Essay Questions

Loy seems to be rather angry with her fellow women in her writing of the Manifesto. Why is this?

Loy is angry with her fellow women because she feels that they are satisfied with too little and appeased with the smallest of changes when in fact they should be focusing on being angry that there are no big changes being made. She is angry that they see a small improvement in their status or a small step towards eventual equality and feel like they are making inroads into the issue when in fact they are really not.

She is also angry with their half-hearted attempts to gain equality. Even the Suffragettes cause her to be frustrated and angry because they are so focused on the issue of votes for women that Loy fears when they have eventually succeeded in giving women the same voting rights as men, they will feel that they have accomplished their goal and will cease fighting for the cause. Loy does not want small changes that add up; she wants the entire system that gives men more rights than women dismantled, even if this is an uncomfortable process.

Although Loy is radical in her views about women and equality, in some of her other views she is said to lean towards the outwardly fascist. What are these views and do you agree with the critical stance on them?

Loy believes that their is a difference between intellectual women of distinction, and uneducated women; she insinuates that members of the former group deserve equality with men, but that members of the latter group do not deserve equality with anyone, because they are intellectually subordinate. She also feels that intellectually superior, physically beautiful women have a duty to procreate so that they can create a generation of women who are more superior than the last.

If this sounds like Hitler's "master race", it is no coincidence; at the time, in the early part of the twentieth century, there was enormous interest in the subject of eugenics, which is basically the scientific perspective on the survival of the fittest theory. In Hitler's case, he wanted to create a master race that were physically superior to their peers until only this master race and their descendants existed, thereby making the country stronger and more unbeatable. Loy's viewpoint was fairly similar; she wanted to create a generation of intellectually superior women who would then in turn produce even more intellectually superior women until women were at their absolute strongest and most unbeatable; a strong intellect, she believed, was the only way in which women were going to be able to affect any change and ultimately gain equality. Her viewpoint is based on the theory of eugenics in the same way that Hitler's is, but her goal is greatly different, in that she is not intending to exterminate the less intellectual women, or remove them from society; however, her intention is based on the theory that to be intellectual is somehow to be superior and so for this reason her Manifesto has always been extremely controversial.