Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife: A Reassessment

Abstract

The Pastor’s Wife (1914) may seem at first reading simply another depiction of a woman struggling for liberation in the decades following the work of Thomas Hardy and Henrik Ibsen, being the story of how Ingeborg Bullivant escapes from an English patriarchal home, only to find herself trapped in another one in Germany. The novel, however, marks a turning point in Elizabeth von Arnim’s career; it is a novel that looks back to previous themes while anticipating those to come. It demonstrates, with comedy and bitterness, themes of alienation and exile; satirizes German codes and class; and provides a lyrical Romantic vision of the natural world. It also presents the married woman as a prisoner in a way that anticipates Vera (1921). The novel can also stand alone as an underrated classic that plays an important part in the history of English literature. Published at the beginning of high modernism, it shows, unlike the work of some canonized writers of the time, a fusion of realism and modernism. This essay argues that the novel is a proto-feminist work that is radical in its portrayal of women’s experience and influenced by literary naturalism in its childbirth scenes, but pessimistic about possibilities for change. The essay shows how the novel is modernist in its depiction of the alienated experience of the city; uses nineteenth-century realism in its narrative structure and comedy; and yet is forward-looking in its use of endings. A book that begins as a comedy but ends as a tragedy, The Pastor’s Wife deserves equal recognition with the work of H. G. Wells and E. M. Forster, writers with whom von Arnim was connected and by whom she was influenced.     

Ma Rainey’s phonograph

This essay engages a series of performance routines by the blues artist Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, as a way of critiquing the epistemological tenets of sound reproduction technology. Between 1923 and 1925 Gertrude “Ma” Rainey carried out an elaborate quasi-burlesque performance routine in which she sang while hidden inside a giant phonograph; this routine precisely references and troubles the legacy of black sounds and bodies and their conflicted forms of capture andembodiment through sonic technologies. I think about how black sounds and bodies have been rendered as documentary objects within sonic and visual performance contexts and how this history is both referenced and complicated in Ma Rainey’s performances. I argue further that Rainey’s performance illustrates how sonic technologies always require, what I term black documentary embodiment, through the sonic and the visual. To this end I illustrate how reducing black art to an evidentiary object was central to the phonograph’s material and epistemological construction. In addition to analyzing Rainey’s performance I briefly engage the contemporaneous visual culture of the blues as a means to trace the legacy of black documentary embodiment within a longer visual-sonic tradition.     

‘Where There’s a Will There’s a Woman’: Exploring the Gendered Nature of Will-Making

This paper explores the gendered nature of the formal will-making process. Longer female life expectancy means that women often make the final decision regarding the disposal of relational assets. Inheritance is thus identified as a rare opportunity for them to enjoy power and control over family wealth. There are, however, questions as to whether that enjoyment may be inhibited by the presence of men. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted with professional legal practitioners this paper discusses how, when couples seek will-making advice together, that process is largely dominated and driven by women. It argues that this situation is primarily attributable to a combination of the multi-faceted nature of will-making and, crucially, women’s position and role within the family. Having identified the possibilities available to women to exercise power and authority over men in this context, the paper concludes with a brief consideration of the potential implications for both practitioners and policy-makers.     

‘Blackberrying in the Sun’? Modernism and the Ageing Woman in Rhys’s Good Morning,Midnight, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent

Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West break with tradition in re-envisioning the aging woman. No longer content with representing the forlorn dowager or the redundant females of Gaskell’s Cranford, these writers challenge earlier representations while also confronting modernism itself. Instead of focusing on youth, they ‘make it [modernism] new’ by carefully detailing the various ways ageism and sexism make us ‘the other’, as they speak out against the interlocking oppressions of ageism and sexism. Whereas Rhys underscores what it means to be an impoverished, aging woman, Woolf and Sackville-West shift their concerns to the ways in which their characters come to terms with aging. For Woolf, there is both a sense of mourning and a sense of celebration as Clarissa attempts to unite her world through her ‘offering’ of parties that ‘defy’ the Gods. In contrast, Sackville-West’s dutiful Lady Slane claims her independence for the first time in her life, as she refuses the ways in which her children infantilize her.     

The Feminist Citizen-Subject: It’s not About Choice,It’s About Changing It All

This article ties together two different sources related to the Trial of Pussy Riot in Russia in 2012. On the one hand, I consider legal documents, such as court proceedings, police reports, and the sentence. On the other, I analyse a life-history interview with one of the accused, thus giving her a voice that is not mediated by juridical institutions within criminal law procedure. This allows an analysis of two different subject positions produced by these texts: a conformist citizen and a feminist activist-citizen. I pay more attention to the latter. I conclude that in order to retain an activist position, the feminist subject has no option but to resist.     

Children’s and Adolescents’ Expectations about Challenging Unfair Group Norms

Youth often hold group norms that perpetuate inequality. One way these norms can be changed is by challenging these norms by choosing to include new members into these groups who hold morally just norms. In the current study, children’s and adolescents’ inclusion decisions and social reasoning about challenging group norms through inclusion were investigated. The sample included 9–10 (children) and 13–14 year-olds (adolescents) (N?=?673, 54.4% female). Participants supported including challengers into groups holding norms supporting relational aggression and unequal allocation of resources, but they were less likely to support including a challenger into a physically aggressive group. Age-related differences and gender differences were found: children and female participants were more likely to include challengers than were adolescents and male participants. The findings indicate that youth support including new members who would challenge morally questionable group norms, but that their support depends on the specific norm the group holds.     

Women’s perspectives on the value of a father’s initiative in shifting gendered practices within families

This paper explores the qualitative perspectives of women about a community embedded fathers’ initiative in Northern England. Projects to improve the well-being of men and their children are less common within the landscape of parent and child support, with mothers more often being the target recipients. Asking women about their perceptions of an initiative for fathers then offers original insights from women who are positioned as ‘related outsiders’, in that they were ‘outside’ the project but ‘inside’ the family and community. Findings suggest that women are able to see the positive impact of such a project, identifying that it offers a shared space for men and children, time for mothers without their children and can help with shifting roles and attitudes around childcare and emotional labour in the home. The initiative was also seen by the women as offering men more healthy means of coping, including men moving away from traditional hegemonic practices, which in turn shifted some women’s long held gendered beliefs about men as fathers. This research then offers a relational gendered backstory to a father’s initiative, demonstrating how such initiatives can potentially ‘undo’ gender and the positive implications this could have for families.     

same old story? children and young people’s continued normalisation of men’s violence against women

Globally, nationally and locally men’s violence against women is an endemic social problem and an enduring human rights issue within all societies and cultures. Challenging attitudes that condone violence both at the individual and community level is a key priority in its prevention. This paper brings together findings from two separate studies based on children’s and young people’s understandings of men’s violence against women. Both studies were located in Glasgow, Scotland, and used qualitative methods to explore children’s and young people’s views of men’s violence against women. The two studies, conducted nearly ten years apart, involved children aged 11 and 12 and young people aged 15 to 18. Despite the differences in age and the interval between them, there are remarkable similarities identified within both studies centring around children and young people’s normalisation of men’s violence against women. This paper presents a discussion of three of the key themes identified from these studies: the construction of men’s violence; gender roles and the naturalisation of difference; and the normalisation of men’s violence. In both studies the techniques of normalisation were employed by the participants to minimise both the seriousness of the violence and the significance of it to the victims. The findings clearly illustrate the widespread justification of gendered violence by both boys and girls. Thus, while the development and implementation of domestic violence/abuse education programmes need to take into account gender differences, targeting only boys’ attitudes fails to acknowledge an important component in reducing domestic violence/abuse: the internalisation of patriarchal norms by girls and women.     

Irish Women’s Networks on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, 1864–1922

This article explores the ethnic incorporation of Irish women on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island from 1864, when the gold rushes began, until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The central argument is that these newcomers did not choose ethnic solidarity as a means to pursue their goals and, for most, an ethnic or religious category sufficed in an environment where local communities, churches, trade unions, kinship ties and non‐ethnic political parties had far more social relevance. The small‐scale structure of West Coast localities, the relative economic homogeneity of its inhabitants and the absence of entrenched anti‐Irish elites militated against the rise of sectarian animosities and the maturation of intensified ethnic consciousness. As a consequence, Irish women did not construct and sustain informal social networks based on ‘principles of ethnic categorisation’ in which they distributed resources and channelled interaction among group members.     

Parents’ Self-efficacy Beliefs and Their Children’s Psychosocial Adaptation During Adolescence

Research has shown that parents’ perceived parental self-efficacy (PSE) plays a pivotal role in promoting their children’s successful adjustment. In this study, we further explored this issue by comparing psychosocial adaptation in children of parents with high and low PSE during adolescence. One hundred and thirty Italian teenagers (55 males and 75 females) and one of their parents (101 mothers and 29 fathers) participated in the research. Data were collected at T1 (adolescents’ mean age = 13.6) and T2 (mean age = 17.5). Parents reported their PSE at T1. At T1 and T2, adolescents reported their perceived academic self-efficacy, aggressive and violent conducts, well-being, and perceived quality of their relationships with parents. At T2, they were also administered questions by using Experience Sampling Method to assess their quality of experience in daily life. As hypothesized, adolescents with high PSE parents reported higher competence, freedom and well-being in learning activities as well as in family and peer interactions. They also reported fewer problematic aspects and more daily opportunities for optimal experience. Findings pointed to the stability of adolescents’ psychosocial adaptation and highlighted possible directions in future research.     

red girls’ revolutionary tales: antifascist women’s autobiographies in Italy

This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engaged in revolutionary politics during and after the Second World War: Luciana Castellina (La scoperta del mondo, 2011), Bianca Guidetti Serra (Bianca la rossa, 2009), Marisa Ombra (La bella politica, 2010), Marisa Rodano (Del mutare dei tempi, 2008) and Rossana Rossanda (La ragazza del secolo scorso, 2005). In these autobiographies, personal narratives of passionate engagement are entangled with the urgency of antifascist resistance, and with the social and political conflicts that traversed Cold War Italy. Women’s multiple forms of political engagement within the Italian Communist Party are analysed, as well as the contradictory, ambivalent connection between Western European communist activists and Eastern European socialist regimes. The intersections between antifascist, communist and women’s rights politics are also explored, since some of the authors were leaders of the nation-wide left-wing Union of Italian Women. The autobiographies tell the story of an antifascist, left-wing ‘middle wave’ that fought pioneering battles for women’s political and social rights, and narrate its complex, conflictual encounter with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. These writings, therefore, allow us to reflect on changes in gendered subjectivities and revolutionary politics across time and generations.     

‘If a girl’s photo gets sent around,that’s a way bigger deal than if a guy’s photo gets sent around’: gender,sexting, and the teenage years

Youth, particularly female teens, are encouraged to self-monitor and be responsible for their actions online in order to avoid harm from cyberbullying, ‘sexting,’ and other forms of cyber-risk. Highlighting findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens regarding sexting, we show the continued saliency of a gendered double standard applied to the online distribution of nudes. Our sample of male and female teens (n = 115) from urban and rural regions, aged 13–19, underscores the relatively lower ‘stakes’ involved with sexting for male teens. We explore this trend with specific reference to the salience of hegemonic masculinities and the gendered aspects of public and private spaces, both online and offline. Public exposure of nudes has potentially serious stigmatizing consequences for youth. We highlight teen experiences sending and receiving images of male penises (‘dick pics’), which is an under-researched aspect of sexting. We show the relative ubiquity of receiving ‘dick pics’ among female teens, exploring various reactions, and male motivations for doing so from male and female standpoints. Policy implications are discussed with specific reference to school-based cyber-safety programs, which our participants indicate remain highly gendered, neglecting epistemological questions around male experiences and responsibility.     

The Constitution of Afghanistan and Women’s Rights

This article argues that women’s human rights were and are being violated in Afghanistan regardless of who governs the country: Kings, secular rulers, Mujahideen or Taliban, or the incumbent internationally backed government of Karzai. The provisions of the new constitution regarding women’s rights are analysed under three categories: neutral, protective and discriminatory. It is argued that the current constitution is a step in the right direction but, far from protecting women’s rights effectively, it requires substantial revamping. The constitutional commitment to international human rights standards seems to be a hallow slogan as the constitution declares Islam as a state religion which clearly conflicts with women’s human rights standards in certain areas. The Constitution has empowered the Supreme Court to review whether human rights instruments are compatible with Islamic legal norms and, in case of conflict, precedence will be given to Islamic law. Keeping this in view, it is argued that Afghanistan’s ratification of the Women’s Convention without reservations has no real significance unless Islamic law dealing with women’s rights is reformed and reconciled with international women’s rights standards.