Flowering of Womanhood

My 1906 Ladies’ Home Journal Girl.

Hmm.

Yesterday, I watched the final 4 or 5 episodes of series 3 of Upstairs Downstairs.

I can see why that year the series won the Emmy for best Drama.

The stories are more polished than in the first two years.

It’s so weird. 4o years later, I’m discovering this famous television series, after having spent 5 years researching the 1908-1913 period from a Canadian point of view.

Perhaps had I been familiar with the series, and already known about the era of Model T’s and suffragettes, I wouldn’t have been as interested in researching the background to the Nicholson Family letters…

As it was, I knew nothing about the era and started from scratch and then waited until I was well-informed to watch this series that is ALL about 1908-1913 and makes a effort to be historically correct. In fact, these 3rd series episodes are a bit weighed down by efforts to teach history. Lord Bellamy’s speeches, anyway.

But the fashions are spot on. The series didn’t spend much on sets, but it made up for it in fashion. I will certainly go back over the series and take a closer look at Lady Bellamy’s hats, etc.

Anyway, I’ve reached a point in my draft of Flo in the City, where I want to expound on the Presbyterian thing. Light in Dark Places… That’s the 1910 book or “Sex Manual” that was so popular in Canada.

I inlcluded the Gertrude Atherton “Threshold Girl” quote in the book, where she describes ‘teenage’ girls as being confused by the sex drive and their female role… which is good, but I have to put it in context by describing the Presbyterian mindset. I want to do this fairly and honestly.

Oddly, I recently framed a 1906 Ladies Home Journal Cover and mounted it on the mantle and as I look at it I think: “That picture captures something of what I want to say.”

At first glance the viewer gets the sense that the girl on the cover is a pretty Puritan, what with herperfect posture, her book held at just the right distance from her face. (I open Flo in the City with Flora studying in a reed rocker, with her feet up on the chair.) But the girl on the cover glancing at the viewer.. hmm. and that bonnet! At second glance it is very sensual. Isn’t it?

This was not uncommon for covers of the Ladies’ Home Journal. I found another, which I posted on my Tighsolas website, at http://www.tighsolas.ca/ that is very suggestive. I think, anyway.

Or maybe a braid is just a braid and a bonnet is just a bonnet. But it can’t be denied: on Magazine covers of the time, young women are either gazing at blooms or wearing hats that look like blooms.

Anyway, must get to it. I am writing a story about 1910 ‘teachers’ – how to make it ‘sexy’..hmm. Marion’s story is easier, as she is ‘courting’ and she broke a lot of rules. I have already decided to have her see the snake wrestling man in Dominion Park..

Threshold Girls and Lost Magazines

My new mantle.. Harper’s Bazar 1913, Ladies’ Home Journal 1906 covers. And ‘The Girls’.. or my Anna of the Five Towns vases.

Well, yesterday, I tried to find that July 1911 Food and Cookery Magazine I purchased off eBay five years ago, with the awesomely illustrative article on the Healthful Home.

I need it for the detailing of my Flora in the City Novel in Progress.

I found my 1906 Ladies’ Home Journal and the cover of the Harper’s Bazar and spontaneously decided to frame them before they fall to scraps. I took the posters of La Dulce Vida and Ladro di Bicyclette (spelling?) out of two cheap Walmart frames and put the covers in and then removed the tall framed details of Van Gogh’s Irises and Sunflowers which graced my living room mantle and replaced them with these smaller frames.

They go good with “The Girls” I think: my art nouveau Thomas Forester vases. Right era, right theme. Pretty girls. Girls as decoration.

A theme I’m fiddling with in Flo in the City.

I’m thinking of changing the the title (which really doesn’t work as she doesn’t get to the city until the end) to Threshold Girl. That’s a term used by author Gertrude Atherton in an Article in a 1909 Delineator I have somewhere, but can’t find.

It’s probably with my Food and Cookery, in the garage.

A “Threshold Girl’ is a girl between 17 and 19, who is all muddled and has not yet learned that a woman must pretend to be what she is not, at least according to Atherton.

Threshold Girls are even more confused in 1909, as they have so many more options than did their grandmothers, says Atherton. That’s another theme I’m fiddling with in Flo in the City. I’m not sure I agree with Atherton, who is saying what most everyone was saying in 1910: that a woman could have it all. That all doors were open to her.

Threshold Girl is a perfect title for my novel, because the term has two meanings in my story. It refers to Flora’s age and also to the times she lives in. The Birth of Now.

HIGH ANXIETY 33rd installment

Dresses, summer, Delineator 1909

Margaret was in frenzy. First Herb had finally written her,enclosing a picture of his new bank in Cowansville, but the letter, a short note had proven maddening:

Feb 28, 1909
Ormstown

Dear Mother,

Am going to drop you a new line to let you know I am well. I am doing ledger work here. I was awfully sorry to here of Sam McMorine’s trouble and I think I will drop him a line. Things are very quiet here except for a horse race on the river. I think I know everybody in town and it is not quite so bad.

Now about writing, I know it is about the least I can do to write every week and will try and do better in future and although your letters were not answered as soon as they should be, yours are the only ones out of two pocketfuls that have been. I am going to try to write to Father this week.

Your Son, Herb

Excuses, always some excuse. Although he seemed to be apologizing for his Christmas behavior, wasn’t he? He said he wasn’t minding being in Cowansville, after all those cruel words at Christmas, about his parents ruining his chances, a conversation she couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone, even Norman, especially Norman.

And then there was the Ladies’ Home Journal. Sister Bella had dropped it off the day before, the new February issue, the Valentine’s issue, saying that Flora might enjoy the article ideas for silks, ribbons and flowers as she was interested in going into the millinery profession. Millinery Profession. Wherever had she heard that nonsense? No daughter of hers would ever be a shop-keeper’s assistant.

And later, when Margaret had picked up the magazine, which was, after all, so hard to resist, with its vision of pretty new things and comfortable homes, the easy life, she noticed that the magazine contained not one, but three articles railing against women’s suffrage.

THOSE RESTLESS WOMEN screamed one headline.

Suppose we take the noisy clamor for the right of women to vote and reduce it to a practical test or two. Now we are certainly led to believe by the speeches of the female suffragists, that the American women really want the ballot – in fact, that definite statement is repeatedly made. But just what is meant by the phrase “the American Woman” isn’t always made clear. How large a part of American Womanhood does it include? Let us take an expression or two direct from women. Not many years ago an American President received the customary petition that is familiar to every President, asking him to incorporate into his next message to Congress a recommendation that the subject of women’s suffrage be seriously taken up with the view of giving women the right to vote. The President was fair-minded. He was willing to see both sides, so he determined to test the truth of the phrase in the petition, that is ” this was practically the unanimous desire of American womanhood as a whole,” but that “men had refused to recognize the fact.” That evening he handed the petition to his wife and asked her “What do you think of that?” “I really don’t know,” she answered. “I have never thought about it.” The President said, “but the petition says it is the unanimous desire of American women.”
“Perhaps it is,” she answered. “Why don’t you find out. Pick fifty women whose opinion you respect and write and ask them.”

The President did.

There were 46 answers. Thirty four had no desire at all to vote. They were ‘too busy’ or left politics to their husbands. Eleven were absolutely indifferent. One lonely lady said “she might vote” but added “probably, when the time came, I wouldn’t bother to vote.” Here, then, were forty-odd intelligent, representative women, and yet not a single one actually wanted the ballot!

…The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of American women have not only no desire to vote, but, to use their own words, they are not bothering about the question. This is the actual condition that American suffragists confront, not the antagonism of men, for men, as a body, are not antagonistic, they are indifferent, perfectly content to let women fight this question out among themselves and find consensus among themselves. And up to this date that consensus is distinctly that the average woman’s common sense, and particularly her knowledge of her own sex, teaches her that she is unwilling to run the risks, which she knows, far better than men, would accompany an extension of the franchise to her sex. The field of politics as a new excitement for a few restless American women is barred to them by their own sex.

Americans, Margaret thought. Who cares what Americans think? We live in Canada, and Canadians are more Progressive than Americans. Except for Uncle Alec and The Kellochs and Sister Bella, of course.

The magazine, these days is nothing but advertisements, she noticed. (The Nicholsons had long cancelled their subscription.) She was about to toss it aside when she noticed a full page article (or was it an advertisement?) The Cheapest Way to Warm a House that pulled her back in… “The fuel savings of hot water, steam or vacuum heating will pay from 15 to 50 percent over old fashioned heating methods like coal and wood…There are other savings more important than fuel, that cannot be accurately figured in dollars..All housewives know how much extra house-cleaning old fashioned heating methods necessitate…. no cold corners, no drafts, pure clean uniform warmth..which is why our system is used in all modern hospitals, which owe their existence to unsanitary, uneven heating conditions…

This time she threw the magazine down for real. How could a person find peace of mind these days? Even fashion magazines set fires under your fiercest fears.

Making Marriage Less Easy…

Margaret and Flo. 1910 era.

Here’s an editorial from the 1909 Ladies’ Home Journal, I referred to in another blog. Now, as I’ve written, the LJH was not one of the many magazines out there in 1910 crying for women’s equality and social reform. I find this article interesting for the beginning, which is on the lines of La Plus ca Change.. but the second part is really quite weird, for a socially conservative magazine.

“Every once in a while the American Family is predicted as on the verge of dissolution, and lugubrious articles will appear in the public prints. Thirty years ago alcoholism was going to disrupt the American home: then drinking was found to be on the decrease and the American fireside thrived. Then the marriage rate was found to be on the decrease, and again the American family was on the brink. Now, it appears that the marriage rate for the last twenty years has actually increased. Again came the decreased birthrate to rock the foundations of the American hearthstone, and well, we found things were not so bad as had been printed. The national hearthstone is still firm. Now come the Government’s figures showing the increase in divorces, and this time the American family is going all to pieces, headed straight for the proverbial bow-wows. Of course, no one will say that these divorce figures make pleasant reading; that they represent a deplorable state is conceded…..

The question in connection with this divorce evil is not whether the American Public will act, for that it can be depended on to do, but how will it act? Will it adjust the divorce laws and begin at the wrong end, or will it tighten the marriage laws and begin at the right end? This is not a time for wailing, but for good straight-forward thinking along right lines. And the more we think along the line of making marriage less easy, the nearer we will become to the real solution of the divorce law.

‘

Pianos and Fashion

Unknown woman in a sailor suit. 1910 era.

In an earlier blog, I have Flora playing piano in the living room as Edith and her mother talk.

Flora played piano. So did Marion. (Marion talks about ‘practicing’ without mentioning the word ‘piano’ in her 1907 diary. )

I left a blank in my blog, to fill in later: I wanted to find a typical song she might be practicing.

In my research today, I dug out my copies of the World’s Work magazine and the Ladies’ Home Journal for 1909.

This particular issue has editorials trashing the women’s suffrage movement as well as the editorial trashing nickelodeons. (I put these editorials up on my website http://www.tighsolas.ca/ which I am using to write this novel Flo in the City.

Well, as I wrote on the Tighsolas website, piano playing was very popular in 1909. The ‘fad’ may have been at its apex. The middle class splurged on pianos… they cost a lot. 1,000 or so. That’s why ads for pianos seldom showed prices. (In a 1902 letter, Margaret is asking Norman to buy a piano second hand and see if they can get one for 100. dollars.)

So it’s no surprise that in this February 1909 issue of LHJ there is a full page column “A Department devoted to the Questions of Piano Students” by Josef Hofman, with the adjoining page having a song In the Twilight Garden, which I just decided I will have Flora playing (even if it is published a few months after)for it has a love and marriage theme.

Beside that song, in the magazine is, surprise, an advert for Ivers and Pond Pianos. Five models, no prices, but promise of deferred payment plan.

Good stuff for my story.

Oh, and on the Editorial Page, among the articles I mentioned is yet another one of interest, which I will write about in a future blog.

Where Morality and Consumerism Collide

Marion, a drawing by a Buzzell. 1910 era

I’m composing the next scene in my head, when I recall that I have a copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal under the coffee table, the May 1906 issue. I had opened it to a Page for Girls, titled The Popular Girl. I thought I might use a passage from it in my book.

I scanned that article (the articles are long, the fonts tiny)and highlighted a few passages, then started flipping through the other pages.

An editorial caught my eye: Are girls overdoing athletics? The article claimed that, although exercise is good for both sexes, “muscular efforts emulating a male athlete’s can injure a woman beyond repair. ” Both physically and mentally, as women have a different mental make-up from men. Silken Laumann, would you care to comment?

This might be useful for Flo in the City, my story based on the Tighsolas www.tighsolas.ca letters.

Then I read the next editorial and it intrigued me even more: apparently the Ladies’ Home Journal had been running a literary series by an anonymous author called My Brother’s Letters, that frankly discussed the issue of men and their needs…and had scenes where a young man visited a prostitute.

They received an avalanche of angry letters from readers.

In this editorial, the editors were not apologizing for including this feature in their magazine. It is their duty to push the envelope, they wrote. (My words.)In some matters they were more informed than their readers, who seldom leave the house. BURN!

They are so unapologetic,in the editorial, they include a letter from the author in this issue, which directly addresses the double-standard around sex.

The double standard is hypocritical, a correspondent suggests. (my words). Men should be as pure at marriage as women

In 1910, young men are expected to have had some sex (using prostitutes) before marriage while women are expected to remain virtuous, except for the poor prostitute who helps the young man ‘become a man’ for she is a lost woman anyway. Something like that.

They called prostitution in those days “the social evil” and much of the hypocrisy surrounding the so called world’s oldest profession (how I hate that phrase) still lingers and is the subject of an occasional newspaper article when people suggest prostitution should be legalized.

My problem for Flo In the City. How do I stick all this into the next scene, or do I? It’s an old magazine, 1906. Do I pretend it is the latest magazine and have Marion carrying it when she arrives in Richmond.

Do I keep it the May 1906 issue and have Marion carrying it because it contains an article on Making School Yards Fun? Or do I introduce it later in the scene, or later in the book.. as the last issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal that the Nicholsons got in the mail – as they ran out of money.

This high and mighty attitude toward the gender and sex question in the editorial is all very ironic, as the Ladies’ Home Journal was extremely conservative.

(It was also the first women’s fashion magazine to be sustained by advertising (the other ones sold patterns) and many of the products advertised in its pages (produced largely by the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency) at that time became household names during the century.

“Old Dutch: We’re all for women’s rights. The right to a clean home.” Tsk.

Borden’s Milk:their logo, a cow with a woman’s hourglass figure. (I could write an entire novel about the era around the issue of ‘milk’.

In February 1909, they ran three editorials that are against women’s suffrage, which I will use for Flo in the City.