Our latest blog is from museum volunteer and PhD student Michelle Reynolds. This accompanies an exhibition Michelle has curated on the 'New Woman', which you can now see in our lower gallery. The featured image shows a promotional card we hold from DeMille's film 'the Cheat' from 1915, starring Fannie Ward (EXEBD 84980).
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As a volunteer cataloguing the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum’s collections, I was offered the chance to curate a display related to my research interests. While the focus of my PhD thesis is women illustrators in Britain active between the years 1880 and 1920, I have long been interested in photography and film, and my research also considers the New Woman’s wider cultural influence. Named by the writers Sarah Grand and Ouida in 1894, the ‘New Woman’ is a term analogous to what we today would call a feminist. The New Woman’s emergence in the late nineteenth century marked a shift in the early feminist movement, as modern women continued to reject the archaic social and sexual mores of the Victorian era.
The ‘New Woman’ existed in society and culture long before the phrase was coined in 1894, with the type first emerging in the literature of the 1880s. Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883) is considered the first New Woman novel. The New Woman was readily depicted in fiction as both male and female writers explored the different ways modern women were transgressing traditional gender roles and norms. Two New Woman novels, The Woman Who Did (1895) by Grant Allen and Portrait of a Rebel (1930) by Netta Syrett, have been adapted to the screen: The Woman Who Did (1915) starring British actress Eve Balfour and A Woman Rebels (1936) starring American actress Katharine Hepburn.
Like the writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, filmmakers also responded to the New Woman’s emergence and began to tell stories that appealed to modern women. Famed American director Cecil B. DeMille explored the New Woman’s aspiration for freer sexual and social expectations in motion pictures such as The Cheat (1915), Old Wives for New (1918), Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), and Why Change Your Wife? (1920). All four of these films speak to the rise of consumer culture in the 1910s and 20s as the New Woman became associated with capitalism. Items in this display such as postcards, cigarette cards, collectables, and novelisations demonstrate one aspect of this developing interest in consumerism. Although DeMille started to portray the New Woman in his work, many of these films continued to depict women ultimately restrained by conventional gender norms. While The Cheat does include a New Woman striving for her individual desires, in the end she is thwarted by patriarchal society.
Many women found success in the burgeoning film industry and looked to the New Woman to represent, and embody themselves, and the shifting place of women in society and culture. One of the most renowned actresses of early cinema was Mary Pickford who made a name for herself as ‘America’s Sweetheart’. Women were also working behind the camera as writers, editors, and directors. While often overshadowed by the fathers of early Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith, Lois Weber also forged a highly successful career as a director. Like DeMille, Weber made films that not only spoke to modern women, but specifically highlighted issues faced by women. Weber’s female characters are complex individuals, contributing directly to storylines that do not end with the New Woman becoming constricted to her conventional gender role.
One of the first recognisable female archetypes seen on screen that reflected the New Woman’s aspiration for less restrictive sexual mores was the ‘vamp’ or femme fatale. The vamp was emulated by many different actresses, most notably the American actress Theda Bara. In films such as Salomé (1918), based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, Bara imbues the vamp’s eroticism and sexual appeal. First written in French in 1891 and published in English by The Bodley Head in 1894, Wilde’s original work also links itself to the New Woman. Illustrated by the infamous British artist Aubrey Beardsley, Wilde’s Salomé is portrayed in the same manner as Beardsley’s New Women in The Yellow Book (1894-97). This controversial periodical, also published by The Bodley Head, began to promote more positive depictions of the New Woman that challenged the sexist caricatures that were typically seen in dominant mainstream culture.
Clara Bow (EXEBD 67872)
As the twentieth century progressed, the New Woman continued to become a global phenomenon, appearing in all facets of society and culture. Actresses not only represented the New Woman on screen but in their personal lives as well. One of the most recognizable New Woman types at the start of the interwar period was the flapper, who fully embraced her newfound freedoms while epitomising the optimism of the post war years. Although more conservative members of society regarded the flapper with apprehension, many popular and successful actresses from the Americans Clara Bow and Louise Brooks to the British Chili Bouchier embodied this new type on screen and in their lives off set, inspiring the use of the term ‘it girl’.
Chili Bouchier in 'Chick' (1928)
One of the biggest surprises for me as an American scholar when researching and selecting items for this display was the number of British actresses who were also highly successful in portraying ‘the new woman’. The history of early film is often dominated by Hollywood and figures such as Clara Bow and Louise Brooks are recognisable even to those who are not otherwise familiar with the history of early cinema. However, Britain also had a thriving film scene and actresses such as Betty Balfour, Mabel Poulton, and Chili Bouchier were big names on cinema marquees. Balfour was considered Britain’s answer to Mary Pickford. The phrase ‘it girl’ was also associated with Bouchier, who was a clear correlation to Bow.
While women of colour such as the Americans Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong also forged successful careers on the stage and screen, they both ultimately emigrated to Europe to find additional acclaim and renown. Although I had heard of Baker previously, I was not familiar with Asian-American actress Wong, who is very well represented in the museum collections. Both women faced challenges not experienced by their white peers, such as racial stereotyping and prejudice. Baker moved to Paris where she became the first black actresses to star in a major motion picture, Siren of the Tropics (1927). Wong broke free from the typecasting of Hollywood on German screens.
Fern Andra, Life on the Rocks (1918) (EXEBD 99324)
Many of the most fascinating images I found for this display come from the Townly Cooke Collection of film stills. On chance I found a still from a German film titled Auf des Lebens rauher Bahn, or in English, Life on the Rocks (1918). In this still we see the actress Fern Andra dressed in a suit and trilby while holding a gun. This still brought to my mind the German Neue Frau, or New Woman, who was a uniquely German image of modern woman in the Weimar Republic of the interwar period, most famously portrayed by Marlene Dietrich (image?). One aspect of the Neue Frau was her association with androgyny and more masculine fashions for women, which reflects the attire Andra’s character is wearing in this still. Like Anna May Wong, the American Andra also found acclaim in German cinema. Louise Brooks was another American actress who immigrated to Berlin and starred in the now classic motion picture Pandora’s Box (1929).
Curating this display has greatly expanded my understanding and appreciation of the New Woman as I discovered new and different ways this image of womanhood influenced women and their representations. I have immensely enjoyed learning more about only some of the many women who contributed to the global film industry between the wars.