Coda
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First [189] Lines —— 0.15 —— Norm PgEn [189] Coda In considering the role that fiction played in creating and sustaining the first wave of feminist activism in America, it seems appropriate to return to Oreola Williams Haskell’s short story, “Tenements and Teacups,” because in many ways, it encapsulates the optimism of feminist activist fiction written between the years 1870 and 1920. The members of the “Squad” exhibit an unequivocal belief in the rightness of their cause and its potential for changing the world, and they gain strength from belonging to a community of like-minded reformers. It is also clear that the author firmly believes that storytelling plays a pivotal role in bringing about these changes and contributing to such a community; telling stories both attracts new members and nourishes those already involved in the movement. It is appropriate, too, that this story was written in 1920, the year the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified and suffragists were still feeling heady from their success and confident about their future. However, what feminist activists could not know at that moment was that most of their revolutionary work was behind them instead of in front of them. It was the activist process throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not the end result of the vote, that actually brought about the most advances for women. By entering the public sphere en masse and chipping away over the decades at educational and professional barriers, woman’s rights activists had exponentially increased opportunities for many American women, although many inequalities still existed, especially because of race and class bias. Unfortunately, once they achieved their ultimate goal, the enfranchisement of women, most political communities of feminist reformers disbanded, and after a honeymoon period in which both Republicans and Democrats courted new women voters, their voices were relatively negligible in actually determining U.S. legal policy (although that is no longer the case as “women’s issues” have become pivotal ones in campaigns). In some ways, female suffrage came at a particularly inauspicious moment: two years after the end of World War I. American society, rattled by the tumultuous violence and cultural upheaval it had just endured, attempted a forced return to “normalcy” and as part of that effort tried to reinstate traditional middle-class gender roles. This conservative backlash is clear in an essay from 190 coda 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [190] Lines —— 0.0p —— Norm PgEn [190] the June 1919 issue of Scribner’s Magazine entitled “The Limits of Feminine Independence .” The author claims that the recent world war had “served to set once more in high light an old truth [ . . . ] [of] the fundamental differences between the sexes which quasi-feministic propaganda had begun to discredit and confuse” (Grant 733–34). The result, according to the article, is that America has returned “automatically to primitive instincts and the habits of the tribe” (Grant 733). The author’s use of “primitive instincts” is telling in that it could describe a visceral, fearful reaction to something considered dangerous, although he probably did not mean the phrase to convey that sense. In postwar America, anything perceived as a challenge to patriotism or to the nuclear family—both conservative mainstays of the culture—was considered threatening. According to historian Sarah Jane Deutsch, American society’s “primitive instincts” thus led it particularly to fear the spread of communism, aptly named the Red Scare, which was ostensibly working to overthrow democracy and capitalism. Additionally , it expressed fear of homosexuality (especially of homosexual women), which was perceived as a corrupting influence on conventional family life. The unorthodox feminist activity of white middle-class women, especially collectively agitating for reform, was also perceived as threatening and according to Deutsch, conservatives quelled it by connecting it to these two sources of anxiety: “In an era in which any organizing at all was suspect, women in the 1920s could either organize together for equality and rights and be labeled ‘red’ and fired, or they could try to go it alone” (424). Furthermore, during the 1920s and ’30s...
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