US Women’s Suffrage
Social Change
The 19th Amendment of the US Constitution was ratified on August 26 in 1920, stating, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” [1]. The fight for women’s right to vote began in 1840 when two women, Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, were denied entrance to an Anti-Slavery political convention [2]. This sparked a movement amongst women which came to a head in 1870 when the 15th Amendment was ratified, giving African-American men the right to vote and thus strengthening women’s call for equal rights [3, 4]. Women’s contributions to World War I, including relief aid to wounded soldiers, conservation of food, and working new jobs previously held by men, was the final push needed for Congress to pass the bill in 1919 [5].
Just as there was a surge on the political and social front of women deciding it was time for a deconstruction of gender norms and a swell of voices rising and shouting, “We will not be quiet and meek and oppressed any longer!” so too was this same voice swelling in poetry. We have seen this in the poetry we have read by Marianne Moore, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Mina Loy. Particularly, in Mina Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto” when she states, “The first illusion it is to your interest to demolish is the division of women into two classes the mistress, & the mother every well-balanced & developed woman knows that is not true.” But Loy’s blatant critique of gender restrictions is not the only voice present, and we see a shift in women’s poetic language too. For instance, H.D. revamps the beautiful and the feminine in her poems, making these once fragile and flouncy elements harsh, extreme, and strong. “Garden” is about a rose, something with immense connotations of femininity and delicacy, penetrating a rock, becoming hard, causing the speaker (the “I”) to become empowered and violent, able to “break a tree…break you.”
Rocket Science & Insulin
Science, Technology, Ideas
Robert H. Goddard was a physicist who developed some of the most important inventions leading to successful space travel. Particularly of note was his work in the early 1920s in which he developed a rocket able to break through the earth’s atmosphere. In 1920, the New York Times published an infamous article called “A Severe Strain on Credulity” questioning Goddard’s theories and ridiculing his expectations to go to space [6]. And just as famously in 1969, the NYT apologized to Goddard (25 years too late) when Apollo 11 landed on the moon largely due to his discoveries [7].
Starting in 1921, Dr. Frederick Banting and his assistant, Charles Best, began experiments that led to the isolation of insulin within the pancreas. From this discovery they determined its usefulness in treating diabetes, and in 1923, Banting and his benefactor were rewarded the Nobel Prize [8].
These achievements in science don’t seem to have anything in common, and it is because of their variance in scale. But both of these discoveries led to a shifting of perspectives. The rocket indicated an ability to capture a previously unattainable distance and infinitude, while insulin signaled the importance and magnitude of something very close but also very small. Perspectives shifts of scale and size were also occurring within poetry. New associations were taking place where the mundane, such as a red wheelbarrow, is able to contain and uphold an entire universe, “so much depends/upon” that particular wheelbarrow [W.C.W]. Because the ideas of the physical universe were in flux due to several inventions and discoveries, so too the language and subjects of verse started to undergo change to compensate the new.
Book Burning and Banning
Arts & Culture
Between 1918 and 1920 James Joyce published his book Ulysses in a sequence in The Little Review, and he published the book in its entirety in 1922. Upon its publication an intense controversy sparked within the United States, involving massive book burnings and resulting in an obscenity trial [10]. The publisher of Ulysses was found guilty, ordered to pay a hefty fine, and to cease publication. The book was then banned in the United States until 1934 when the Supreme Court found there to be no reason for the book to be considered obscene [11].
I chose to highlight the controversy surrounding Joyce’s novel because often you will hear that his writing is an archetype of the modern period. The Poetry Foundation describes his works as being “characteristic modernist forms” because of their “innovative language.” I think when we sit in a classroom and run through poetry at light speed without being able to really stop and research artists and the movements they were behind, we lose sight to how iconoclastic and groundbreaking their art really was. Claude McKay is openly contemptuous of American culture in his poems “The Lynching” and “America,” which could be considered far more incendiary than Joyce’s mentioning of masturbation. The modern period, especially within art culture, was rife with individualistic and rebellious attitudes calling attention to the changing times of the world, and these voices were often met with harsh or dangerous consequences.
End of World War I
Politics & War
The League of Nations, a precursor to the current United Nations, was established in 1919, and its first meeting was held in 1920. The organization’s goal was to prevent the outbreak of another war comparable to World War I. Obviously, with the occurrence of World War II, The League’s goal was not accomplished. The League’s failure can be attributed to the fractious state of the world after the first World War. The attempt at peace keeping was thwarted due to the Rhur Uprising and civil war in Germany throughout the 1920s, Italian Prime Minister and fascist Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, and the Bolshevik Revolution leading to the forced formation of the USSR also in 1922. These events are exemplars of how the world was in a state of crisis after the turmoil of the first world war, and the relations of peoples within single nations were extremely tenuous.
The League of Nations’ endeavor at containing the violence and tensions across countries is similar to what occurs in poetry during this same time. Poets are products of their culture, and the poets during the 1920s would have been submerged in turbulence. Poetry is a way for them to contain and to control the fragmentation, the desperation, and the confusion occurring within their lives. T.S. Eliot is a prime example with his publication of The Waste Land. But not all poetic subjects need to be politically connected in order to illicit the feeling of control or containment. For example, Gertrude Stein’s “Why Do You Feel Differently” is a close study of differences within objects and how these differences impact the individual on an emotional and intimate level. The very act of putting these subjects into the form of a poem is an attempt at containment and control, but very quickly Stein loses the control as the poem devolves into rapid line breaks and desperate “No please[s]”. Poetry and art will always serve as a way in which humans can manipulate, control, and understand their environment. And in the 1920s, when ventures in peace were failing and war was rampant, artistic understanding was high in demand.
