Motherhood: Exploring Social Ideas in The Yellow Book
Mary Ann Matias
Ryerson University
Introduction
The Yellow Book was a quarterly literary magazine published in London between 1894 and 1897, spanning only thirteen volumes. It was short-lived but has nonetheless become a symbol of the period. This exhibit examines representations of motherhood in The Yellow Book by analyzing two of its featured works. In the third volume, Frederick Greenwood, a prolific editor and journalist, published his article, “Women – Wives or Mothers?” This is a highly opinionated piece that focuses on the expected feminine behaviours and duties of women. Despite being written with a masculine authority, it feigns credibility by masking Greenwood under the pseudonym “A Woman.” In 1896, the tenth volume of The Yellow Book featured a water colour portrait entitled “Mother and Child” from a young Glaswegian artist, Margaret Macdonald. These two pieces can be attributed to The Yellow Book's collection of miscellaneous content, which sometimes expressed conflicting views. However, what this also means is that its vast range of literary and artistic genres embodies the 1890s, a documentation of the period's culture (Katherine Lyon Mix 3).
Maternity in The Yellow Book
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The Yellow Book's material is a collection of ideas that are distinct of the period and its culture. In particular, normative and emerging interpretations of motherhood and maternity were expressed in The Yellow Book's content. Both Greenwood's article and Macdonald's painting represent The Yellow Book's connection to social ideas. Macdonald is known for her contribution to Glasgow painters. Drawing upon a review written about the Glasgow School Exhibition in 1895, it is important to note the reverence with which this style is received. It describes a distinct personality in each piece that comes from being the “product of their own consciousness” (Lucy Monroe 374). Macdonald's connection to Glasgow style extends to her expression in The Yellow Book; her paintings were known for her stylistic choices, and it is the unique identity present in her work that cements any ideas about motherhood expressed in this painting. In regards to Volume 10 of The Yellow Book, Margaret Macdonald's painting is not named at all within a review's list of exceptional contributors that made it “much better worth its price than most books of other colours” (I. Zangwill 452). However, this absence supports the novelty of her painting and the ideas perpetuated by it. Greenwood is much more ingrained in social culture. In an article written about a dinner in his honor, the author, Herbert Paul, remembers Greenwood's writing for its vigour and strength, especially in regards to society and politics (67). He possessed no reliance on public authority, and within The Yellow Book Greenwood is clearly dedicated to his convictions. His article is noted as being “extremely flimsy” in a review of The Yellow Book's third volume (“Rev. Of The Yellow Book 3” 469), and it complains that the magazine is inconsistent in its content. It is a collection of so many different genres and beliefs that it can even appear messy, but this is a testament to the variety of material. Scholars have discussed The Yellow Book's immersion in social culture, and there is an even greater wealth of discussion about the representation of women in society of the 1890s. Particular conversations about motherhood in The Yellow Book has yet to be discussed. This study will not only highlight those specific conversations, but also emphasize why authorial voice is important to how they are portrayed. |
Front Cover
Aubrey Beardsley
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Motherhood: Exploring Social Ideas in The Yellow Book
Mary Ann Matias
Ryerson University
Maternity and Art
Photograph of Margaret Macdonald
Wikipedia Commons
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Macdonald's
painting, “Mother and Child,” is an example of The Yellow Book's
content expressing novel ideas about motherhood in the 1890s. In this
period, an increasing responsibility for the
health and well-being of children helped in creating a celebration of
innocence and purity. There was a type of familial identity forged in
these ideas; particularly for women, they became central figures in
raising children (Gill Jagger and Caroline Wright
29). The “content of motherhood” became something of an ideology and,
as a result, the female identity was divided between the fulfillment of
these expectations and those that deviated from it (Jagger and Wright
29). There was a construction and scapegoating
of particular stereotypes (Jagger and Wright 29), and these splits in
identity are evident in the depiction of women in art. Many of these
depictions were archetypal in nature (Wendy Slatkin 13). The avante-garde circles that The Yellow Book was involved with also participated in general female forms that could range from virginal maidens to seductive femme fatales (Slatkin 13). This preoccupation with human sexuality made maternity an especially popular subject, as it was firmly associated with reproduction and fertility.
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On
the surface, Macdonald's painting seems to also portray those same
female forms. The woman's features in this painting are particularly
feminine and delicate, and both the presence of an infant and balloons
portray that same
innocence and nurturing role cemented in family culture. But closer
inspection reveals that these elements and the way in which Macdonald
portrays them are evidence of a self-awareness in this piece. Focusing
first on the woman in this painting, she is depicted
as a serene figure; her expression is smooth and pleasant. It is
important to note that many of these features are emphasized, and are
also details associated with the traditional maternal role, such as a
docile nature. This is not uncharacteristic
of Macdonald's artwork, as her specific style lends itself to a social
prowess derived from the reinterpretation of traditional themes,
symbols, and structures – including gender (Jennifer Jill Bauer 10).
What this painting does is subvert social conventions
about the mother figure through the way it constructs them. Although
this woman possesses many of the features associated with the accepted
stereotype of a maternal figure – innocence, a loving nature, beauty –
it is all done in a very stylized manner.
Details on this human form, such as her expression and dress are
portrayed as almost too raw and obvious in its symbolism; at the same
time, the exposure of her neckline and the vibrant shading of her eyes
and lips are just as stark, and convey a sexuality that perverses
those modest qualities.
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Mother and Child
Margaret Macdonald
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Focusing last on the baby and the balloons,
their presence is also too overt. The baby in this painting is nude and
cherub-like, reaching for an array of balloons held in its mother's hand
that seem out of place and
crowded. Both of these things are another part of this maternal
archetype, this absolute familial purity. This is also characteristic of
Macdonald's fascination with the construction of fairy tale themes,
especially that of innocence (Bauer 20). Macdonald's
painting carries a theatricality in its portrayal of motherhood, a
particular attention to what the spectator was familiar with and
projecting those expectations as a sort of mirror. Clearly, Macdonald is
over-idealizing these normative views of motherhood as a sort of caricature through an exaggeration of its ideas.
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Motherhood: Exploring Social Ideas in The Yellow Book
Mary Ann Matias
Ryerson University
Maternity and Family Values
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In contrast, Greenwood's article, “Women – Wives or Mothers,” is an example of content in The Yellow Book that expressed normative views about motherhood in the 1890s. The stereotypes expressed in artwork were symptoms of an abstract significance for women in society, with their sexuality and fertility also giving cause to deny them any influence and individuality (Slatkin 13). A mother's identity resided in the home and a sort of “surveillance of motherhood” took place (Jagger and Wright 29). It was unsavory for women to have children outside of marriage, and these mothers were typically condemned as deviants in an accepted structure (Jagger and Wright 29). This social ideal of a traditional family based a lot of its responsibility on the women – their inability to fit this mantle was seen as a risk to both men and their children. Fatherhood, however, did not bear this same responsibility. Fathers were seen as possessing a “natural right” over their wives and children, as men possessed a superior strength and rationality to women (Jagger and Wright 29). Essentially, this responsibility towards maternity trapped women within domesticity, constructed from a dependency on their husbands or children. |
Frederick Greenwood Vanity Fair
Carlo Pellegrini
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Photograph of Frederick Greenwood
www.flickr.com
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Greenwood claims the article is by “A Woman.” He is attempting to validate his opinions by drawing on family values through the voice of those he feels should adhere to them: a woman. On a basic level, female
sexuality and fertility manifests only two roles for women within the
family, and both cement this domestic environment. The first of these
roles is that of a wife. The institution of marriage needed to be
challenged and reconstructed to recognize the
rights of married women (Lydia Murdoch 75), but at the time it was
celebrated as necessary for women to maintain their respectability.
Greenwood takes full advantage of this, as he claims the bond between a
man and woman enables her to fulfill her true social
destiny and should instill an immense gratitude towards the male (13). A
man becomes the only way in which a woman is socially secure. The
second lifestyle option that Greenwood offers in this article is
motherhood, and it is treated as something of
a transaction. Children are a gift bestowed upon a female (Greenwood
13), and they are expected to be received as such. While the mother
becomes simultaneously grateful and dedicated to her husband for
providing this, he is encouraged to “make the best of a very good bargain” (Greenwood 14).
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These themes are creating this dependency on the male, molding him into a vital figure for females in the social sphere – only he allows for the fulfillment of the traditional ideology, as a father to her children and as her husband. The element of maternity allows Greenwood to portray these two roles as unavoidable, as it is a natural force governing the two roles that allows her to eventually embody both (Greenwood 12). The only responsibility Greenwood gives the the male is that he is there as a vital part of a woman's life in order to achieve these two roles. This fits the traditional approach to fatherhood as a foundation of power (Murdoch 80). The mother's dependency on her children and husband was born from the expectation of maternal affection, as she was to lay a familial foundation. Greenwood portrays women as inherently possessing an overabundance of maternal instinct, so much so that she naturally knows “which fold she was intended to pass” (Greenwood 14). It is in her nature to be a loving creature, so dependent on loving something that even a childless marriage can be useful to her husband. The “unemployed maternal instincts of the wife easily work themselves out in an unlimited and universal auntdom” (Greenwood 14), and so she will always possess the ability to embody this domestic world. In essence, no alternative is offered to women, and describing it as an act of nature suggests that these two roles are inescapable. As a result, Greenwood uses sexuality and fertility to create the ultimate female identity.
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Motherhood: Exploring Social Ideas in The Yellow Book
Mary Ann Matias
Ryerson University
Society in The Yellow Book
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Both
this article and painting are part of a larger discussion in The Yellow
Book about the roles of women in society. Much of that comes from the
fact that The Yellow
Book housed a literary and artistic movement for women seeking
full-time careers and ignored the prohibitions of female sexuality
(Linda K. Hughes 850). The Yellow Book contained the New Woman, a figure
that expressed ideas of agency for women (Hughes
851). The emergence of a free-spirit, uninterested in institutions such
as marriage, threatened conventional ideals of maternity and womanhood.
Many young women turned to the arts for self-expression, and magazines
like The Yellow Book provided a means for
that (Mix 11). “Mother and Child” is an example of this, a form of
expression culminated from Macdonald's imagination that challenged the
ideologies of motherhood. However, a variety of materials and artists
also meant a conflict in this discussion. Different
views permeated different texts and images, and that meant social ideas
like the New Woman also came under scrutiny (Hughes 16). More
traditional values, such as those enforced in “Women – Wives or
Mothers,” were also present. As a journalist, Greenwood possessed a proficiency in discussing public affairs (J.W. Robertson Scott 118). He
was a dramatic critic and editor for much of his life, and his article
in The Yellow Book is also a form of expression. Instead of utilizing
symbols like Macdonald, however, Greenwood's piece is entirely social commentary.
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Front Cover
James Illingworth Kay
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Conclusion
Motherhood: Exploring Social Ideas in The Yellow Book
Mary Ann Matias
Ryerson University
Works Cited
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