2012 Gender Gaps and 1912 Suffragettes

In my ebook Threshold Girl I have Flora and Edith Nicholson visit St. James Methodist Church in Montreal in early May 1912, a few days after the Titanic sinks, to see a ‘real British Suffragette’. The suffragette is Barbara Wiley, one that has been forgotten by Herstory and History.   Wiley had a brother who was an MP out West and she visited Montreal and Canada  in 1912 and probably said more than she should have. (I guess she was a bit of a rogue suffragette.) You see, the militant suffragettes had to be careful what they said in their speeches in Canada, as ‘militants’ were not looked well upon.

Barbara Wiley

Most suffragettes visiting Canada began their speeches by saying “I am not militant”. Not this Wiley, who told reporters in Montreal that British Prime Minister Asquith deserved getting an axe hurled at him.” I quote her in my Threshold Girl book, for the Nicholson women cut out an account of her arrival in Montreal in September 1912. From the Montreal Standard. The Suffragettes were careful about many things, including the way they dressed. They were media savvy, that’s for sure. (Read my book for more.) Anyway, as we all know, women got the vote in Canada (some during and all after the First World War).  But despite the high hopes of the suffragettes, who believed that women would change the world because ‘all men cared about was making money’,  did anything really change? Many have argued “NO.” Women vote like men. For the most part.

But there’s an interesting article in Salon today.  According to an ABC New Washington Post statistic, if only men had the vote, Romney the Republican Nominee would win handily over President Obama.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/the_biggest_gender_gap_ever/singleton/

So today, almost 100 years, later the suffragettes appear vindicated. All men do care about is money. And women do care about more than money. Maybe.

Except it’s more complicated than that:  the suffragettes were right wing when it came to some social policy (as I’ve explained elsewhere on this blog.) The Woman Suffrage Movement was strongly aligned with the Temperance Movement, especially in the States and Canada. And here in Canada, Miss Carrie Derick, a suffrage leader, was a proponent of eugenics.

 

As I wrote on another post on this blog, Christabel Pankhurst believed that prostitution would end if women got the vote, but it didn’t. Indeed, brothels are now legal in Ontario. (Sort of.)

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.ca/2010/11/votes-for-women-chastity-for-men.html

Emily Davison throws herself under the Kings Horse, by mistake, maybe. The ‘first suffragette martyr” claims the press.

Here’s a clipping from the 1910 Montreal Witness, a letter to the Editor that one of the Nicholson women, probably Edith, clipped. “There is no suffragette movement in Canada, but there is an movement for the enfranchisement of women.” You see, ‘suffragette’ meant militant, and many women, even those who wanted the vote, distanced themselves from the militants. Edith Nicholson did not. She liked the militant suffragettes. http://www.tighsolas.ca/page27.html

Titanic Fashion, so to speak. A fashion advert from Votes for Women, the magazine of the WSPU, in the UK, April 1912. Hmm. Sunshine Girl.

Woman’s Proper Sphere 1910

A soap is a soap, but

A soap is a soap is a soap. How did Ivory Soap distinguish itself from the rest, then? Not by claiming it was 99.9 percent pure (all products in the era advertised themselves as pure). But by keeping the copy to the minimum.

They created “lifestyle” advertising, that promised a less stressful time of it - sometimes even a mood altering experience. Coke gave and still gives happiness and Ivory Soap promised calm and serenity while you keep house, or oversaw servants who kept house for you.  The ads were generally full page but the picture took up most of it..And |Ivory was mostly advertised in the Ladies’ Home Journal.

 

What follows is an excerpt from an article called Twenty Six Hours a Day by Jeanne Wheaten from the July 1911 issue of Food and Cookery Magazine.

It is quite pertinent to ask, What is woman’s proper sphere? Every true woman instinctively feels, and she may profess it or not, that a woman’s happiest place is, as Mrs. Browning says, ” in the sweet safe corner of the household fire, behind the heads of the children.” Such a home is the ideal of almost every girlish heart.  But there are some who never have it. To enter upon life with the desire to get such a home is to defeat that very purpose, or to obtain in its place a miserable substitute; for, like very other gracious gift, it comes not by seeking, but in its own natural way. With some, a bright vision of married life faded in its realization into cruel mockery. With others the black pall of bereavement has shut the very sunshine out of the heavens. In other homes, the woman’s heart yearns for little ones, but she looks forward to a future of childlessness. What shall these women do? Because the heart is desolate and the hands are empty should the head be empty too? Let us not deceive ourselves. Whether a woman works in the shelter of her own home or outside of it, she has duties to society and an influence over it, which she cannot avoid. How good or how broad that influence depends upon her intellectual and moral nature.

Whatever the past may have been, we know that the future woman can and will take any place she is competent to fill. She ought to wish for no other. It is of little use for women to whine over their wrongs or to storm or scold at man’s tyranny. Men are quite willing to give us a place in the ranks of the world’s workers as we are to earn it. Still, it is well to remember that whatever has helped to elevate women to her present position has been done by those brave spirits who have resolutely wrought at their chosen labour, ignoring the petty ostracism of their next door neighbors, who called them “singular” ‘eccentric’  or “strong-minded.”  We must not judge harshly those who are called to work outside of the beaten paths. When a woman has exceptional gifts, she has probably exceptional work in the world to do, and she ought to do it.

Questions of Silk and Chiffon

A fashion spread from the Delineator, 1909. Each dress had a number with a corresponding pattern. Still, it is unlikely the Nicholson women made such fancy dresses. Of course, in those days, a woman would have one or two nice dresses, no more. We are used to seeing these fashions in movies, like Titanic, on gorgeous actresses portraying wealthy women. Let’s face it, the fashions in movies like Easter Parade or Gigi are half the fun.

With the Academy Awards coming up Sunday, or the Oscars, it is interesting to observe that the women in these early fashion magazines were fantasies to aspire to, much as the modern actresses parading the red carpet are, today, 100 years later. For the Academy Awards are all about fashion, right? (Of course, this year they’ve nominated more popular movies as well as the art house movies like An Education which critics like but few go to see in the cinema. (Well, I do.)

(I hope my favourite actor Colin Firth wins best actor for A Single Man, despite the fact I have very mixed feelings about the movie. I don’t even believe, as most critics do, that Firth outdid himself in this movie. He’s always worthy of a nomination, I think, anway. Oh, and I tried to watch the Olivier Pride and Prejudice last night, taped off Turner Classic Movies, but I couldn’t. Those ridiculous hats and dresses! Not Regency at all! I’m just so used to the Colin Firth P and P.)

My next chapter of Flo in the City, a story based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, will be about fashion, which means I have to ‘study’ this Delineator to absorb the lingo, the fashion jargon, which is Greek to me.

(I’m watching Richard III on my big screen, right now, and Olivier is doing his winter of discontent speech, in a silly wig..very distracting.)

Here’s a bit from this Delineator…Society Page, in honor of the 2010 Oscars, because, since the 1910 era, actors (and singers) have taken the place of society people in the the heart of us dull normals as people to look up to.

Not in one’s wildest flights of fancy could one call New York a deserted city, even during this deadest and dullest season on the year. Fifth Avenue alone feels the defection of its householders and the sightless eyes of its closely boarded windows turn a vacant stare on the quiet and sunny street.

The city has been taken over by an ever changing flow of visitors, who are here to enjoy the amusements which New York affords during the Summer Months. These women, or girls rather, for they are still girls, with their love of youthful pleasures have been planning for these days or weeks in the city and have used all of their ingenuity to be gowned correctly for all occasions.

Our concern is with the women who lead in the matters of fashion. Newport, Narragansett, Manchester, and the other cities by the seas are at the height of the season, and there seems to be no dearth of amusement if one is fond of polo tournaments, tennis matches and yacht races. The older women of the social world are apt to be a bit bored by the never varying program that repeats itself each Summer, but if one is young and not too much troubled by temperament, I believe the point of view is somewhat different (Sic!) Nothing is or should be a bore to someone of one and twenty, although one gloomy young person who is dragging through the first year of society assured me, when she came to order her summer frocks, that another winter she intends to take a flat on the east side and work among the poor so that she can get a little rest. However, I noticed that once she became really interested in the question of summer silks and chiffons , the slums seemed to slip a little into the background.. (PS. for some reason this excerpt of August in the Cities by the Sea by Mrs. Simcox, written in 1909 and therefore in the Public domain disappeared off my blog. Hmmm. Ghosts?)

(Hmm, I love this…It was OK for society matrons to take an interest in social problems, but clearly it was not encouraged in the young. A young woman concerned with more than her appearance was deemed ‘dull’ and too troubled by temperament. The media, in this case, magazines, provides a kind of conditioning, with a few well-chosen words. (Does this happen today? But of course.)

Now, I gotta go to IMDB and see if Richard III won any awards for costumes. I hope not. They are awful!! Gielgud looks like he’s wearing a woman’s wrapper from that 1909 Delineator I have on hand. But the acting, ahh, that’s a different story.