Female Journalists of the Fin de Siècle

‘Journalism is one of the noblest occupations a woman can follow’, suggested Sylvia’s Journal in 1894, thereby lending value and recognition to women’s growing participation in journalism and newspaper cultures, and emphasising the positive and influential aspects of the profession. During the final years of the nineteenth century the female journalist, discussed and depicted in factual essays, articles, interviews, advice manuals and short stories came to symbolise the Advanced Woman. Often a New Woman figure living independently in the city and attempting to integrate professionally into maledominated journalistic spheres, the female journalist was an increasing presence in the epicentre of newspaper production, authorship and reportage.

‘We are numerous enough, we women of the press . . . fiction has made heroines of us’, declared the successful female journalist M. F. Billington in 1896. Indeed, journalism as a plot and the female journalist as fictional character are depicted in a number of fin-de-siècle novels and short stories. Fiction provides an important examination of the journalistic marketplace and women’s entry into a professional arena, mapping out the increasing prevalence of the woman journalist and the resistance encountered on the way. Male and female writers wrote about journalism and in doing so highlighted both the advantages and disadvantages of women’s participation in the newspaper and periodical press.

She is the child of probably the swiftest and completest evolution time has ever known . .. she has burst one by one every bar of that gilded cage of convention beyond which her sanctified imagination never used to stray . .. on every crag of achievement some woman has carved her name . .. Has this new found liberty spoilt her? Has she, Moderna, grown ‘fast’ simultaneously with the pace of her development? Must we sadly revise in our mental catalogues many of the recognised qualities of womanhood in order to square them with this strange, modern product?

This volume considers the extent to which women’s involvement in journalism has been depicted in both fictional and factual print spaces. The texts in this volume were published in 1905, 1915 and 1932. Such a wide-ranging choice of material, in terms of publication dates, allows for insight into the shifting attitudes towards the female journalist and women’s careers in the public sphere. Female roles in journalism were still contested and debated after the fin de siècle. Despite many advances and expansion in women’s careers in the public sphere, as in the 1890s, women’s participation in journalism continued to be criticised, especially by ‘newspaper’ men. For example, in 1927 Anthony M. Ludovici, in an article published in the journal Current History entitled ‘Women’s Encroachment on Men’s Domain’, expressed his anger that ‘women now had the vote, the newspaper page . . . the city and journalism has changed since women began to compete with men’. Ludovici’s article shows a continuous reactionary backlash against women entering public spaces and journalism. Like Walter Besant, whose mocking tirade against the female journalist is reprinted in Volume I of this collection, Ludovici meditates on the impact of middle-class women intruding upon what he deems to be male geographical and print spaces. Although Ludovici’s article appeared thirty years after Besant’s piece, it confirms that well into the twentieth century male journalists continued to be anxious about women’s expansion into political, urban and print arenas. Ludovici’s article provides an interesting perspective on journalistic climates after the fin de siècle. It demonstrates that some male journalists remained committed to downgrading women’s autonomy and involvement with the press. Periodical and newspaper articles published in the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s often employed narratives that warned the reader to be cautious of the female journalist. Like their 1890s counterparts, male journalists were concerned with women’s ‘newness’, visibility and capability. Yet alongside such dismissive and critical views, many writers, both male and female, hailed the progressive, confident and ambitious female journalist as emblematic of modern life and an asset to the expanding press: