Breaking the Ties That Bind

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Breaking the Ties That Bind (Magill Book Reviews)

In her introduction, editor Maureen Honey discusses how the image of women presented in fiction began to change in the early twentieth century. Victorianism had idealized and even eroticized female powerlessness and helplessness; contemporary romances similarly eroticized male dominance even when they covertly express hostility toward it. Honey states that the distinguishing feature of the “new woman” romance is that the heroine’s hostility to male dominance is overt, grounded in a desire for self-fulfillment.

The editor selected the fifteen stories in this volume from a sample of more than seven hundred stories from popular magazines of the era. The stories, all but one of which are by women, present various examples of “new woman” heroines. Honey does not claim great literary merit for the stories chosen; rather, they are representative of the magazine fiction of the time, much of which was formulaic and of low quality. The brief biographies of the writers appear at the end of the volume indicate that several had minor careers, while others, such as Jessie Fauset and Booth Tarkington, were quite well known.

The stories as a whole present the struggle of early twentieth century women to break out of a mold of subservience to men and to find self-fulfillment. Most of the stories involve a heroine’s conflicted relationship with a man. Tarkington’s is the only story written from a male perspective. His protagonist wishes that his wife would run a household as his mother did, staying at home rather than pursuing a career. Like many of the women in these stories, the wife has succeeded in work outside the home and is reluctant to give up her career, even at the risk of divorce. The female protagonists of the other stories discuss the same conflict from their perspective, finding themselves having to explain why they are not conforming to traditional roles. In many cases, the heroines suffer from internal conflicts as well, wondering whether their choices for independent fulfillment are the correct ones.

The careers pursued by the heroines range from writer to artist to store manager to student to pilot, showing in this variety that women were indeed interested in pursuing all fields of endeavor outside the home. The stories serve as a refreshing reminder of the changes in women’s roles that have occurred over the course of the twentieth century. The idea that a woman would choose to work, rather than doing so out of necessity, appears as a novelty in this fiction.

The stories need not be read solely from scholarly interest. Although they are very different from most modern fiction, they provide entertaining light reading for those who wish such, as well as offering an underlying social message.