Suffragists, Egoists, and the Politics of Early Modernism

Abstract

SUFFRAGISTS, EGOISTS, AND THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERNISM C H A R LE S F E R R A L L Humber College An December 1913, at the height of the Suffragist agitation, the directors of a small monthly London magazine called The New Freewoman decided to change its name to The Egoist. Under its new title, the magazine became famous for publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Tarr, and the poetry and prose of writers such as T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, H.D., D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, Ford Madox Hueffer, and Ezra Pound. Because recent criticism has alerted us to the masculinist biases of much of the modernist canon,1it might seem plausible to assume that the change of name was the result of some literary takeover of a Suffragist or feminist magazine. K.K. Ruthven, for example, argues that Ezra Pound, who was responsible for introducing a literary section to The New Freewoman on 15 August 1913, “appropriated” the “feminist” journal to further the literary careers of himself and others. Thus, according to Ruthven, “the publishing history of The New Freewoman and The Egoist might provide a paradigmatic instance of the subordination of women by a male-dominated modernism” ( “Appropriations” 1301).2 There is certainly some truth to Ruthven’s assertion that Pound was a “phallocrat” whose dealings with the paper provide evidence of a “desire to dominate, a will-to-power” (1300), but to describe the editor of the maga­ zine, Dora Marsden, as a “feminist” (1300) requires more clarification than Ruthven provides. Marsden had been a member of two Suffragist organi­ zations, the Women’s Social and Political Union and the Women’s Militant Suffrage Society, and had even been arrested at one Suffragist demonstra­ tion. However, she resigned from the W.M.S.S. late in 1911, finding its leadership too autocratic (Lidderdale and Nicholson 53). Unperturbed by her alienation from mainstream feminism, Marsden even went so far as to reprint a resolution passed by the W.S.P.U. condemning her paper. The res­ olution states that the “meeting totally disapproves of The New Freewoman, because of its attitude on the Suffrage question, and the spirit of the edi­ torial attack on Miss Pankhurst; it resolves to boycott the paper” (qtd. in MacKendrick 24). And by June 1913, Marsden was claiming that the “term ‘Woman Movement’ is one which deserves to go the way of all such — free­ dom, liberty and the rest — to destruction” (15 June 1913: 5). Whatever it English Stu d ies in Ca n a d a , x v iii, 4, December 1992 was that Pound took over, it was hardly an orthodox “feminist” magazine.3 How are we to describe the politics of Marsden, and what connection, if any, do they have with early modernism? Critics from Glen Hughes in 1932 to Ruthven have assumed that there is little or no connection between the political pages of the magazine that Marsden edited and its literary section.4 Only Ronald Bush and Michael Levenson have dissented from this otherwise almost universal assumption. Bush argues that Marsden and Pound share a similar kind of vitalist phi­ losophy, and Levenson contends that the philosophical “egoism” of Marsden was compatible with a modernism that was “individualist before it was anti­ individualist” (79). Whatever the new light shed on early modernism by these recent studies, both largely ignore the contemporary political context to which Marsden was reacting. It is important that we analyse in more detail the political ideology of Marsden, since, if there is more than an arbi­ trary connection between the two halves of the magazine, such an analysis should reveal much about the politics of early modernism. The title of the final version of the magazine provides the most significant clue to the nature of Marsden’s politics. Although Pound and a number of other male contributors complained that the magazine’s name did not reflect its contents (Marsden 15 Dec. 1913: 244), the new title appears to have been suggested by Marsden (Lidderdale and Nicholson 75). In the 15 December 1913 issue, Marsden expresses no reluctance about the change and even...