We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2017
And I heard a sound of something cracking, and I looked, and I saw the band that bound the burden on to her back broken asunder; and the burden rolled on to the ground.
And I said, ‘What is this?’
And he said, ‘The Age-of- muscular- force is dead. The Age-of- nervous- force has killed him with the knife he holds in his hand; and silently and invisibly he has crept up to the woman, and with that knife of Mechanical Invention he has cut the band that bound the burden to her back. The Inevitable Necessity is broken. She must rise now.’
Olive Schreiner, ‘Three Dreams in a Desert’ (1891: 71–2)The close of the nineteenth century marks an epoch of social revolutions! Humanity is borne more and more rapidly along on the course of the ever-widening, the ever-swifter flowing stream of progress, through scene after scene of novelty, where stupendous events and marvellous discoveries and inventions crowd thickly one upon another…. [M]ore discussed, debated, newspaper paragraphed, caricatured, howled down and denied, or acknowledged and approved, as the case may be, than any of them, we have the new woman … immeasurably the first in importance, the most abounding in potentialities and in common interest.
Mrs Morgan-Dockrell, ‘Is the New Woman a Myth?’ (1896: 339–40)In Olive Schreiner's 1890 short story ‘Three Dreams in a Desert’, the narrator, having fallen asleep under a mimosa tree, experiences in three dreams an allegorical journey from slavery to emancipation. In the first dream the narrator finds herself in a desert, in which she encounters the figure of a woman lying motionless in the sand, bound by chains and weakened by ages of subordination. But after having her chains cut off by ‘Mechanical Invention’, the woman staggers to her knees, and continues towards emancipation; the other two dreams see the narrator journey through a purgatorial river, and then arrive at a heavenly future. This book focuses on just what cuts off the woman's chains in Schreiner's allegory: that ‘Mechanical Invention’ of the late nineteenth century. Mrs Morgan-Dockrell in the Humanitarian names the ‘course of the ever-widening, the ever-swifter flowing stream of progress, through scene after scene of novelty, where stupendous events and marvellous discoveries and inventions crowd thickly one upon another’ (1896: 339).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
