The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935

Book excerpt: Focuses on late 19th- and early 20th-century American society, where, the author says, "the beginnings of modern sexuality and psychology intersect with the foundations of modern womanhood...." Suffragettes demanding social and political independence were often transformed by literature and the popular press into "masculine women" and female sexual "inverts." While Judith Halberstam's Female Masculinities (1998), say, focused on contemporary society and the idea of male masculinity, Behling (English, Gustavus Adolphus College) exclusively addresses an earlier time when sartorial and political masculinity in relation to the female body was often interpreted as a medical as well as political condition. Behling's documents include Gertrude Stein's early novel Fernhurst, Henry James' Bostonians, Dr. William Lee Howard's novel The Perverts, newspaper accounts, Hellen Hull's "Fire," Sherwood Anderson's Poor White, and the artwork that accompanied Djuna Barnes's satiric Ladies Almanack. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR