The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation — John Shaqi
The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of InterpretationMaitland, Edward
Religion
The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation
Maitland, Edward
Kingsford, Anna Bonus, 1846-1888; Mysticism
One of the occupations of her early married life was the editing of a
lady's magazine, which she purchased with a view of making it an
instrument for the dissemination of her ideas especially in regard to
her sex. And she accordingly took an active part in the movement then
recently originated for the enfranchisement of women, achieving an
extraordinary success as a public speaker. But, becoming convinced that
their cause would be best advanced by the practical demonstration of
their fitness for the promotion they sought, and also feeling her own
need for the discipline of a severe intellectual training to balance the
emotional side of her nature, she soon withdrew from active
participation in the movement. She moreover recognised as a grave
mistake the disposition evinced by her fellow-workers to suppress their
womanliness in favour of a factitious masculinity, under the impression
that they would thereby exalt their sex; her idea being, that their true
policy lay in magnifying rather than in depreciating their womanhood.
Meanwhile she had given birth to a daughter, her only child.
Her magazine was given up after a couple of years, the results failing
to justify the expenditure of time, labour and money, requisite for its
continuance. Not that it lacked adequate support; but the principles on
which she insisted on conducting it proved to be incompatible with
commercial success. She resolutely refused all advertisements of
articles, whether of food or of clothing, of which she disapproved; and
she had adopted the pythagorean regimen and discarded as unhygienic
sundry articles of attire ordinarily deemed indispensable by her sex. It
was in her magazine that she first struck the note which proved the
initiation of the holy warfare since waged against the horrors of the
physiological laboratory, a warfare in which she bore a foremost part
and developed the malady of which she died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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