Mueller, H. F. “The New Woman.” Life (1883-1936), 92, 14, (1928, Jul 26).

 

In H.F. Mueller’s vignette “The New Woman”, a bride and groom speak of the bride’s trip to his mother’s house, where she was supposed to learn how to cook. However, she instead ends up fixing the resistance coil in her mother-in-law’s electric iron, fixed the vacuum belt that was keeping the brushes back, took apart and cleaned the automatic drain in the washing machine, and takes apart the electric refrigerator and puts it back together, saying she and her sisters were raised to take turns doing it. She then asks her groom to remind her to pick up his Mother next Tuesday and bring her to the airport, so she can teach her about the elementary principles of aviation, believing a serious interest and that her Mother-in-law will be able to do a bit of flying within the month. 

 

Written for Life Magazine, Mueller’s vignette exhibits the newfound intellectual assertion and independent living of the New Woman. Published in 1928, this New Woman- although a bride- seems to go unruled by a man the way a woman in past decades may have been. When her husband says, “I thought you were going to my Mother’s to let her teach you how to cook,” she makes no attempt to disguise from him that cooking was the least important thing on her agenda. She is comfortable with her intelligence, and comfortable with defying traditional roles. This New Woman does not change her behavior to accompany the movement, but is simply a New Woman born from her own life experiences.

 

“The New Woman” illuminates feminine identity in the 20s presented by Fitzgerald by comparing a trifecta of women, each different, and expressing parts of the New Woman identity in different ways. The Bride and Jordan are true New Women; despite the male dominated world they inhabit, they do not submit. Daisy has every appearance of a new woman, but is not one, because she does not seek a greater role for herself beyond an object of desire. She pursues no deeper fulfillment. These women serve to show the multifaceted ways in which this cultural shift of embracing femininity and establishing a distinct identity apart and equal to men affected women in different degrees. Jordan represents a woman highly receptive to this cultural shift, and rebellious in how thoroughly she embraces it. Nick speaks to the way Jordan maintains her superiority: by avoiding men able to point out her faults.

“Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to be at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.” She is aware of her flaws, her pride, her offhanded gossiping and dishonesty, and in keeping men at a distance, she displays a new woman independence and new woman defiance of the social mores that she grew up with. She defines who she is only in her own eyes, not in the eyes of men, a previous “necessity” in the eyes of society.

The Bride represents a New Woman that sees this shift as only natural; she unintentionally makes a statement by living her life freely. Daisy represents a woman that adopts all of the superficial aspects of the movement, but lacks the strength, motivation, or belief to embrace it. 

Even in her new woman-esque infidelity and attempt to leave her husband (which was impossible to attain without a husband’s permission until the 1970’s), she defines herself by the men in her life, and whoever she is with, she turns to for guidance and decision making. Even when she is trying to tell Tom she’s leaving him for Gatsby, she balks between them. Gatsby tells her to tell Tom,

“You never loved him.”

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing — and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.

“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance.

“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly.

“No.”…

“Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone.. .. “Daisy?”

“Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said — but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. 

Instead of following her own intuition and emotional needs, she takes orders from men, and is only persuaded out of them by men. She enjoys sexual freedom, but only on the terms of the men in her life- she discovers Gatsby is nearby early in the book and asks about him, but does not seek him out on her own; Nick orchestrates their meeting, per Gatsby’s request. She tells Tom she never loved him at Gatsby’s command, although there is hesitation and thus, an implied untruth. She is swayed by Tom’s emotional manipulation, despite his poor treatment of her, and goes back to him. She has every appearance of a New Woman, but lacks the core value: a life undefined by men, and defined only by the self.

 

“The New Woman” does reveal the literary text to be fully in line with 1920s culture, because each woman is different in the ways they produce or oppose a New Woman identity. Bride is self-sufficient and was raised to be so, and in being able to teach her mother-in-law about aviation, is implied to not only be educated for the sake of equality’s appearance, but for her personal interest. Jordan is contemptuous and a terrible gossip, and makes no effort to be nice- she is described often as having a look of contempt or disinterest, and it makes no difference to her whether her behavior is “good”. The only person she tries to impress is herself.

 

“I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear…

“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor ——” I said.

“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”

“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.

“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”

“I don’t.”

“Why ——” she said hesitantly, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”

She offhandedly puts Daisy’s life– and pain– before Nick, with no regard to privacy or decorum. The only thing she seeks in this situation is the drama of Daisy and Tom’s life, for her own entertainment or knowledge. She makes no show for Nick and silences him, not caring about submitting to him or gracing him with dignified behavior. She is a new woman because she lives her life purely for herself. Despite unpopular reports of her in the news and Tom’s obvious distaste for her independent life of travel and competition, her apathy towards others and their opinions of her reveals a woman that submits to no one. While Jordan is unencumbered by cultural expectations, Daisy lives her life by them. Daisy presents herself in a way that highlights her allure; she murmurs to make people lean toward her, longs for people to miss her, extemporizes charming speeches that, at base, contain no depth or truth. While one could argue that she fulfills the tangible attributes of a New Woman- attending parties, engaging in an extramarital affair, flaunting her beauty and charm- she is not one, because she does not seek greater fulfillment beyond her male-dominated, unhappy life. She does not seek out happiness- only the comfort of knowing her place within society. She is a wealthy woman who has fallen out of love with an unfaithful husband, and yet, even after Gatsby has decided to take the fall for her killing of Myrtle, Nick sees through her window that,

 

“Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale – and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.”

Daisy spends the currency of the New Woman, but is not one. She enjoys the freedoms allowed her on the horizontal plane of her life- wealth, adoration, social success- but does not seek to redefine her role in the world or attempt an upward motion toward happiness. She is unsatisfied with her daughter and husband, but at her core, does not believe choices are hers to make. She is ruled by the comfortable pattern of her life. Although she defies Tom in small doses– in comments, in her affair– ultimately, the ease of their life keeps her in her gilded cage; if she chose Gatsby, she would have financial comfort and love, but his reputation would be called into question, and Tom would be unlikely to grant her a divorce. Letting him rule her again, with the insistence that she loved him at some points, she settles for a life she already knows to be unhappy, assuming he, her husband, knows best. Where Jordan is ruled by no man and seeks to please herself, Daisy does not prioritize pleasure in her life. While the Bride is independent while engaging in the traditional institution of marriage, her life is her own, and she makes clear to him what her priorities are. 

 

The literary text aligns with the existence of the New Woman, but presents this identity in different ways. The Bride finds her freedoms in her capabilities: inhabiting a traditional male role of handiness and self-reliance, asserting herself as more than just a homemaker, using her knowledge to confidently teach and encourage another woman to redefine her role in the world. Jordan is a New Woman in the sense that she shirks her traditional gender role- expected to one day become a mother and a wife– in favor of embracing and enjoying her life as she sees fit– be that contempt, gossip, or her professional success as an accomplished athlete. In making little effort to be a traditional woman, she makes every effort to shed any resemblance to one. These two new women– different in practice, but the same in the serving of the self unrelated to man– define what it meant to be a New Woman in the 20s. At its core, it encouraged women to pursue a life and identity of their own. Daisy acts like a new woman in social contexts, but holds onto the ideals of the patriarchal woman; suffering in silence, and obeying men regardless of her desires or truths. These three women provide a nuanced view of how new womanhood was redefined in that period, and how the pressures of society still clung to some, as it was a settled path of little resistance.