World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections. In some languages, in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, the right to stand for election; the combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage. Suffrage is conceived in terms of elections for representatives. However, suffrage applies to referenda and initiatives. Suffrage describes not only the legal right to vote, but the practical question of whether a question will be put to a vote; the utility of suffrage is reduced when important questions are decided unilaterally without extensive, full disclosure and public review. In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections of representatives. Voting on issues by referendum may be available. For example, in Switzerland this is permitted at all levels of government. In the United States, some states such as California and Washington have exercised their shared sovereignty to offer citizens the opportunity to write and vote on referendums and initiatives.
Referendums in the United Kingdom are rare. Suffrage is granted to qualifying citizens. What constitutes a qualifying citizen depends on the government's decision. Resident non-citizens can vote in some countries, which may be restricted to citizens of linked countries or to certain offices or questions; the word suffrage comes from Latin suffragium, meaning "vote", "political support", the right to vote. The etymology of the Latin word is uncertain, with some sources citing Latin suffragari "lend support, vote for someone", from sub "under" + fragor "crash, shouts", related to frangere "to break". Other sources say; some etymologists think the word may be related to suffrago and may have meant an ankle bone or knuckle bone. Universal suffrage consists of the right to vote without restriction due to sex, social status, education level, or wealth, it does not extend the right to vote to all residents of a region. The short-lived Corsican Republic was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage to all citizens over the age of 25.
In 1819 60-80,000 men and women from 30 miles around Manchester assembled in the city's St. Peter's Square to protest their lack of any representation in the Houses of Parliament. Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age.. The film Peterloo featured; this was followed by other experiments in the Paris Commune of 1871 and the island republic of Franceville. The 1840 constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted universal suffrage to all male and female adults. In 1893, when the Kingdom of Hawai'i was overthrown in a coup, New Zealand became the only independent country to practice universal suffrage, the Freedom in the World index lists New Zealand as the only free country in the world in 1893. Women's suffrage is, by definition, the right of women to vote; this was the goal of the suffragists, who believed in using legal means and the suffragettes, who used extremist measures. Short-lived suffrage equity was drafted into provisions of the State of New Jersey's first, 1776 Constitution, which extended the Right to Vote to unwed female landholders & black land owners.
"IV. That all inhabitants of this Colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same, have resided within the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months preceding the election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council and Assembly. New Jersey 1776 However, the document did not specify an Amendment procedure, the provision was subsequently replaced in 1844 by the adoption of the succeeding constitution, which reverted to "all white male" suffrage restrictions. Although the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted female suffrage in 1840, the right was rescinded in 1852. Limited voting rights were gained by some women in Sweden and some western U. S. states in the 1860s. In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to all adult women. In 1894 the women of South Australia achieved the right to both stand for Parliament; the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire was the first nation to allow all women to both vote and run for parliament.
Those against the women's suffrage movement made public organizations to put down the political movement, with the main argument being that a woman's place was in the home, not polls. Political cartoons and public outrage over women's rights increased as the opposition to suffrage worked day and night to organize legitimate groups campaigning against women's voting rights; the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was one organization that came out of the 1880's to put down the voting efforts. Many anti-suffrage propaganda poked fun at the idea of women in politics. Political cartoons displayed the most sentiment by portraying the issue of women's suffrage to be swapped with men's lives; some mocked the popular suf
History of corsets
The corset has been an important article of clothing for several centuries in Europe, evolving as fashion trends have changed. Women, as well as some men, have used it to change the appearance of their bodies; the corset first became popular in sixteenth-century Europe, reaching the zenith of its popularity in the Victorian era. While the corset has been worn as an undergarment, it has been used as an outer-garment; the English word corset is derived from the Old French word corps and the diminutive of body, which itself derives from corpus—Latin for body. The term "corset” was in use in the late 14th century, from the French "corset" which meant "a kind of laced bodice." The meaning of it as a "stiff supporting and constricting undergarment for the waist, worn chiefly by women to shape the figure," dates from 1795. The term "stays" was used in English circa 1600 until the early twentieth century, was used interchangeably with corset in the Renaissance; the earliest known representation of a possible corset appears on a Cretan figurine made circa 1600 BCE.
The article of clothing depicted might be perceived as a corset, but is worn as an outer garment, leaves the breasts exposed. Corsets have been used for centuries among certain tribes of the Caucasus: Abkhaz, they were used to "beautify" women and to ensure modesty. Corsets were laced with as many as fifty laces, had to be worn from childhood until the wedding night; when the marriage was consummated, a groom had to and undo each lace in order to demonstrate self-control. The corset as an undergarment had its origin in Italy, was introduced by Catherine de Medici into France in the 1500s, where the women of the French court embraced it; this type of corset was a tight, elongated bodice, worn underneath the clothing. The women of the French court saw this corset as "indispensable to the beauty of the female figure." Corsets of this time were worn with a farthingale that held out the skirts in a stiff cone. The corsets turned the upper torso into a matching but inverted cone shape; these corsets ended in flaps at the waist.
They flattened the bust, in so doing, pushed the breasts up. The emphasis of the stays was less on the smallness of the waist than on the contrast between the rigid flatness of the bodice front and the curving tops of the breasts peeking over the top of the corset; these corsets were made out of layered fabric, stiffened with glue, were laced. While a few surviving corsets exist that are structured with steel or iron, these are considered to have been either orthopedic or novelty constructions and were not worn as part of mainstream fashion. By the middle of the sixteenth century, corsets were a worn garment among European women, on the continent and in the British Isles; the garments began to incorporate the use of a "busk," a long, flat piece of whalebone or wood sewn into a casing on the corset in order to maintain its stiff shape. The front of the corset was covered by a "stomacher," a stiff, V-shaped structure, worn on the abdomen for decorative purposes. In the Elizabethan era, whalebone was used in corsets so bodices could maintain their stiff appearance.
A busk made of wood, ivory, metal, or whalebone, was added to stiffen the front of the bodice. It was carved and shaped into a thin knife shape and inserted into the Elizabethan bodice fastened and held into place by laces, so that the busk could be removed and replaced; the busk was used for special occasions and events, was sometimes presented to a suitor as a prize when he was interested in a female. Since the mid-Victorian period, the busk has been made of steel and consists of two parts, one for each side. One side has studs and the other eyes so that the corset can be fastened and unfastened from the front. During the late 1500s, when whalebone was used at the sides and back of the corset, the corset was laced up at the front; the lacing came to be done at the back of the corset. As it gained popularity, the corset was not worn by everyone. Mary, Queen of Scots, for example, did not wear a corset. During the reign of Louis XV of France and again during the French Revolution, the corset went out of style, as the fashions were simpler.
The most common type of corset in the 1700s was an inverted conical shape worn to create a contrast between a rigid quasi-cylindrical torso above the waist and heavy full skirts below. The primary purpose of 18th-century stays was to raise and shape the breasts, tighten the midriff, support the back, improve posture to help a woman stand straight, with the shoulders down and back, only narrow the waist, creating a "V" shaped upper torso over which the outer garment would be worn. Deriving from the French word jupe, which in the eighteenth century referred to a short jacket, jumps were only boned and padded with cotton to provide support for the breasts while not being restrictive. Jumps were made of silk, cotton, or linen and embroidered. Jumps fastened over the breasts with ties such as silk ribbons and sometimes, metal hooks. Both garments were considered undergarments, would be seen only under limited circumstances. Well-fitting eighteenth-century corsets were quite comfortable, did not restrict breathing, allowed women to work, although they did restrict bending at the waist, forcing one to protect one's back by lifting with the legs.
By 1800, the corset had become a method of supporting t
Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill was a British author at the forefront of cultural Zionism during the 19th century, was a close associate of Theodor Herzl. He rejected the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and became the prime thinker behind the territorial movement. Zangwill was born in London on 21 January 1864, in a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, his father, Moses Zangwill, was from what is now Latvia, his mother, Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill, was from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing the cause of people he considered oppressed, becoming involved with topics such as Jewish emancipation, Jewish assimilation, territorialism and women's suffrage, his brother was novelist Louis Zangwill. Zangwill received his early schooling in Bristol; when he was nine years old, Zangwill was enrolled in the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields in east London, a school for Jewish immigrant children. The school offered a strict course of both secular and religious studies while supplying clothing and health care for the scholars.
At this school he excelled and taught part-time becoming a full-fledged teacher. While teaching, he studied for his degree from the University of London, earning a BA with triple honours in 1884, he had written a tale entitled The Premier and the Painter in collaboration with Louis Cowen, when he resigned his position as a teacher owing to differences with the school managers and ventured into journalism. He initiated and edited Ariel, The London Puck, did miscellaneous work for the London press. Zangwill's work earned him the nickname "the Dickens of the Ghetto", he wrote a influential novel Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People, which the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing called "a powerful book". The use of the metaphorical phrase "melting pot" to describe American absorption of immigrants was popularised by Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, a success in the United States in 1909–10; when The Melting Pot opened in Washington D. C. on 5 October 1909, former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play."In 1912 Zangwill received a letter from Roosevelt in which Roosevelt wrote of the Melting Pot "That particular play I shall always count among the strong and real influences upon my thought and my life."The protagonist of the play, emigrates to America after the Kishinev pogrom in which his entire family is killed.
He writes a great symphony named "The Crucible" expressing his hope for a world in which all ethnicity has melted away, becomes enamored of a beautiful Russian Christian immigrant named Vera. The dramatic climax of the play is the moment when David meets Vera's father, who turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David's family. Vera's father admits guilt, the symphony is performed to accolades and Vera live ever after, or, at least, agree to wed and kiss as the curtain falls. "Melting Pot celebrated America's capacity to absorb and grow from the contributions of its immigrants." Zangwill was writing as "a Jew. His real hope was for a world in which the entire lexicon of racial and religious difference is thrown away."Zangwill wrote many other plays, including, on Broadway, Children of the Ghetto, a dramatisation of his own novel, directed by James A. Herne and starring Blanche Bates, Ada Dwyer, Wilton Lackaye. Liebler & Co. produced all three plays as well as The Melting Pot.
Daniel Frohman produced Zangwill's 1904 play, The Serio-Comic Governess, featuring Cecilia Loftus, Kate Pattison-Selten, Julia Dean. In 1931 Jules Furthman adapted Merely Mary Ann for a Janet Gaynor film. Zangwill's simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest, he wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery, social satire such as The King of Schnorrers, a picaresque novel. His Dreamers of the Ghetto includes essays on famous Jews such as Baruch Spinoza, Heinrich Heine and Ferdinand Lassalle; the Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room mystery novel. It has been continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial movies. Another produced play was The Lens Grinder, based on the life of Spinoza; the following is a list of his "of the Ghetto" books: Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People Grandchildren of the Ghetto Dreamers of the Ghetto Ghetto Tragedies, Ghetto Comedies, Other books by the author: Chosen Peoples, The Big Bow Mystery The King of Schnorrers The Master The Melting Pot The Old Maid’s Club The Bachelors' Club The Serio-Comic Governess Without Prejudices Merely Mary Ann The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes which include The Grey Wig.
The hero of his produced play, The Melting Pot, proclaims: "America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! G
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem, it is considered one of the most elegant streets in the world. A narrower thoroughfare, much of Fifth Avenue south of Central Park was widened in 1908, sacrificing its wide sidewalks to accommodate the increasing traffic; the midtown blocks, now famously commercial, were a residential district until the start of the 20th century. The first commercial building on Fifth Avenue was erected by Benjamin Altman who bought the corner lot on the northeast corner of 34th Street in 1896, demolished the "Marble Palace" of his arch-rival, A. T. Stewart. In 1906 his department store, B. Altman and Company, occupied the whole of its block front; the result was the creation of a high-end shopping district that attracted fashionable women and the upscale stores that wished to serve them. Lord & Taylor's flagship store was once located on Fifth Avenue near the Empire State Building and the New York Public Library, but has since closed.
In the 1920s, traffic towers controlled important intersections from 14th to 59th Streets. Fifth Avenue originates at Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village and runs northwards through the heart of Midtown, along the eastern side of Central Park, where it forms the boundary of the Upper East Side and through Harlem, where it terminates at the Harlem River at 142nd Street. Traffic crosses the river on the Madison Avenue Bridge. Fifth Avenue serves as the dividing line for house numbering and west-east streets in Manhattan, just as Jerome Avenue does in the Bronx, it separates, for example, East 59th Street from West 59th Street. From this zero point for street addresses, numbers increase in both directions as one moves away from Fifth Avenue, The building lot numbering system worked on the East Side as well, before Madison & Lexington Aves. were retrofitted into the street grid, confusing the building numbers. Confusingly, an address on a cross street cannot be predicted at the intersection of Madison Ave. or Lexington Ave. as these were added decades after the building numbers.
It's. The "most expensive street in the world" moniker changes depending on currency fluctuations and local economic conditions from year to year. For several years starting in the mid-1990s, the shopping district between 49th and 57th Streets was ranked as having the world's most expensive retail spaces on a cost per square foot basis. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Fifth Avenue as being the most expensive street in the world; some of the most coveted real estate on Fifth Avenue are the penthouses perched atop the buildings. The American Planning Association compiled a list of "2012 Great Places in America" and declared Fifth Avenue to be one of the greatest streets to visit in America; this historic street has many world-renowned museums and stores, luxury apartments, historical landmarks that are reminiscent of its history and vision for the future. By 2018 portions of Fifth Avenue had large numbers of vacant store fronts for long periods, part of a citywide trend of vacant store fronts attributed to high rental costs.
Fifth Avenue from 142nd Street to 135th Street carries two-way traffic. Fifth Avenue carries one-way traffic southbound from 135th Street to Washington Square North; the changeover to one-way traffic south of 135th Street took place on January 14, 1966, at which time Madison Avenue was changed to one way uptown. From 124th Street to 120th Street, Fifth Avenue is cut off by Marcus Garvey Park, with southbound traffic diverted around the park via Mount Morris Park West. Fifth Avenue is the traditional route for many celebratory parades in New York City; the longest running parade is the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. Parades held are distinct from the ticker-tape parades held on the "Canyon of Heroes" on lower Broadway, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade held on Broadway from the Upper West Side downtown to Herald Square. Fifth Avenue parades proceed from south to north, with the exception of the LGBT Pride March, which goes north to south to end in Greenwich Village; the Latino literary classic by New Yorker Giannina Braschi, entitled "Empire of Dreams," takes place on the Puerto Rican Day Parade on Fifth Avenue.
Bicycling on Fifth Avenue ranges from segregated with a bike lane south of 23rd Street, to scenic along Central Park, to dangerous through Midtown with heavy traffic during rush hours. There is no dedicated bike lane along Fifth Avenue. In July 1987 New York City Mayor Edward Koch proposed banning bicycling on Fifth and Madison Avenues during weekdays, but many bicyclists protested and had the ban overturned; when the trial was started on Monday, August 24, 1987 for 90 days to ban bicyclists from these three avenues from 31st Street to 59th Street between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays, mopeds would not be banned. On Monday, August 31, 1987, a state appeals court judge halted the ban for at least a week pending a ruling after opponents against the ban brought a lawsuit. Fifth Avenue is one of the few major streets in Manhattan along. Instead, Fifth Avenue Coach offered a service more to the taste of fashionable gentlefolk, at twice the fare. Double-decker buses were operated by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company until 1953, again by MTA Regional Bus Operations from 1976 to 1978.
Today, local bus service along Fifth Avenue is provided by the MTA's M1, M2, M3, M4 buses. The M5 and Q32 run on Fifth Avenue in Midtown, while the M55 runs on Fifth Avenue south of 44th Street
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late nineteenth century and had a profound influence on feminism well into the twentieth century. The term "New Woman" was coined by writer Charles Reade in his novel "A Woman Hater" published serially in Blackwood's Magazine and in three volumes in 1877. Of particular interest in the context are Chapters XIV and XV in volume two, which made the case for the equal treatment of women and arguably sparked off the whole Women's Movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1894, Irish writer Sarah Grand used the term "new woman" in an influential article, to refer to independent women seeking radical change, in response the English writer'Ouida' used the term as the title of a follow-up article; the term was further popularized by British-American writer Henry James, who used it to describe the growth in the number of feminist, independent career women in Europe and the United States. Independence was not a matter of the mind: it involved physical changes in activity and dress, as activities such as bicycling expanded women's ability to engage with a broader more active world.
The New Woman pushed the limits set by a male-dominated society as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen. Writer Henry James was among the authors who popularized the term "New Woman", a figure, represented in the heroines of his novels—among them the title character of the novella Daisy Miller, Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady. According to historian Ruth Bordin, the term New Woman was intended by to characterize American expatriates living in Europe: women of affluence and sensitivity, who despite or because of their wealth exhibited an independent spirit and were accustomed to acting on their own; the term New Woman always referred to women who exercised control over their own lives be it personal, social, or economic. The "New Woman" was a nickname given to Ella Hepworth Dixon, the English author of the novel The Story of a Modern Woman. Although the New Woman was becoming a more active participant in life as a member of society and the workforce, she was most depicted exerting her autonomy in the domestic and private spheres in literature and other artistic representations.
The 19th-century suffragette movement to gain women's democratic rights was the most significant influence on the New Woman. Education and employment opportunities for women were increasing as western countries became more urban and industrialized; the "pink-collar" workforce gave women a foothold in institutional sphere. In 1870, women in the professions comprised only 6.4 percent of the United States' non-agricultural workforce. More women were winning the right to attend college; some were obtaining a professional education and becoming lawyers, doctors and professors at prestigious all-female colleges such as the Seven Sisters schools: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley. The New Woman in the United States was participating in post-secondary education in larger numbers by the turn of the 20th century. Alice Freeman Palmer became Wellesley's first woman president in 1881, while Mount Holyoke had elected female leadership since its founding in 1837. Autonomy was a radical goal for women at the end of the 19th century.
It was a truism that women were always and economically dependent on their husband, male relatives, or social and charitable institutions. The emergence of education and career opportunities for women in the late 19th century, as well as new legal rights to property, meant that they stepped into a new position of freedom and choice when it came to marital and sexual partners; the New Woman placed great importance on her sexual autonomy, but, difficult to put into practice as society still voiced loud disapproval of any sign of female licentiousness. For women in the Victorian era, any sexual activity outside of marriage was judged to be immoral. Divorce law changes during the late 19th century gave rise to a New Woman who could survive a divorce with her economic independence intact, an increasing number of divorced women remarried. Maintaining social respectability while exercising legal rights still judged to be immoral by many was a challenge for the New Woman: Mary Heaton Vorse put her compromise this way: "I am trying for nothing so hard in my own personal life as how not to be respectable when married."
It was clear in the novels of Henry James that however free his heroines felt to exercise their intellectual and sexual autonomy, they paid a price for their choices. Some admirers of the New Woman trend found freedom to engage in lesbian relationships through their networking in women's groups, it has been said that for some of them, "loving other women became a way to escape what they saw as the probabilities of male domination inherent in a heterosexual relationship". For others, it may have been the case that economic independence meant that they were not answerable to a guardian for their sexual or other relationship choices, they exercised that new freedom; the New Woman was a result of the growing respectability of postsecondary education and employment for women who belonged to the privileged upper classes of society. University education itself was still a badge of affluence for men at the turn of the 20th century, fewer than 10 percent of people in the United States had a postsecondary education during the era.
The women entering universities belonged to the white middle class. Consequentially, the working class, people o
