported dress reform, which they expressed in the Dokumente der Frauen in 1902, and some of them contributed with reform dress designs. Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge are said to have cooperated in designing reform fashion, and such clothing
31806-575: Was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne . In the fall of 1875, he moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris . Aside from two trips to America, he spent the next three decades—the rest of his life—in Europe. In Paris, he met Zola , Daudet , Maupassant , Turgenev and others. He stayed in Paris only a year before settling in London, where he established relationships with Macmillan and other publishers, who paid for serial instalments that they published in book form. The audience for these serialised novels
31992-435: Was intended to reduce pressure on the abdomen and improve overall health. The new S-curve silhouette created by this design quickly caught on among fashion houses in the early 20th century. The most famous product of the dress reform era is the bloomer suit. In 1851, a New England temperance activist named Elizabeth Smith Miller (Libby Miller) adopted what she considered a more rational costume: loose trousers gathered at
32178-444: Was itself the symptom of some fear of or scruple against sexual love on his part." Dupee used an episode from James's memoir, A Small Boy and Others, recounting a dream of a Napoleonic image in the Louvre, to exemplify James's romanticism about Europe, a Napoleonic fantasy into which he fled. Between 1953 and 1972, Leon Edel wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which used unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained
32364-418: Was largely made up of middle-class women, and James struggled to fashion serious literary work within the strictures imposed by editors' and publishers' notions of what was suitable for young women to read. He lived in rented rooms, but was able to join gentlemen's clubs that had libraries and where he could entertain male friends. He was introduced to English society by Henry Adams and Charles Milnes Gaskell ,
32550-462: Was left with few options of survival. His story, New Year's Sacrifice (1924), while not explicitly about the New Women of China, went on to criticize the idea of monitoring women's chastity and virtue. However, his story Regret for the Past , whose female protagonist is modelled after Nora, shows his female lead leaving her family home to be with her lover, only to eventually return to her family home in
32736-435: Was most engaged with the theatre, James wrote a good deal of theatrical criticism, and assisted Elizabeth Robins and others in translating and producing Henrik Ibsen for the first time in London. Leon Edel argued in his psychoanalytic biography that James was traumatised by the opening-night uproar that greeted Guy Domville , and that it plunged him into a prolonged depression. The successful later novels, in Edel's view, were
32922-434: Was not against women seeking independence, he was however, pointing out the limited access women had to economic self-sufficiency and social welfare. Regardless of Lu Xun's warning, Western literary figures, like Nora in A Doll's House (1879), came to be seen as great examples of New Women to female and male readers of the time. Nora, the heroine of A Doll's House , who leaves her patriarchal marriage and ventures out into
33108-476: Was not for their personal benefit but instead for the state and nation. Early New Women such as Hu Binxia , an early editor for The Ladies Journal , promoted in her articles the ideas of education to learn how to support a family and participate in the cult of domesticity . However, like minded male reformers to Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu promoted a very different kind of women for China’s changing political, social, and economic landscape pre-May Fourth era. Founder of
33294-474: Was not until the great enthusiasm for bicycling in France in the 1890s that women in general adopted the bloomer costume with trousers and no corsets as sports wear. In the early 20th century, however, the French fashion industry was finally influenced by the reform dress movement, which abolished the corset by the 1910s. Germany was a leading country of the Reformkleidung , 'dress reform' in
33480-668: Was one of four boys, the others being William , who was one year his senior, and younger brothers Wilkinson ( Wilkie ) and Robertson. His younger sister was Alice . Both of his parents were of Irish and Scottish descent. Before he was a year old, his father sold the house at Washington Place and took the family to Europe, where they lived for a time in a cottage in Windsor Great Park in England. The family returned to New York in 1845, and Henry spent much of his childhood living between his paternal grandmother's home in Albany, and
33666-627: Was one of the few to defy propriety norms and discuss the gynecological issues resulting from lifelong corset usage, in particular uterine prolapse . Feminist historian Leigh Summers theorized that some moral panic derived from the common but unspeakable idea that tightlacing could be used to induce an abortion . American women active in the anti-slavery and temperance movements , having experience in public speaking and political agitation, demanded sensible clothing that would not restrict their movement. While supporters of fashionable dress contended that corsets maintained an upright, 'good figure', as
33852-474: Was particularly interested in what he called the "beautiful and blest nouvelle ", or the longer form of short narrative. Still, he produced a number of very short stories in which he achieved notable compression of sometimes complex subjects. The following narratives are representative of James's achievement in the shorter forms of fiction. At several points in his career, James wrote plays, beginning with one-act plays written for periodicals in 1869 and 1871 and
34038-542: Was portrayed by authors such as Elsa Herrmann ( So ist die neue Frau , 1929) and Irmgard Keun ( Das kunstseidene Mädchen , 1932, translated as The Artificial Silk Girl , 1933). These urbane, sexually liberated working women wore androgynous clothes, cut their hair short, and were widely seen as apolitical. The New Women in Germany was closely connected to the lesbian subculture in Weimar Republic . In Korea in
34224-458: Was required for stylish dress and had its own unique pleasures; dress historian David Kunzle theorized that some enthusiastic fans of tightlacing may have experienced sexual pleasure when tightlacing, or by rubbing against the front of the corset, which contributed to the moral outrage against the practice. Doctors such as Alice Bunker Stockham counseled patients against them, particularly during maternity; reformist and activist Catharine Beecher
34410-460: Was to become a celebrated literary academic in adulthood, and painter John La Farge , for whom Henry sat as a subject, and who introduced him to French literature, and in particular, to Balzac . James later called Balzac his "greatest master", and said that he had learned more about the craft of fiction from him than from anyone else. In July 1861, Henry and Thomas Sergeant Perry paid a visit to an encampment of wounded and invalid Union soldiers on
34596-530: Was viewed as a New Woman who through her job, was able to obtain economic independence but through her actions of suicide, demonstrated a very long tradition in Chinese history of female suicide for the sake of virtue. After women gained the right to vote and be elected in the wake of World War I in Germany, the Neue Frau became a trope in German popular culture, representing new discourses about sexuality, reproduction and urban mass society. This German New Woman
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