"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated June 25, 1911:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (APRIL 7, 2021):
So, I'm not a fan of this particular strip… partly because I can't seem to map it onto our recurring allegorical narrative, but more so because it is dismissive of both women and women's suffrage. - 1/17
The history of women's suffrage is long and fraught with misogynistic ideology (I can't cover it all here, by any means). - 2/17
That said, I did come across a 1911 document, prepared by one J.B. Sanford,
that demonstrates the sort of misogynistic rhetoric that suffragettes were fighting against: - 3/17
This document (historically useful, but downright revolting in it's contents) was an attempt to stop the 1911 California Proposition 4, which was to give women in California the right to vote for the first time: - 4/17
#SpoilerAlert: Sanford and his ilk failed and suffrage was passed narrowly with 50.7% support. - 5/17
Now, though the vote for Proposition 4 did not occur until October (Some four months after this strips publication), one must assume that it would've been a common talking point. - 6/17
California would soon become only the sixth state in the US to grant women's suffrage by 1911 (unless I'm mistaken, NY state didn't follow suit until 1919?). It seems naïve to think that the rest of the US wasn't keeping tabs. - 7/17
This strip reveals historical misogyny in a way that I simply haven't read overtly in McCay's work up until now, so it took me by surprise. - 8/17
I am very fond of the Princess' character in this series and have often thought that, though she isn't the titular character, she is frequently presented in positive ways and with (historically) atypical characteristics. - 9/17
Hearing stereotypical misogyny like "she'd start talking and never stop" is off-putting when I've come to respect what I perceived as a forward thinking attitude towards women within McCay's work. - 10/17
All that said, McCay is far from perfect and, as we've spoken about before, his strip reveals many prejudices that were prevalent in the early 20th Century, so this shouldn't be too surprising. - 11/17
Also, why would the female hippo care about human women's suffrage? She is a hippo; she wouldn't be getting the vote. Why is it that this strip suggests that if given a voice, the only thing she'd have to talk about it human politics? - 12/17
This somewhat betrays the notion of "animals telling their stories" that was established all those strips ago with our friends, the bears. - 13/17
That said, it also reinforces the politics of this strip by demonstrating the power dynamic between the male and female hippo. - 14/17
Here, the female hippo is prevented not from telling *her* story, but from chiming in at all… the male hippo has silenced (similarly to how human males of the time did) the female hippo from participating in the conversation. - 15/17
This effectively reveals the oppressive power dynamic that existed between men and women in the early 20th century. - 16/17
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #298. What's yours? - 17/17
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