New Women and/in Masculine Spaces: The Anti-Feminism of the Pen and Pencil Club of Montreal, 1895–1915

Using close reading of archival material, this paper uncovers the anti-feminist underpinnings of the Pen and Pencil Club of Montreal, amidst which Stephen Leacock and Andrew Macphail spent their formative years as writers. It examines four instances of the artistic and literary output of the Club’s members from 1895 to 1915: William McLennan’s unpublished poem “The New Woman,” a drawing by Edmond Dyonnet, a watercolour by Kenneth Macpherson, and a published book entitled A Semi-Detached House and Other Stories, written by J. Try-Davies and illustrated by fellow member Robert Harris. The period covering this production leads up to and culminates with the publication of “The Woman Question” by Leacock in 1915. The article argues that the Pen and Pencil Club’s obsession, first with the figure of the “New Woman” and then with the “suffragette,” precedes Leacock and Macphail’s adhesion and was sustained until 1915, thus providing a crucible in which Macphail and Leacock’s ideas on the place of women were developed and refined.