The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

women greater control over their own bodies, weakening the need for dependence on and submission to male authority. According to Theriot, “late-century women experienced the cared- for female body as naturally healthy, not feeble, and saw suffering as an aberration, not as an inevitable consequence of being female… [they] viewed health and strength as essential to female beauty, a concept totally at odds with the earlier idealization of frail, pale, listless femininity, [attributing] illness and weakness to socialization, not to nature” (81-82). Advances in birth control and understanding of reproduction also afforded women more control over their bodies (Theriot 90) Women no longer had to define themselves by the children they birthed, adding to their health and overall sense of worth beyond their function as vessels of boys-who- would-be-men. New Womanhood progressed into the twentieth century, eventually giving way to the woman of the 1920s. This changing tide of womanhood, while important, was not black and white. In the study of one particular woman of the nineteenth century, whose married life began just as the New Woman appeared, we see the influences of both concepts of womanhood. Martha: Her Own Woman The year 1900 represents a pivotal point in both American history and in the life of Martha McMillan. As the century turned, Martha was in her mid-fifties, thirty years into her marriage, and was the mother of adult children. The idea of New Womanhood had already been established, but Martha was of the generation brought up under the ideal of True Womanhood. As such, throughout the first four months of her 1900 journal, Martha exhibits traits of both types of womanhood. She doesn’t define herself completely as a certain type of woman; instead, Martha proves that even though she exhibits traits of True Womanhood and New Womanhood, ultimately she doesn’t have to define herself in relation to anyone: she’s just Martha. 179