The superwoman: Theories of gender and genius in Edwardian Britain

Historical Journal

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 101-126

  Delap, Lucy ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 77950074031     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X03003534     Document Type: Article

References (168)

1. Germainc Greer in The female eunuch, for example, remarked from the perspective of the 1970s on 'the faith that the suffragettes had in the existing political system and their deep desire to participate in them'. Germaine Greer, The female eunuch (London), 1993), p. 14.
2. Historian Brian Harrison sees Edwardian suffrage-feminism as dominated by the liberal agenda of Mill: 'Edwardian suffragists ... were too preoccupied with campaigning for the vote to spend much time on sketching out the shape of the new society, or on doing more than expose particular abuses and build up a following for the programme that J. S. Mill had laid down half a century before.' Brian Harrison, 'The act of militancy: violence and the suffragettes, 1904-1914', in Michael Bcntley and John Stevenson, eds., Peaceable kingdom: stability and change in modern Britain (Oxford, 1982), pp. 80-122.
3. Nancy Cott, The grounding ofmodemfeminism (New Haven, 1987), pp. 3-6.
4. See also RichardJ. Evans, The feminists: women's emancipation movements in Europe, America and Australasia, 1840-1920 (London), 1977), p. 39, n. 1.
5. Teresa Billington-Grcig, The militant suffrage movement-emancipation in a hurry (London), 1911), p. 213.
6. Flavia Alaya, 'Victorian science and the genius of women', Journal of the History of Ideas, 38 (1977), pp. 261-80, at p. 268, original emphasis.
7. The term 'superhuman' is here used as a shorthand for the many 'super' entities (-man, -woman, -natural, -consciousness) discussed by Edwardians, though 'superhuman' was itself also a term in use.
8. Howard, Mumford Jones, Revolution and romanticism (Cambridge, MA, 1974).
9. and M. H. Abrams, The mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and tlie critical tradition (Oxford, 1953).
10. Gallon accepted that small numbers of-eminent women did exist, but could not see them as sexually attractive. He believed they would be unlikely to marry because of their 'dogmatic and self-asserting type' or their 'shy, odd manners'. This meant that their 'genius' could not be passed on, and was thus an evolutionary irrelevance. Francis Gallon, Hereditary genius: an inquiry into its lazes and consequences (London), 1950), p. 318.
11. This trend was bolstered by the empirical investigations into the distribution of genius or intelli-gence, such as the account published in 1871 by Hyde Clarke, 'On the geographical distribution of intellectual qualities in England', Journal of tlie Statistical Society of London, 34 (Sept. 1871), pp. 357-73.
12. Havelock Ellis, A study of British genius (London), 1904), p. 227.
13. Ellis, British genius, pp. 229, 203.
14. Christine Battersby, Gender and genius: towards a feminist aesthetics (London), 1989), p. 102.
15. See also Andrew Elfenbein, Romantic genius: the prehistory of a homosexual role (New York, 1999);.
16. Mumford Jones, Revolution and romanticism, chs. 9 and 10. For contrasting earlier meanings of genius, .
17. see Kineret Jaffe, ' The concept of genius: its changing role in eighteenth-century French aesthetics', Journal of the History of Ideas, 41 (1980), pp. 579-99, .
18. Logan Pearsall Smith, Words and idioms: studies in the English language (Tendon, 1957).
19. Vitalism can loosely be described as the postulation of a 'life force' additional to mechanics or chemistry as an explanatory device in science. It had been discarded as a scientific theory for Edwardians, but remained influential as a social ideology. Edwardian vitalism gained intellectual standing through the growing influence of Samuel Butler, and the popularization of Henri Bcrgson.'Vital force' was a prominent trope in the plays of G. B. Shaw and many modernist writers, and was seen as an alternative 'engine' of evolution to the survival of the fittest postulated by Darwin. Evolutionary theory had been influential in encouraging ideas of' higher types', but seemed to rule out free will, as well as the divine element in human life. Samuel Butler argued instead that evolution was a process of 'willed adaptation to the environment', which he (and, later, Henri Bcrgson) referred to as 'creative evolution'. G. D. H. Cole, Samuel Buller and the way of allflesh (London), 1947), p. 25;.
20. Henri Bcrgson, Creative evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (London), 1911).
21. Creative evolution would allow humans to approach God or superhumanity, through ever increasing self-consciousness. Evolution towards higher forms was 'directed mainly by intelligent sense of need', and driven by the human qualities of ingenuity and heroism -in other words, by 'life force'. Samuel Butler, life and habit (London), 1916), pp. 253, 297.
22. Havelock Ellis, Man and woman: a study of secondary and tertiary sexual characters (London), 1934; 8th edn), p. 360, .
23. and quoted in Alaya, Victorian science p. 275.
24. Ellis, British genius, pp. 10-11.
25. Ellis, British genius, Ibid., pp. 158, 159.
26. Susan Kingslcy, Kent's study, Gender and power, emphasizes the way in which debates about authority have frcquendy been cast in the languages and imagery of gender. Kent, Gender and power in Britain, 1640-1990 (London), 1999), p. 19.
27. R. C. Macfie, Heredity, aviation, and vitalism (Bristol, 1912), pp. 267, 2G9. Macfie's theory of vitalism included a chapter-long polemical diatribe against the 'lamentable spirit of sex-antagonism so subtly inculcated by the propaganda of the so-called "feminists'".
28. Patrick Geddcs and Arthur Thomson, The evolution of sex (London), 1889).
29. This language was picked up in political tracts, such as that written by anti-feminist Ethel Harrison, The freedom of women (London), 1908), p. 22.
30. Ccsarc Lombroso, in his study of genius, had described women as 'conservators': 'Like children', he argued, 'they arc notoriously misoncistic; they preserve ancient habits and customs and religions.' Ccsarc Lombroso, The man of genius (London), 1891), p. 138.
31. See Alaya, Victorian science. Stanley Hall also used this distinction in his Adolescence, its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education (New York, 1904), p. 565.
32. Millicent Murby, The common sense of die woman question (London), 1908), p. 55. Murby was involved in the translation of the 1911 edition of Bcrgson's Creative aolulion, and later contributed to The Freewoman, a feminist journal which hosted discussions of the 'supenvoman'.
33. Ellis, British genius, p. 182.
34. Gout was a 'male condition', associated with the 'choleric', defined in the 1901 j'av English dictionary as 'A specific constitutional disease occurring in paroxysms, usually hereditary and in male subjects.' A new English dictionary; iv (Oxford, 1901).
35. Ellis, British genius, p. 180.
36. Galton, Hereditary genius, p. 331.
37. William James, The social value of the college-bred, in James, Writings, 1902-1910 (New York, 1987), pp. 1246-7.
38. W. H. Mallock, Aristocracy and evolution: a study ofthe rights, the origin and the social function of the wealthier classes (London), 1898), p. 379.
39. This was cxplicidy identified as a 'Tory' position by texts such as J. M. Kennedy's Tory democracy (London), 1911), .
40. and Anthony Ludovici's A defence of aristocracy: a textbook for tories (London), 1915).
41. J. A. Hobson, 'The new aristocracy of Mr Wells', the Contemporary Review (Apr. 1906), pp. 487-97, at p. 488.
42. G. B. Shaw, Raskin's politics (London), 1921), p. 30.
43. John Ruskin, 'Unto this last', in E. T. Cook and A. Wcdderburn, eds., The works of John Ruskin (London), 1905), p. 74, .
44. quoted in Ernest Barker, Political thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the present day (London), 1915), p. 193.
45. A. R. Oragc, Xietzsche in outline and aphorism (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 51.
46. Ruth Cavendish Bentinck, 'The point of honour: a correspondence on aristocracy and socialism', in Sally Alexander, cd., Women's fabian tracts (Ixmdon, 1988), p. 144.
47. George Bernard Shaw's The illusions of socialism (London), 1956) made a similar argument.
48. The .content of affiliations such as 'progressive' are hard to establish for this period, one in which iconoclasm and expcrimcntalism reigned, and the 'avant-garde' became a site of a curious mixture of radicalism and reaction. See Tom Steele, 'From gentleman to superman: Alfred Oragc and aristocratic socialism', in C. Shaw and M. Chase, eds., The imagined past: history and nostalgia (Manchester, 1989), pp. 112-27.
49. and Paul Peppis, Literature, politics and the English avant-garde: nation and empire, 1901-1918 (Cambridge, 2000).
50. The first British edition orStirner's work was published in 1912. Max Stirncr, The ego and his own, trans. Steven T., Byington (London), 1912).
51. The first British edition orStirner's work was published in 1912. Max Stirncr, The ego and his own, trans. Steven T., Byington (London), 1912). Ibid., pp. 255-6.
52. See David Thatcher, Xietzsche in England, 1890-1914 (Toronto, 1970);.
53. Dan Stone, 'An "entirely tactless Nictzschcanjcw": Oscar Levy's critique of western civilisation', Journal ojContemporary Modem History, 36 (2001), pp. 271-92;.
54. Bruce Dclvuler, Xielzsclie and the politics of aristocratic radicalism (Chicago, 1990). Most contemporaries drew their interpretation of Nietzsche's 'superman' or (as it was still often referred to) 'beyond-man'from Tims spake Zarathustra;.
55. see A. C. Pigou, 'The ethics of Nietzsche'.
56. and A. W. Benn, 'The morals of an immoralist: Frcidrich Nietzsche. II', International Journal of Ethics, 18 and 19 (1908 and 1909). Zarathustra was one of the earliest works of Nietzsche translated into English, the first volume to be issued in what was intended to be a complete works, in F. Nietzsche, Titus spake Zarathuslra: a book for all or none, trans. A. Tillc (London), 1896).
57. Oragc, Nietzsche in outline and aphorism, pp. 43-4.
58. Also quoted in Thatcher, Xietzsche in England, p. 249.
59. Dr Angclo S., Rappoport, The Xav Age (26 Sept. 1910), p. 429.
60. See Bruce Clarke, Dora Marsdcn and early modernism (Ann Arbor, 1996), for further discussion ofthe politics and 'genius' ofearly modernism.
61. Barbara Will, Gertrude Stein, modernism and the problem of genius' (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 1-7.
62. A 1921 dictionary noted that the word 'superman' 'has led to any number of nonce formations of which the language is getting very tired'. Ernest Weekley, An etymological dictionary of modem English (London), 1921). 'Superman' and 'supenvoman' were terms popular in the United States, where the Reader's guide to periodical literature listed both terms in its indices covering 1905-19, though neither term appeared before or after these dates.
63. Despite its wide usage, 'superman' was certainly not a word that gained unquestioned accept-ance, and it was probably only useful to a minority of thinkers. It was described as 'a foolish word', used 'to express an ideal very popular with those to whom nature has denied a pair of shoulders and other virile attributes', Weekley, Etymological dictionary. The association between genius and homo-sexuality had persisted from the nineteenth century, and also permeated the idea of a superman.
64. G. B. Shaw, Man and superman (Westminster, 1903), p. 196.
65. Mabel Atkinson, 'The struggle for existence in relation to morals and religion', International Journal of Ethics, 18 (1908), pp. 291-311, at p. 309.
66. Atkinson's article provides a good example of the way in which progressives used the 'superman' to frame their concerns; as a Fabian, Atkinson believed that the superman 'furnishes [Englishmen] with a motive for endeavouring politically to remedy the social conditions of to-day; for supermen cannot be bred in slums.' Ibid., p. 310., Mabel Atkinson, 'The struggle for existence in relation to morals and religion', International Journal of Ethics, 18 (1908)
67. Marsden, The New Age (23 Nov. 1911), p. 95.
68. See Thatcher, Xietzsche in England, pp. 272-3.
69. See John Carey, The intellectuals and the masses: pride and prejudice among the literary intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (London), 1992).
70. Graham Wallas, Human nature in politics (London), 1908), p. 4.
71. Rcba Soffer, Ethics and society in England: the revolution in the social sciences, 1870-1914 (Berkeley, 1978).
72. Wilfred Trotter, Instincts of die herd in peace and tear (London), 1916).
73. 'Crowd psychology' was influenced by Gustave, Le Bon's The croud: a study ofthe popular mind, first translated into English in 1896 (London), 1896). Trotter's influential book, published in 1916, drew on articles published in the Sociological Rnirw in 1908 and 1909.
74. Owen, 'Occultism and the "modem" self in fin-de-si'ecle Britain', in Daunton and Ricgcr, eds., Meanings of modernity: Britain from the late-Victorian era to World War II(Oxford, 2001), pp. 71-96.
75. Owen, 'Occultism and the "modem" self in fin-de-si'ecle Britain', in Daunton and Ricgcr, eds., Meanings of modernity: Britain from the late-Victorian era to World War II(Oxford, 2001), Ibid., p. 87.
76. Owen notes the preference of 1890s thinkers for terms such as 'new', 'the modern attitude', 'extreme modernity', and 'Jin de siccle' to indicate that their ideas characterized a new era. The term 'modernism' was a later invention.
77. Ibid., p. 74.
78. Shaw, Man and superman, p. 114 .
79. also quoted in Jonathan Rose, The Edwardian temperament, 1895-1919 (Athens, 1986), p. 77.
80. Farr, The New Age (6 June 1907), p. 92. By seeing the superman as a state of mind rather than an individual, Farr was able to claim it for women.
81. Swiney in Huntly Carter, Women's suffrage and militancy: a symposium (London), 1911), p. 63.
82. See Lucy Bland, Banishing the beast: English feminism and sexual morality, 1885-1914 (London), 1995), .
83. and George Robb, 'Eugenics, spirituality and sex differentiation in Edwardian England: the case of Frances Swiney'', Journal of Women's History, 10 (1998), pp. 97-117.
84. Dan Stone, Breeding superman: Nelzsche, race and eugenics in Edwardian and interwar Britain (Liverpool, 2002), p. 93.
85. Interest in race should not, however, be overstated. A representative comment in The jVew Age proposed a superman ' not as the offspring of male and female' but' as self-begotten from within the mind of man'. Indeed, for this contributor, 'as an individual reaches perfection he turns instinctively away from procreation and from sex'. Anon., 'Unedited opinions', The New Age (1 Dec. 1910), p. 107.
86. For both sides of the debates, see Mathew Thomson, '"Savage civilisation": race, culture and mind in Britain, 1898-1939', in Ernst and Harris, eds., Race, science and medicine, 1700-1969 (London), 1999), PP- 235-58.
87. and Daniel Pick, Faces of degeneration: a European disorder, c. 1848-1918 (Cambridge, 1989).
88. Maximilian Mugge, 'Eugenics and the superman: a racial science and a racial religion', Eugenics Renew, 1 (1909), p. 184, .
89. quoted in Stone, Breeding superman, p. 73.
90. George Robb's paper on Frances Swincy's interest in the superman mislcadingly suggests that 'no English-language feminists ever used the term "supenvoman" in their writings'; Robb only finds French uses of surjemme, though he accepts that many British feminists were fascinated by the idea of the supenvoman. Robb, 'Eugenics, spirituality and sex differentiation', p. 18, n. 113.
91. Westminster Gazette (22 Jan. 1906), .
92. quoted in Supplement to Vie Oxford English dictionary (Oxford, 1986).
93. The fallibility of the term "super"', Anti-Suffrage Review (Mar. 1915), p. 22.
94. Sidney Low, 'The passing of the superman', Fortnightly Review (May 1917), pp. 758, 761.
95. Rathbone Royden et al., in Victor Gollancz, ed., The making of women: Oxford essays in feminism (London), 1917), p. 13.
96. See Battcrsby, Gender and genius.
97. See for example, Frederic Harrison's essay on 'The future of woman', in Harrison, Realities and ideals (London), 1908), pp. 73, 74.
98. Olive Schrcincr, for example, listed Sappho and Aspasia as women of genius, but subscribed to conventional theories of genius in admitting that feminine genius was highly exceptional, Schrcincr, Woman and labour (London), 1978), pp. 101-2, 87.
99. Helena Swanwick, The future ofthe women's movement (London), 1913), p. 142.
100. Florence Farr, Modem woman: her intentions (London), 1910), p. 7.
101. Anon., The New Age (26 Sept. 1912), p. 517. I am grateful to Tom Villis for pointing this reference out.
102. Swanwick, Thefuture of the women's movement, p. 147.
103. This is reflected in Olive Schreiner's Woman and labour, one of the most influential feminist works of this period. Three out of six chapters in this work are devoted to a discussion of'parasitism', and Schreiner's emphasis is firmly on the corrupted character ofwomen; emancipation therefore partly lay in attention to character and a determination to seize for oneself an independent lifestyle, rather than in attention to changing social institutions that impose this position on women. Charlotte Despard, president of the Women's Freedom League, made similar claims about the woman's movement and the building of character and personality. Her feminism was introspective and spiritual, but not aristocratic. Despard, Theosophy and the woman's movement (London), 1913), pp. 34, 45.
104. Ellis, introduction to Ellen Key's The woman movement, trans. M. B. Borthuick (London), 1912), p. xv.
105. Key's matcrnalist policies placed her on the conservative side of the women's movement.
106. Emma Goldman, 'The tragedy of women's emancipation', in Anarchism andother asajs (New York, 1969), p. 230.
107. and Alix K. Shulman, ed., Red Emma speaks (London), 1979), p. 89.
108. Otto Weininger, Sex and character (London), 1906), p. 45.
109. Ethel L. Rogers, 'The professor, women and the superman', The Englishwoman (Nov. 1909), p. 24.
110. Schrcincr, Woman and labour, p. 144;.
111. Farr, Modern woman, p. 8.
112. Stopes, in Carter, Women's suffrage and militancy, p. 57.
113. Clifford Sharp, in ibid., p. 48., Women's Suffrage and Militancy
114. The Freewoman (henceforth FW) (23 Nov. 1911), p. 3.
115. The Freewoman amplified the demand for self-development, while rejecting the focus on service and duty that was another strong feature of Edwardian feminism, and is reflected in Stopes's comment. On The Freewoman, .
116. sec Les Garner, A brave and beautiful spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960 (Aldcrshot, 1990);.
117. Clarke, Dora Marsden;.
118. Lucy Delap, ' The Freacoman, periodical communities and the feminist reading public', Princeton University Library Chronicle, 61 (2000), pp. 233-76;.
119. Lucy Dclap, '"Philosophical vacuity and political ineptitude": The Freacoman's critique of the suffrage movement', Women's History Revirw, 11 (2002), pp. 613-30;.
120. Lesley A., Hall, 'Stella Browne, the new woman as freewoman', in Angeliquc Richardson and Chris Willis, eds., The new woman in fiction and in fact: fin-de-sieclefeminisms (Basingstoke, 2001).
121. Current Opinion (Jan. 1913), p. 47, .
122. Dora Marsden Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library box IV folder 2.
123. Marsden, FW(30 Nov. 1911), p. 21.
124. Gawthorpe, The New Age (12 Sept. 1912), p. 479.
125. Whitby, FW(18 Apr. 1912), pp. 425-6.
126. Whitby, FW(18 Apr. 1912), pp. 425-6., Ibid.
127. Francoisc Delisle, Friendship's odyssey (London), 1946), pp. 180-1.
128. Marsden, FW(18 July 1912), p. 164.
129. Marsden, FW Nov. 1911), p. 2.
130. E. M. White, International Journal of Ethics, 22 (Apr. 1912), pp. 321-34, at p. 334.
131. See comments from Dora Marsden in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 2 Sept. 1913, Shaw Weaver papers, vol. 57352, British Library.
132. Mathew Thomson, 'Psychology and the "consciousness of modernity" in early twentieth-century Britain', in Daunton and Riegcr, eds., Meanings of modernity, pp. 97-115.
133. Ellis subscribed to the journal and his wife, Edith Ellis, addressed the Freewoman Discussion Circle that met fortnightly in London.
134. See Bland, Banishing the beast, for a fuller account of this interchange between feminism and sex psychology.
135. In 1913 Edcr became the first secretary to the London Psycho-Analytic Society.
136. See J. B. Hobman, Darid Edcr: memoirs of a modern pioneer (London), 1945).
137. Marsden, FW (30 Nov. 1911), p. 21.
138. Marsden, FW(23 May 1912), p. 2.
139. 'A. B.', FW(1 Feb. 1912), p. 213, .
140. also quoted in Lucy Bland, 'Hctcroscxuality, feminism and The Freewoman journal in early twentieth-century England', Women's History Review, 4 (1995), pp. 5-23, n. 22.
141. Swanwick, The future of the women's movement.
142. Edith A. Browne, FW(14 Jan. 1912), pp. 153-5, at p. 154.
143. Watson, FW(14 Apr. 1912), p. 397;.
144. Dennett, FW(9 May 1912), p. 499.
145. See Dclap, Philosophical vacuity, pp. 613-30.
146. Marsden, FW (18 Jan. 1912), p. 162.
147. E. M. Watson, FW(21 Dec. 1911), p. 91.
148. 'The Chancellor', 'The angel club', Xac Freeivoman (1 Oct. 1913), p. 144.
149. Helen Hamilton, FW(21 Mar. 1912), p. 352.
150. Rachel Graham, FW(5 Sept. 1912), pp. 313-14.
151. Marsden, FW(16 May 1912), p. 504.
152. The Forum, Oct. 1912, p. 457, Dora Marsden Collection, Princeton University Library folder iv, box 2.
153. Andreas Huyssen, 'Mass culture as woman: modernism's other', in AJler the great divide: modernism, mass culture and postmodernism (London), 1986), pp. 44-62, at p. 55.
154. Le Bon, The croud, pp. 21, 17.
155. Hall, Adolescence, p. 561.
156. See also Kopald, in Frida Kirchway, ed., Our changing morality: a symposium (London), 1925).
157. M. P. Willcocks, FW (18 July 1912), p. 175.
158. The Freewoman group disintegrated as the journal moved away from feminism and became more firmly 'high modernist' under its new title, The Egoist. Dora Marsden sought solitary philosophical self-realization, became a recluse, and eventually her mental health broke down under the strain.
159. See Garner, Brace and beautiful spirit.
160. Orage, 'Notes of the week', The New Age (22 Aug. 1912), pp. 385-9, at p. 389.
161. Hall, Adolescence, p. 561.
162. Margaret L. Woods, 'Supermanity and the supenvoman', Xineteenth Century, 66 (1910), p. 534.
163. Charlotte Perkins, Gilman, Herland (New York, 1970), p. 69.
164. Gilman had previously celebrated genius in terms of the 'domestic genius' and 'mother-genius' of women, 'Genius, domestic and maternal', Forerunner (July 1910), pp. 5-7.
165. Roydcn, in Gollancz, ed., The making of women, p. 50.
166. For tvpieal view on women, genius, and vital force .
167. see Ellis, British genius, pp. 158, 159.
168. See Eleanor Rathbone, The disinherited family (London), 1924).