Negotiating Modernity

Fare clic
Years
of Turmoil
per modificare lo stile del sottotitolo dello schema

OED, Modernity

The quality or condition of being modern;

modernness of character or style.
1635 G. Hakewill
Apologie (ed. 3) v. 192 Yea but I vilifie the present times, yo
1782 H. Walpole
Let. to W. Cole 22 Feb. (1858) VIII. 161 Now that the poem
Chatterton's] have been so much examined, nobody (that ha
1796 S. Pegge Anonymiana
(1809) 429 Macrobius is no good author to follow in point
1883 Harper's Mag.

OED Modernism

2. Modern character or quality of thought,

expression, technique, etc.; sympathy with or
affinity for what is modern.
3. Theol. Freq. in form Modernism. A
tendency or movement towards modifying
traditional beliefs and doctrines in accordance
with modern ideas and scholarship; spec. a
movement of this kind in the Roman Catholic
Church around the beginning of the 20th cent.
4. Any of various movements in art,
architecture, literature, etc., generally

Chris Rodrigues and Chris Garratt, Introducing Modernism.

Totem Books, 2001.

Modernity and Modernism??

The first and simplest way to define modernity
and distinguish it from modernism is in terms of
new technologies - on a mass scale for mass
consumption. Modernity in real terms means
new modes of transport (the automobile, bus,
aeroplane, tractor and underground train); new
media (film, photography, the X-ray, telephone,
typewriter, tape recorder); new materials
(reinforced concrete, stell, plate glass, readymixed oil paint, plastic, dyes and man-made

V. Woolf, Mr Bennett and Mrs

Brown, 1924

On or about December 1910, human character

changed. I am not saying that one went out, as
one might into a garden, and there saw that a
rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an
egg. The change was not sudden and definite
like that. But a change there was, nevertheless;
and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it
about the year 1910.

Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard

University Press, 1994

Modernity comes in as many variations as

there are thinkers or journalists, yet all its
definitions point, in one way or another, to the
passage of time. The adjective 'modern'
designates a new regime, an acceleration, a
rupture, a revolution in time. When the word
'modern', 'modernization', or 'modernity'
appears, we are defining, by contrast, an
archaic and stable past. Furthermore, the word
is always being thrown into the middle of a
fight, in a quarrel where there are winners and

Marshall Berman, "Why Modernism Still Matters" in Scott Lash &

Jonathan Friedman, Modernity and Identity. Blackwell, 1992

Modernists, as I portray them, are at once

at home in this world and at odds with it.
They celebrate and identify with the
triumphs of modern science, art,
technology, economics, politics: with all the
activities that enable mankind to do what
the Bible said only God could do: to 'make
all things new'. At the same time, however,
they deplore modernization's betrayal of its
own human promise. Modernists demand
deeper and more radical rewards: modern

Charles Baudelaire,
Modernness/Modernit, 1863

Thus he goes, he runs, he seeks. What does he seek? Certainly this man, such as I have
portrayed him, this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling through the
great desert of mankind, has a higher end than that of a mere observer, an end more general
than the fugitive pleasure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may call
modernness, for no better word to express the idea presents itself. His object is to detach from
fashion whatever it may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from the
transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pictures, we are struck with the general
tendency of the artists to dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously the sign
of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that everything in the costume of a certain
period is ugly than to undertake the work of extracting from it the mysterious beauty which
may be contained in it, however slight or light it may be. The modern is the transitory, the
fleeting, the contingent, the half of art, whose other half is the unchanging and the eternal.
There was a modernness for every ancient painter; most of the beautiful portraits which
remain to us from earlier times are dressed in the costumes of their times. They are perfectly
harmonious, because the costumes, the hair, even the gesture, the look and the smile (every
epoch has its look and its smile), form a whole that is entirely lifelike. You have no right to
despise or neglect this transitory, fleeting element, of which the changes are so frequent. In
suppressing it you fall by necessity into the void of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like
that of the only woman before the fall.

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter

of Modern Life,

The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of

the bird and the water that of the fish. His
passion and his profession is "to wed the
crowd." For the perfect flneur, for the
passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure
to choose his home in number, change,
motion, in the fleeting and the infinite. To be
away from one's home and yet to be always at
home; to be in the midst of the world, to see it,
and yet to be hidden from it; such are some of
the least pleasures of these independent,

Howards End, ch. 13

The Londoner seldom understands his city

until it sweeps him, too, away from his
moorings, and Margaret's eyes were not
opened until the lease of Wickham Place
expired. She had always known that it must
expire, but the knowledge only became vivid
about nine months before the event. Then the
house was suddenly ringed with pathos. It had
seen so much happiness. Why had it to be
swept away? In the streets of the city she
noted for the first time the architecture of

Constantin Guys, Le Chahut,

1850 ca

Constantin Guys, Au thatre,

1850 ca

Le peintre de la vie moderne, 1863

But evening has come. It is the strange, uncertain hour at which the curtains of the sky are
drawn and the citiesare lighted. The gas throws spots on the purple of the sunset. Honest or
dishonest, sane or mad, men say to themselves, "At last the day is at an end!" The wise and the
good-for-nothing think of pleasure, and each hurries to the place of his choice to drink the cup
of pleasure. Mr. G---- will be the last to leave any place where the light may blaze, where
poetry may throb, where life may tingle, where music may vibrate, where a passion may strike
an attitude for his eye, where the man of nature and the man of convention show themselves in
a strange light, where the sun lights up the rapid joys of fallen creatures! "A day well spent,"
says a kind of reader whom we all know, "any one of us has genius enough to spend a day that
way." No! Few men are gifted with the power to see; still fewer have the power of expression.
Now, at the hour when others are asleep, this man is bent over his table, darting on his
paper the same look which a short time ago he was casting on the world, battling with his
pencil, his pen, his brush, throwing the water out of his glass against the ceiling, wiping
his pen on his shirt,--driven, violent, active, as if he fears that his images will escape him,
a quarreler although alone,--a cudgeler of himself. And the things he has seen are born
again upon the paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful,
singular and endowed with an enthusiastic life like the soul of the author. The phantasmagoria
have been distilled from nature. All the materials with which his memory is crowded become
classified, orderly, harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is the result
of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a perception that is keen, magical by force of
ingenuousness.

Constantin Guys, 1850 ca

Gustave Caillebotte, 1877, Paris

on a Rainy Day (Chicago Art
Institute)

Gustave Caillebotte, Le pont de

lEurope, 1876, Muse dArt,
Genve

Walter Benjamin, Passages

(Paris, Capitale du XIX sicle)

Baudelaires genius, which drew its

nourishment from melancholy, was an
allegorical one. With Baudelaire, Paris for the
first time became the subject of lyrical poetry.
This poetry is no local folklore; the allegorists
gaze which falls upon the city is rather the
gaze of alienated man. It is the gaze of the
flneur, whose way of living still played over
the growing destitution of men in the great city
with a conciliatory gleam. The flneur still
stood at the margins, of the great city as of the

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working

Class in England in 1844 (1845)

A town, such as London, where a man may

wander for hours together without reaching the
beginning of the end, without meeting the
slightest hint which could lead to the inference
that there is open country within reach, is a
strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this
heaping together of two and a half millions of
human beings at one point, has multiplied the
power of this two and a half millions a
hundredfold; has raised London to the
commercial capital of the world, created the

Friedrich Engels

But the sacrifices which all this has cost

become apparent later. After roaming the
streets of the capital a day or two, making
headway with difficulty through the human
turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles,
after visiting the slums of the metropolis,
one realises for the first time that these
Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the
best qualities of their human nature, to bring
to pass all the marvels of civilisation which

Flix Nadar

Felix Nadar, first aerial

photographs

Flix Nadar

Flix Nadar

Flix Nadar, catacombs

Georg Simmel and Kurt Wolff (Translator). The Metropolis

and Mental Life. 1903

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the

intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and
uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. Man is a differentiating creature.
His mind is stimulated by the difference between a momentary impression and the
one which preceded it.With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and
multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep
contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of
psychic life.

Intellectuality is thus seen to preserve subjective life against the overwhelming

power of metropolitan life, and intellectuality branches out in many directions and
is integrated with numerous discrete phenomena

Modern mind has become more and more calculating. The calculative exactness of
practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal
of natural science: to transform the world into an arithmetic problem, to fix every
part of the world by mathematical formulas.

Howards End, 1910

Howards End, sometimes proclaimed as

Forsters most mature novel, uses the country
house as a symbol of cultural unity. On the
title page of the early editions is the phrase
Only connect. Forster admonishes
humankind that its most significant failure is
the reluctance to establish relationships with
each other and eliminate the obstacles of
prejudice that divide and subjugate
individuals. The Schlegels and the Wilcoxes
represent two different ways of life. The

She broke off, and listened to the sounds of a

London morning. Their house was in Wickham
Place, and fairly quiet, for a lofty promontory
of buildings separated it from the main
thoroughfare. One had the sense of a
backwater, or rather of an estuary, whose
waters flowed in from the invisible sea, and
ebbed into a profound silence while the waves
without were still beating. Though the
promontory consisted of flats--expensive, with
cavernous entrance halls, full of concierges and
palms--it fulfilled its purpose, and gained for
the older houses opposite a certain measure of
peace. These, too, would be swept away in
time, and another promontory would rise upon
their site, as humanity piled itself higher and
higher on the precious soil of London. Ch. 2

Howards End, ch. 6

Here he stopped again, and glanced

suspiciously to right and left, like a rabbit that
is going to bolt into its hole. A block of flats,
constructed with extreme cheapness, towered
on either hand. Farther down the road two
more blocks were being built, and beyond
these an old house was being demolished to
accommodate another pair. It was the kind of
scene that may be observed all over London,
whatever the locality--bricks and mortar rising
and falling with the restlessness of the water in

Ch. 6

Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and

turned, not upstairs, but down, into what is
known to house agents as a semi-basement,
and to other men as a cellar. He opened the
door, and cried "Hullo!" with the pseudogeniality of the Cockney. There was no reply.
"Hullo!" he repeated. The sitting-room was
empty, though the electric light had been left
burning. A look of relief came over his face,
and he flung himself into the armchair. The
sitting-room contained, besides the armchair,

Maude Goodman

To the modern eye, Maude Goodman's

paintings seem in the most cringe-makingly
sentimental taste, the sort of thing that gave
the Victorians a bad name. Doting mothers,
children with yaplike dogs, fur animals on the
floor, happy smiles all round. However, they
are certainly technically very competent. Her
style is consistent - the mothers tend to wear
pale gowns rather than normal clothes, and
have bunned curly hair, often with bonnets.
Now and again the women's faces show a

Maude Goodman, Santa Claus

Howards End, ch. 10

Vulgarity reigned. Public-houses, besides

their usual exhortation against temperance
reform, invited men to "Join our Christmas
goose club"--one bottle of gin, etc., or two,
according to subscription. A poster of a
woman in tights heralded the Christmas
pantomime, and little red devils, who had
come in again that year, were prevalent upon
the Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid
idealist. She did not wish this spate of
business and self-advertisement checked. It

Howards End, ch. vi

Mr. Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and

Leonard stood wondering whether he would
take the tram as far as a penny would take him,
or whether he would walk. He decided to
walk--it is no good giving in, and he had spent
money enough at Queen's Hall--and he walked
over Westminster Bridge, in front of St.
Thomas's Hospital, and through the immense
tunnel that passes under the South-Western
main line at Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused
and listened to the roar of the trains. A sharp

Howards End, ch. xv

Helen and Margaret walked the earnest girl as

far as Battersea Bridge Station, arguing
copiously all the way. When she had gone
they were conscious of an alleviation, and of
the great beauty of the evening. They turned
back towards Oakley Street. The lamps and
the plane-trees, following the line of the
embankment, struck a note of dignity that is
rare in English cities. The seats, almost
deserted, were here and there occupied by
gentlefolk in evening dress, who had strolled

James Mc Neill Whistler,

Nocturne, 1875

Whistler, Nocturne in Grey and

Silver, 1875

Claude Monet, Tugboats on River

Thames, undated

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge,

1900

Ch. 13

. Certainly London fascinates. One visualizes it as a tract of quivering grey,

intelligent without purpose, and excitable without love; as a spirit that has altered
before it can be chronicled; as a heart that certainly beats, but with no pulsation of
humanity. It lies beyond everything: Nature, with all her cruelty, comes nearer to
us than do these crowds of men. A friend explains himself: the earth is explicable-from her we came, and we must return to her. But who can explain Westminster
Bridge Road or Liverpool Street in the morning--the city inhaling--or the same
thoroughfares in the evening--the city exhaling her exhausted air? We reach in
desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are
ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is
religion's opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but
anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of
our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
The Londoner seldom understands his city until it sweeps him, too, away from
his moorings, and Margaret's eyes were not opened until the lease of Wickham
Place expired. She had always known that it must expire, but the knowledge only
became vivid about nine months before the event. Then the house was suddenly
ringed with pathos. It had seen so much happiness. Why had it to be swept away?
In the streets of the city she noted for the first time the architecture of hurry, and

Ch. 2 (On stations and the

phantasmagoria)

. Like many others who have lived long in a

great capital, she had strong feelings about the
various railway termini. They are our gates to
the glorious and the unknown. Through them
we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to
them alas! we return. In Paddington all
Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down
the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands
and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through
the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the
poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realize this,

Walter Benjamin, Passages

With iron, an artificial building material

appeared for the first time in
the history of architecture. It went through a
development whose
tempo accelerated during the course of the
century. This received its
decisive impulse when it turned out that the
locomotive, with which
experiments had been made since the end of
the twenties, could only
be utilized on iron rails. The rail was the first
iron unit of construction,

The arch at Euston Station

(demolished)

St Pancras Station, 1868

St Pancras, iron/steel
architecture

Chapter X

"But couldn't you get it renewed?" "I beg

your pardon?" asked Margaret. "The
lease, I mean." "Oh, the lease! Have
you been thinking of that all the time?
How very kind of you!" "Surely
something could be done." "No; values
have risen too enormously. They mean to
pull down Wickham Place, and build flats
like yours." "But how horrible!"
"Landlords are horrible." Then she
said vehemently: "It is monstrous, Miss

Suburbia, ch. 3

The train sped northward, under innumerable tunnels. It

was only an hour's journey, but Mrs. Munt had to raise and
lower the window again and again. She passed through the
South Welwyn Tunnel, saw light for a moment, and entered
the North Welwyn Tunnel, of tragic fame. She traversed the
immense viaduct, whose arches span untroubled meadows
and the dreamy flow of Tewin Water. She skirted the parks
of politicians. At times the Great North Road accompanied
her, more suggestive of infinity than any railway,
awakening, after a nap of a hundred years, to such life as is
conferred by the stench of motor-cars, and to such culture as
is implied by the advertisements of antibilious pills. To
history, to tragedy, to the past, to the future, Mrs. Munt
remained equally indifferent; hers but to concentrate on the

Incipit

Then there's a very big wych-elm--to

the left as you look up--leaning a little
over the house, and standing on the
boundary between the garden and
meadow. I quite love that tree already.
Also ordinary elms, oaks--no nastier
than ordinary oaks--pear-trees, appletrees, and a vine. No silver birches,
though.

The wych-elm, ch viii

."

"I suppose you have a garage there?"

"Yes. My husband built a little one only
last month, to the west of the house, not
far from the wych-elm, in what used to be
the paddock for the pony." The last
words had an indescribable ring about
them. "Where's the pony gone?" asked
Margaret after a pause. "The pony? Oh,
dead, ever so long ago." "The wych-elm I
remember. Helen spoke of it as a very
splendid tree." "It is the finest wych-elm

Civilization of luggage, ch. xvii

Round every knob and cushion in the

house sentiment gathered, a sentiment
that was at times personal, but more often
a faint piety to the dead, a prolongation of
rites that might have ended at the grave.
It was absurd, if you came to think of it;
Helen and Tibby came to think of it:
Margaret was too busy with the houseagents. The feudal ownership of land did
bring dignity, whereas the modern
ownership of movables is reducing us

Raymond Williams, The Country

and the City

Rural Britain was subsidiary, and knew it was

subsidiary, from the late nineteenth
century. But so much of the past of the
country, its feeling and its literature, was
involved with rural experience and so many of
its ideas of how to live well, from
the style of the country-house to the simplicity
of the cottage, persisted and even
were strengthened, that there is almost an
inverse proportion, in the twentieth

Stuart Hall, Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. Blackwell, 1996.

What we mean by "modern" is that

each process led to the emergence
of certain distinctive features or
social characteristics, and it is
these features which, taken
together, provide us with our
definition of "modernity". In this
sense, the term "modern" does not

Stuart Hall, Modernity: An Introduction to Modern

Societies. Blackwell, 1996.

4. The decline of the religious

world-view typical of
traditional societies and the rise
of secular and materialistic
culture, exhibiting those
individualistic, rationalist, and
instrumental impulses now so

Capital Shares

She learnt, to her horror, that Margaret, now of

age, was taking her money out of the old safe
investments and putting it into Foreign Things,
which always smash. Silence would have
been criminal. Her own fortune was invested
in Home Rails, and most ardently did she beg
her niece to imitate her. "Then we should be
together, dear." Margaret, out of politeness,
invested a few hundreds in the Nottingham
and Derby Railway, and though the Foreign
Things did admirably and the Nottingham and

Capital gain, ch. xv

The man of business smiled. Since his wife's

death he had almost doubled his income. He
was an important figure at last, a reassuring
name on company prospectuses, and life had
treated him very well. The world seemed in
his grasp as he listened to the River Thames,
which still flowed inland from the sea. So
wonderful to the girls, it held no mysteries for
him. He had helped to shorten its long tidal
trough by taking shares in the lock at
Teddington, and if he and other capitalists
thought good, some day it could be shortened
again. With a good dinner inside him and an
amiable but academic woman on either flank,

Porphyrion insurance, ch. xv

My only contribution is this: let your young

friend clear out of the Porphyrion Fire
Insurance Company with all possible speed."
"Why?" said Margaret.
He lowered his voice. "This is between
friends. It'll be in the Receiver's hands before
Christmas. It'll smash," he added, thinking
that she had not understood.
"Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he'll
have to get another place!"
"Will have? Let him leave the ship before it

International capital

"Isn't the climate of Nigeria too horrible?"

"Someone's got to go," he said simply.
"England will never keep her trade overseas
unless she is prepared to make sacrifices.
Unless we get firm in West Africa, Germany,
untold complications may follow. Now tell me
all your news." "Oh, we've had a splendid
evening," cried Helen, who always woke up at
the advent of a visitor. "We belong to a kind
of club that reads papers, Margaret and I--all
women, but there is a discussion after.

Ch. xiv (Negotiating the

country?)

I had a bit of dinner at Wimbledon, and then--"

"But not good country there, is it?" "It was
gas-lamps for hours. Still, I had all the night,
and being out was the great thing. I did get
into woods, too, presently." "Yes, go on,"
said Helen. "You've no idea how difficult
uneven ground is when it's dark." "Did you
actually go off the roads?" "Oh yes. I always
meant to go off the roads, but the worst of it is
that it's more difficult to find one's way."
"Mr. Bast, you're a born adventurer,"

Reading Ruskin

He pulled himself together. He drank a little

tea, black and silent, that still survived upon an
upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs
of cake. Then he went back to the sittingroom, settled himself anew, and began to read
a volume of Ruskin.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"
How perfectly the famous chapter opens!
How supreme its command of admonition and
of poetry! The rich man is speaking to us from
his gondola.

On Ruskin

Since Ruskin believes that the signs of

Venetian spiritual decline appear in the city's
movement from Gothic to Renaissance
architectural styles, the following two
volumes, The Sea Stones and The Fall (both
1853), examine the growth of the city-state
and the significance of its major buildings,
particularly St. Mark's and the Ducal palace.
"The Nature of Gothic," which provides the
ideological core of The Stones of Venice,
appears in the second volume and argues that

John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera,

1871-1894

Ruskin, who came to criticism of society through the study of architecture, increasingly
concerned himself with the role of the individual worker. As early as The Seven Lamps of
Architecture (1848) he wrote that "the right question to ask, respecting all [architectural]
ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment was the carver happy while he was
about it?" (8.218) Great architecture, then, embodies the happiness, the fulfillment, the human
activity of the workman. According to The Stones of Venice "All art is great, and good, and
true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of manhood in its entire and highest sense; that
is to say, not the work of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided, according to her necessities,
by the inferior powers" (11.201). Ruskin, in other words, wishes to solve the problems of
Victorian England and Victorian architecture by making the workman an artist. In fact, one
might argue that he became increasingly aware of the dilemmas of the modern age once he
realized that the average worker, unlike the painter, had no means to express himself, develop
his capacities as a man, or engage in truly useful labor. By the time he wrote Fors Clavigera
he had closely associated the role of artist and worker, and according to the eleventh letter to
the workingmen of England, "a true artist is only a beautiful development of tailor or
carpenter. As the peasant provides the dinner, so the artist provides the clothes and house"
(27.186). A romantic theory of art, as we have seen, concentrates on the nature and function of
the artist. Ruskin begins with such a romantic theory of the arts, applies its criteria to
architecture, and recognizing the plight of the worker whom he considers potentially an artist,
moves away from the problems of art to the problems of society.

John Ruskin

Like The Seven Lamps, The Stones of Venice

discusses and defends

Gothic architecture, but it moves beyond the

earlier work's abstract treatment

both because it devotes considerable space to

the details of architectural

construction and also because it places

architecture within its social, political,

John Ruskin

Thus holding a romantic conception of

architecture, he judges this art by the same
criteria he applies to romantic poetry and
painting. A building, for example, should be
sincere. As he comments in The Seven Lamps
of Architecture, "We may not be able to
command good, or beautiful, or inventive,
architecture; but we can command an honest
architecture: the meagreness of poverty may
be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected;
but what is there but scorn for the meanness of

Seven Lamps of Architecture

The need for honesty in building similarly

forbids the "use of cast or machine-made
ornaments of any kind" (8.60), since
decoration, the proper task of the worker,
cannot be tacked on at so much a yard.
Sincerity in relation to structure expresses the
nature of architect and patron, whereas
sincerity in relation to handmade ornament
expresses the worker as well: if a man chooses
things he truly loves and carves them on
capitals and moldings, the building thus

Ch. xvi

Leonard had no idea. He understood his

own corner of the machine, but nothing
beyond it. He desired to confess neither
knowledge nor ignorance, and under these
circumstances, another motion of the head
seemed safest. To him, as to the British
public, the Porphyrion was the Porphyrion
of the advertisement--a giant, in the
classical style, but draped sufficiently, who
held in one hand a burning torch, and

The century of women, ch. vi

A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to

say that she was not respectable. Her
appearance was awesome. She seemed all
strings and bell-pulls--ribbons, chains, bead
necklaces that clinked and caught--and a boa
of azure feathers hung round her neck, with
the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound
with a double row of pearls, her arms were
bare to the elbows, and might again be
detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace.
Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those

Ch. vi

"Len, you will make it all right?"

"I can't have you ask me that again," said
the boy, flaring up into a sudden passion. "I've
promised to marry you when I'm of age, and
that's enough. My word's my word. I've
promised to marry you as soon as ever I'm
twenty-one, and I can't keep on being worried.
I've worries enough. It isn't likely I'd throw
you over, let alone my word, when I've spent
all this money. Besides, I'm an Englishman,
and I never go back on my word. Jacky, do be
reasonable. Of course I'll marry you. Only do

William Holman Hunt, The

Awakening Conscience, 1853

Bohemia?? Ch. iii

So far so good, but in social matters their aunt

had accomplished nothing. Sooner or later the
girls would enter on the process known as
throwing themselves away, and if they had
delayed hitherto, it was only that they might
throw themselves more vehemently in the
future. They saw too many people at
Wickham Place--unshaven musicians, an
actress even, German cousins (one knows
what foreigners are), acquaintances picked up
at Continental hotels (one knows what they are

New Women

New Women

The term New Woman was coined by the

writer and public speaker Sarah Grand in 1894
(271). It soon became a popular catch-phrase
in newspapers and books. The New Woman, a
significant cultural icon of the of the fin de
sicle, departed from the stereotypical
Victorian woman. She was intelligent,
educated, emancipated, independent and selfsupporting. The New Women were not only
middle-class female radicals, but also factory
and office workers. As Sally Ledger wrote:
The New Woman was a very fin-de-siecle
phenomenon. Contemporary with the new
socialism, the new imperialism, the new

New Women

Satire on New Women

John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection

of Women, 1869

That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes the legal
subordination of one sex to the other is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human
improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or
privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

But, it will be said, the rule of men over women differs from all these others in not being a rule a rule of
force: it is accepted voluntarily; women make no complaint, and are consenting parties to it. In the first
place, a great number of women do not accept it. Ever since there have been women able to make their
sentiments known by their writings (the only mode of publicity which society permits to them), an
increasing number of them have recorded protests against their present social condition: and recently many
thousands of them, headed by the most eminent women known to the public, have petitioned Parliament for
their admission to the Parliamentary Suffrage The claim of women to be educated as solidly, and in the
same branches of knowledge, as men, is urged with growing intensity, and with a great prospect of success;
while the demand for their admission into professions and occupations hitherto closed against them,
becomes every year more urgent. Though there are not in this country, as there are in the United States,
periodical conventions and an organised party to agitate for the Rights of Women, there is a numerous and
active society organised and managed by women, for the more limited object of obtaining the political
franchise. Nor is it only in our own country and in America that women are beginning to protest, more or
less collectively, against the disabilities under which they labour. France, and Italy, and Switzerland, and
Russia now afford examples of the same thing. How many more women there are who silently cherish
similar aspirations, no one can possibly know; but there are abundant tokens how many would cherish
them, were they not so strenuously taught to repress them as contrary to the proprieties of their sex. It must
be remembered, also, that no enslaved class ever asked for complete liberty at once

Ch. 9

But my husband"--her voice

softened, the chill increased--"has
very little faith in the Continent,
and our children have all taken
after him." "On what grounds?
Do they feel that the Continent is
in bad form?" Mrs. Wilcox had
no idea; she paid little attention to

Socialism, ch. xv

"Give them a chance. Give them money.

Don't dole them out poetry-books and railwaytickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal
to buy these things. When your Socialism
comes it may be different, and we may think in
terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it
comes give people cash, for it is the warp of
civilization, whatever the woof may be. The
imagination ought to play upon money and
realize it vividly, for it's the--the second most
important thing in the world. It is so sluffed

Work, ch. xiii

"I shall stick to it," she continued, smiling. "I

am not saying it to educate you; it is what I
really think. I believe that in the last century
men have developed the desire for work, and
they must not starve it. It's a new desire. It
goes with a great deal that's bad, but in itself
it's good, and I hope that for women, too, 'not
to work' will soon become as shocking as 'not
to be married' was a hundred years ago."
"I have no experience of this profound
desire to which you allude," enunciated Tibby.

Gender relations, ch. 25

The insurance company sees to that,"

remarked Charles, "and Albert will do the
talking."
"I want to go back, though, I say!" repeated
Margaret, getting angry.
Charles took no notice. The motor, loaded
with refugees, continued to travel very slowly
down the hill. "The men are there," chorused
the others. "Men will see to it."
"The men can't see to it. Oh, this is
ridiculous! Charles, I ask you to stop."
"Stopping's no good," drawled Charles.
"Isn't it?" said Margaret, and jumped
straight out of the car.
"

Ch. 25

His father accepted this explanation, and

neither knew that Margaret had artfully
prepared the way for it. It fitted in too well
with their view of feminine nature. In the
smoking-room, after dinner, the Colonel put
forward the view that Miss Schlegel had
jumped it out of devilry. Well he remembered
as a young man, in the harbour of Gibraltar
once, how a girl--a handsome girl, too--had
jumped overboard for a bet. He could see her
now, and all the lads overboard after her. But

Leonard Bast/Ruskin, ch. vi

Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin: he understood him to be the greatest master of English
Prose. He read forward steadily, occasionally making a few notes. "Let us consider a little each of these
characters in succession, and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to
this church--its luminousness." Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he adapt it
to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his
brother, the lay-reader? For example-- "Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and
first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this flat--its
obscurity. " Something told him that the modifications would not do; and that something, had he known
it, was the spirit of English Prose. "My flat is dark as well as stuffy." Those were the words for him. And
the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose,
full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual and
insistent in Leonard's life. For it was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not
guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are. Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was
being done good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen's Hall Concerts, and some pictures
by Watts, he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed in
sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind. It
is the bias of much popular religion: in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange, and
becomes that "bit of luck" by which all successes and failures are explained. "If only I had a bit of luck,
the whole thing would come straight. . . . He's got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20 h.p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he's had luck. . . . I'm sorry the wife's so late, but she never has any luck over
catching trains." Leonard was superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a steady preparation
for the change that he desired. But of a heritage that may expand gradually, he had no conception: he
hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus.