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1. 1 2017-01-13T01:17:15+00:00 Kathleen Hurlock 62afa4649e1001ffbb7bf4bbefc88dc48d384c26 Cobbe Annotation Kathleen Hurlock 2 plain 2017-01-13T01:17:42+00:00 Kathleen Hurlock 62afa4649e1001ffbb7bf4bbefc88dc48d384c26

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• 1 2016-11-26T17:36:19+00:00 Reproduction and Medicine 7 plain 2454 2017-01-18T19:20:25+00:00

  Many New Woman utopian texts address reproduction, or, more generally, medicine, and how each concept functions in the new, futuristic societies. Most of the included texts appear to do so through at least one of two lenses. The first, and perhaps easiest to delineate, are responses to the Contagious Diseases Act. Angelique Richardson, writing in Love and Eugenics In the Late Nineteenth Century, defines these acts: “These acts were introduced as exceptional legislation to control the spread of venereal disease...Demanding the registration and compulsory examination of suspected female prostitutes in these areas, the acts effectively gave state backing to the sexual double standard, legitimizing male promiscuity” (Richardson 46). As discussed in the introduction, New Women's responses to the act correlated heavily with the anxieties surrounding their sexuality. In spite of the slight New Woman anxiety regarding being equated with prostitution (see the Nation, Empire, and Landscape notes), New Women still largely opposed and protested the acts as an issue of sexual repression, which, to borrow Richardson’s term, encouraged the sexual “double standard”, which recalls Sarah Grand’s issue with the “marriage problem”.

   

  Second, many depictions of medicine and reproducing in New Woman utopian societies suggest a desire for an idealized race of people, focusing explicitly on physical perfection (often with more racialized/racist undertones), often obtained through eugenics. It is difficult to place the rather pro-physical engineering attitude of New Woman. In some respects, it likely related to the often tense, even hypocritical ideas surrounding sexual liberation and prostitution. In one sense, New Women heavily advocated for sexual liberation, but perhaps primarily for themselves (educated, radical, white women), in spite of making activism against the Contagious Diseases Act a pet cause. At the same time, New Women, again, resented prostitutes because of both a perceived attack on urban cleanliness and, of course, how often New Woman activists were equated with prostitutes. Perhaps such an idea can be extended beyond sex work, i.e., New Woman, in spite of relishing it, may have been simultaneously anxious about advocating for total sexual liberation, concerned about what sort of “undesirable” humans it may produce. Richardson explains that women’s “power of selection” of their male sexual partners became a feminist issue, and that such an idea was connected to women’s sexual liberation and even education: “Social purists were seeking to reverse this androcentric bias of sexual selection, reinvesting women with the agency of selection on the grounds that...they were sufficiently race aware to make responsible sexual choices...women...would initiate the replacement of romantic love by rational eugenic love” (56). New Women (who, again, were often white and relatively privileged) and other progressive/feminist women perhaps relished in gaining the social power of sexual selection; such an idea attests to their liberation, as they could chose, their partners, but, at the same time, they could gatekeepers for who was or was not a member of the “ideal” race, shaping populations through their sexual choices.

   

  Again, many of the texts included in the anthology seem to address this idea of women controlling populations, presenting a physically idealized, engineered race alongside egalitarianism. Similarly, and, although clearly somewhat contradictory to the modern reader, many texts present more straightforward critiques of the Contagious Disease Acts. The first selection in this chapter, Frances Power Cobbe’s The Age of Science, falls more in the latter category. The text, published under the pen name Merlin Nostradamus, purports to be a futuristic newspaper from January 1977. In this new age, “science” (which seems to be a metonym for medicine) has replaced religion and morality as the primary social guiding force. The paper addresses how, about a century ago, women’s rights were on the rise, noting that, in particular, women were gaining educations and becoming doctors. Now, women are totally repressed, particularly educationally. The newspaper (written in a satirically positive tone) goes on to discuss the innovations made in medicine, positively equating them with the “progress” made regarding women. Any “medical graduate” can throw anyone in an asylum they deem fit; essentially, medical arrests take place, recalling Samuel Butler’s Erewhon from a few years earlier. The text purports that medicine will become the total foundation of society, with “vaccine certificates” having replaced birth/baptismal certificates. The equating of women’s oppression with that of medical oppression certainly seems like a rather transparent critique of the Contagious Disease Acts, along with perhaps other attempts to regulate women’s bodies.

   

  Somewhat similarly, Dixie’s Isola seems concerned with the regulation of the female body, while also recalling issues regarding eugenics. In King Hector’s central Act 6 speech, where he proclaims the various reforms his land will now have after the death of Isola, he makes a rather modern sounding proclamation regarding women’s reproductive rights: “Seek not to force on women Motherhood”. The use of the word “force” here seems almost like a legitimate plea for reproductive choice, allowing women to opt in or out of motherhood, something of which New Woman writers varied in their opinions. That said, the message is surrounded by one that recalls Richardson’s examples of discourse surrounding women’s sexual choice leading to a more racially or physically pure society. Hector also states that forcing motherhood is “A vast mistake which breeds the puny Man”, and that “Some men are unfit to be Sires at all”. The language, particularly regarding men, certainly recalls ideas surrounding sexual selection. Again, New Women sought sexual partners as part of sexual liberation, but, at the same time, this liberation was intrinsically connected to a desire for being at the forefront of population control. Hector’s message seems to strongly convey such an idea; women’s “choice” regarding motherhood will, simultaneously, afford them rights while also maintaining racial and physical purity, something in which many New Woman writers were deeply invested.

  
  
   

  The function of reproduction in Mears’ Mercia operates somewhat similarly, though with perhaps a more subtle, even minimized nod to real reproductive choice--that unrelated to eugenics. For example, the included texts discusses how motherhood did detract from women’s ability to get jobs (permitted and encouraged in the egalitarian England of Mercia) to support the family income, and the text makes clear that women “decide” to become mothers--not just become them because they must. Still, many concessions are made to the idea of racial purity; like that of Isola, any allusion towards reproductive choice seems more concerned with this idea than modern notions of liberation for women. Interestingly, women are more explicitly in charge with physical engineering of their offspring, recalling the rather grotesque sort of “liberation” New Women perhaps sought through using sexual choice as a means of population control. In Mercia, expectant mothers go through a “course of self-denial and watchfulness” throughout their pregnancy. They always rest, maintain absolute physical health, and, most notably, they must practice and master whichever activity they wish their child to have a profession in. The included excerpt offers the example of an expectant mother “devoting herself exclusively” to practicing music each day in order to produce an intelligent child capable of becoming a music professor. In addition, the society in Mercia has, through unexplained means, allowed for parents to have the capability to select the sex of their child. When this technology first emerged, most parents picked male children, throwing the population off balance, but, as egalitarian ideas increased in Mercia’s world in the wake of large global shifts, parents began selecting between the genders more equally. Again, Mercia seems to be promoting ideas of women being more in charge of the fate of their offspring, recalling attitudes of New Woman and contemporaries regarding sexual selection and its results.

   

  Finally, Corbett’s New Amazonia provides a strong example of the potential New Woman interest in eugenics and other means of population control. In the included excerpt, the racial/physical “purity” agenda of New Women is very explicit, perhaps more so than in any other included text. Women are permitted to reproduce in New Amazonia, but those who have are not permitted to hold government positions, one of the more clearly anti-motherhood, not just reproduction, positions in the included texts. Motherhood is rather state sponsored (as addressed in the Social Systems chapter), and disabled children are killed. Illegitimate children are not permitted, further allowing for a sort of population control. Most notably, though, in the included excerpt, is the depiction of New Amazonians’ “rejuvenation” procedure, in which surgeons vivisect dogs to extend the life and improve the physicality of patients. (Such an idea seems to work against many feminist writers of the time, including Cobbe, who were also anti-vivisection advocates). Interestingly, although the text (including the excerpt) does, of course, consider reproduction, it moves more towards issues of medicine in general than Isola or Mercia do. New Amazonia seems to more address furthering the physicality of the race through means aside from reproductive “choice” and/or eugenics. In one sense, it does, then, move away from the New Woman idea of using such sexual selection as a means to control the population. That said, such an attitude still seems to fit within the ethos of New Womanhood, as it extends concern for an issue related to women beyond the confines of gender, showing other ways that racial/physical purity will “progress” in the future alongside gender egalitarianism.