By: Issiah Scarborough, Oskar Christiansen, & Trina Trinh
New Women and Modern Girls
We will explore the transformative portrayal of women in modern literature, focusing on concepts of “The New Woman” and “The Modern Girl.” Through this, we invite you to think about the ongoing journey for gender equality and the paths that have been paved for us.
The concept of “The New Woman” embodied emancipated women who were independent, educated, and politically active. Embraced by both men and women, it set an expectation to which women were expected to conform. However, this often overlooks aspects such as desire, sexuality, leisure, consumption, and traditional femininity, raising questions about the complexity of women’s roles and experiences within society. During the rise of urban capitalism, a new archetype emerged known as “The Modern Girl” distinct from the earlier concept of “The New Woman.” This depicted women as consumers with interests in fashion, style, leisure, and romance.
Barbie (2023)
The portrayal of women in the 2023 Barbie movie reflects elements of both “The New Woman” and “The Modern Girl” archetypes.
Barbie’s character embodies traits of “The New Woman.” The movie starts out with Barbie and Ken living in Barbie land which is a seemingly perfect world. However, they get the opportunity to leave this world and go out and experience the real world which is a scary place for Barbie to go as she has never left before. When Barbie leaves and comes back to Barbie Land she finds out that Ken is trying to take over and set up a new Ken rule. Barbie hatches a plan to outsmart all of the male kens to gain back her Barbie land, and it works as she gets the Kens to all fight on the beach while she takes back the power and rule. This showed all of us Barbie’s intelligence to be able to outsmart all of the Kens. At the end of the movie, she decides she wants to live out in the real world as a human. Her last move being to decide she doesn’t want to live in Barbie land anymore shows the great independence she has gained and the drive that she has to want to create something new for herself.
Aspects of “The Modern Girl” are also evident through Barbie’s engagement in fashion, and consumption. One of the main things we have always seen from Barbie is her fashion and all of the clothes that she wears. The thing that all kids buy after they get the Barbie doll is all the accessories that go along with it. In the movie, we see something similar with all of the bright colors and the latest trends being worn by Barbie. Barbie is also a consumer because of the fact she is going to have all of the latest trends. Anything that comes out and is popular Barbie is going to own and will never be seen as someone who is a late adopter of any product.
Nationalism Inspiring New Women
New Women’s mission to educate themselves and be politically engaged came from a loyalty to benefit their nation. The New Women’s rise coincides with revolutionist ideals as these women challenged traditional gender roles and societal norms. Their very core ideas of serving their nation demonstrated a great sense of nationalism. New Women sought to contribute to the construction and upkeep of China by educating themselves and diving into politics. However, this is all a male-dominated and more importantly a male-restricted domain, which saw some resistance for this movement.
The desire to serve China for the better, but the crossing of long-standing gender roles created an ethical dilemma with the very core of New Women. On one hand, they sought to contribute more to their nation by expanding their role and being active in society, but they had to break long-stand core beliefs of Chinese society. Overall, these New Women acted as pioneers for women rights in China with prominent figures spearheading this movement such as Qiu Jin.
Qin Jiu was born into a wealthy family in China and went abroad to study western ideas in Japan. Once she returned, Qin brought back western ideas such as freedom of marriage, education, and heavily fought against foot binding. Qin also published a radical women’s journal to express more revolutionary ideas to women around China.
Foreign Influence Creating Modern Girls
Source: Google
The rise of Modern Girls was adjacent to the influence of foreign powers. The association of Modern Girls with consumerism and leisure was the result of one very western concept: capitalism. Capitalism allowed for more focus on an individual’s needs/desires, which paved the way for Modern Girls. This way of consumerism enabled women in China to make names for themselves and venture into the spotlight through social means. Although its a foreign reason for the creation of Modern Girls, it shares its core value of advancing women with New Women.
While New Women focused on advancing through political engagement, Modern Girls focused on advancement through societal status and almost marketing themselves almost like valuable commodities. For example, Ruan Lingyu was a famous actress in China around the 1920s. In a bid to conform to western ideas. And to bolster her image, she advertised Coca Cola, an American brand, but wore a traditional Chinese dress. The dress was modified to exemplify her features, which just further demonstrated the intersection of women with capitalism. The advertisement was meant to draw a Chinese audience to a Western product, so it bridged the two together and at the center of it all was a Modern Girl.
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (1879)
Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House,” written in 1879 is one of the earliest works to embody the concept of “The New Woman” in literature.
The protagonist, Nora has become an iconic symbol of female liberation and empowerment. Initially presented as a dutiful wife and mother, Nora began to question her role as a wife and a mother. Eventually, she makes the decision to leave her husband and kids in search of personal fulfillment and independence. Her decision to leave her husband and her entire family shows the great personal independence she has gained and the strong conviction she gained in herself as a person. She is entering a world of complete unknown and walking away from the safety of staying, but she wants this to see if she can improve her life and break away from the shackles of her marriage.
The play serves as a critique of the institution of marriage and traditional gender roles. This play is also one of the first to show us a woman making very strong independent decisions, and left many people at the time shocked at Nora’s decision to leave at the end of the play. Through Nora’s experiences, the audience is invited to question the unequal power dynamics within marriage and reflect on how Nora was treated to be led to make the decisions she did.