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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2021
The following article appeared as a front page leader in the Boston Daily Globe, 26 Feb. 1883, when James was in Boston (see Chronology of Composition and Publication, p. cxxiv). It matches James's opinion that ‘the situation of women’ was ‘the most salient and peculiar point in our social life’. Three of its suggested phrases – ‘uprising’, ‘crusade’, and ‘movement’ – appear in the novel, and the fourth, ‘advance’, appears in a cognate form. The article refers to the variety and pervasiveness of the phenomenon, with ‘clubs of women in all the cities of any importance’ and ‘State and National organizations of women for this, that and the other purpose’, and emphasizes the strength of these ‘sisterhoods’. A paragraph about women who have entered journalism, and who are quick to publicize women's achievements, resonates in the novel with Matthias Pardon's slightly edgy tribute to the ‘lady-writers’ with whom he competes (16: 11). The article concludes by presenting alternative visions of the future relations between the sexes: either ‘the interests of men and women are to be more separated than they have been in the past’, or ‘the interests of the two sexes are to interlace and become constantly closer and more nearly identical’. It seems plausible to suggest that this piece caught James's eye, especially given the direct allusion to his own attitude to women in the title and opening sentence; certainly The Bostonians takes up the questions it poses.
“The Solidarity of the Sex”
Such is the expressive phrase by which Mr. Henry James refers to a certain peculiarity of the feminine sex which leads them to “stand by” one another at all times and upon all occasions. But it is capable of bearing a much deeper significance than that which he gave it in the mouth of the sarcastic character who used it. It is as fitting a phrase as could have been coined to express some of the results of the modern movement of women and the tendency it produces among them to advance in solid phalanx.
This movement itself is one of the most unique, as one of the most momentous, that have changed the conditions of society for several centuries.
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