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| Who Was the New Woman? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 7 2012, 05:42 PM (42 Views) | |
| Sevinc | Oct 7 2012, 05:42 PM Post #1 |
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Hello everyone! First of all, thanks Tamsin for setting up this discussion board! I want to propose a topic for discussion here: the New Woman. The New Woman was one of the most dramatic symbols of the crisis of gender relations that occurred across a number of societies in the fin-de-siècle period. Her image was first brought to public attention worldwide in the 1890s as she became a subject of discussion and controversy in magazines, periodicals and newspapers, gaining the label “The New Woman” in 1894 in a pair of articles by Sarah Grand and Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée), two prominent writers in what would become the New Woman canon. The New Woman in fin de siècle had manifested herself in multiple and often contradictory guises: in England, she was perceived as the ‘wild woman’, the ‘glorified spinster’, ‘the advanced woman’, the odd woman’; in other words, a threat to the conventional gender roles and norms of the society at that time. Similarly, due to her insistence on her social and sexual independence, the New American Woman was generally perceived by American society as “the symptom of a diseased society.” But the New Woman as she was seen in Turkey was different from her Western counterpart: in Turkey in the same period she appeared as an “ideal”, moral woman as part of the visions of modernisers (in the late Ottoman period) and Kemalists: “the emancipated (but chaste) nationalist”, often associated with the image of the “modern but modest” woman. While the New American Woman was the active participation and mobilisation of American women that achieved progress in areas such as the rights vote or be elected (in 1920), Turkish women were effectively granted these rights by the state (in 1930 and 1934 respectively) in what was a much more “top-down” process. Through the discourse of the New Woman, the Turkish government of this period was effectively able to narrow the boundaries of the debate on the woman question to a debate around the creation of a modern and civilized nation, to the exclusion of questions of women’s individual desires and personal fulfilment. As a result, the New Turkish Woman was more in line with patriarchal norms than her American counterpart regarding subjects such as marriage and sexuality (whilst the New American Woman rejects marriage as her only and ultimate option for a fulfilling life, for the New Turkish Woman, marriage was more of a social duty and her traditional sex roles of mother and wife were important alongside her social responsibilities and education) In other words, while the New Turkish Woman was an “emancipated but unliberated” figure, held up as a model of modern duty, chastity and virtue, the New American Woman stood for everything that was regarded as a threat to the hegemonic social order of the era. Questions for our discussion: Although my research has focused on the literary representation of the New Woman in fin-de-siècle USA (Edith Wharton's works) and late Ottoman/early-Republican Turkey (Halide Edib Adivar's works) it would be interesting to investigate this subject further in different contexts. So I would like to open up and extend the parameters of this study here by considering the depiction of this figure not only in literature but also in different cultural texts in different nations (such as films, plays, periodical press of other countries that reflect your research interest and your personal background etc) in the light of the following questions. In raising these questions it would be interesting to draw on different people’s interests in different historical periods, geographical areas, national literatures, and so on. 1. What about other countries and what kind of New Women (if any) do we find in other countries along their paths to modernity (extending from not only the fin-de-siecle period but also throughout the twentieth century)? How was she portrayed in the cultural texts of these countries? What did she want? 2. Do we find instances of the New Woman as a “renegade” woman (of the kind we saw above in the case of the USA for example) or is she aligned with projects to control “renegade” women (as in the case of Turkey)? 3. Was the New Woman only an aspect of public “imaginations” (as represented in cultural texts such as media, literature etc)? Or what evidence do we have to suggest that she really existed? 4. What do her various and contradictory depictions in different countries suggest? Please join the discussion and I am looking forward to hearing from you all! |
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12:39 AM Jul 11