Ons Streven
A trial issue of a new women’s magazine entitled Ons Streven: Weekblad gewijd aan de ontwikkeling der vrouw (Our Quest: Weekly Magazine Devoted to the Development of Women) was published in 1870. In her introductory article editor Betsy Perk announced the magazine’s ‘moderate yet firm demand’ for an improvement in the position of women. Her demand was ‘firm’ because she believed that ‘the position of woman in society’ needed improving without delay and ‘moderate’ because she chose a different method to bring this change about than her more radical counterparts abroad. She was fervently opposed to pushing emancipation to extremes and having women taking the place of men.
Following conflicts with the magazine’s publisher Odé and her fellow-editors, Perk resigned as editor less than a week after the trial issue came out and started her own magazine, with some help from the Delft publisher Johannes Ykema. The new periodical resembled Ons Streven in many respects, including its title, Onze Roeping (Our Mission, 1870-1873). As Ons Streven continued to appear, the Dutch market for periodicals suddenly boasted two new magazines on women’s emancipation. Ons Streven had both male and female collaborators and from its fifth issue, a new (female) editor, Reynoudina de Goeje, who wrote under the pseudonym Agatha.
During its nine-year existence Ons Streven appeared as a newspaper of four to six pages with a regular format. It always started with a current affairs article, followed by domestic and foreign news reports, a miscellany section (‘Mengelwerk’), reviews, correspondences and advertisements. Two new sections were added in 1871, a serial (‘Feuilleton’) and ‘Kitchen and home’ (‘Uit keuken en huishouding’).
Ons Streven stopped appearing in 1878 for financial reasons. Odé had tried to keep it afloat by making some changes, such as a smaller format, twice weekly appearance, a different subtitle and a new section on the fine arts, but he was forced to pull the plug in September. Subscribers were offered De Huisvrouw (The Housewife) as a replacement.
Ons Streven has yielded a wealth of reception data (220 records) for the WomenWriters database as nearly all sections were found to contain references to female authors. Some of these are to contributors to the magazine ? many of the serials were written by women (Amy Geertruida de Leeuw, Catharina van Rees, of course Agatha herself, and others) ? but mostly they are reviews of works by (both Dutch and foreign, contemporary or previous) writers such as Katharina Schweikhardt, wife of the poet Bilderdijk, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette and George Sand. The serials equally presented ‘Beroemde vrouwen van onzen tijd’ (‘Famous Women of Our Time’), among whom several authors. The news items, such as obituaries and reports of special achievements, contained emancipatory and ‘regular’ news, and often featured women, both Dutch and foreign.
The reviews did not focus exclusively on women’s works, although the editors had expressed a preference for them: ‘The editors would prefer to review such novels, poems and other literary writings as are of importance to female readers and touch on women’s interests’ (OS 1870, no.11, p. 51). The magazine had its own reviewers, men and women, and sometimes invited a guest author to write a review. Reviews were not always signed. For 47 review articles female authorship has been specified. For more than hundred other articles discuss work by women, but as they are often unsigned, we cannot be sure if they were written by men or women.
The ‘correspondence’ section contained letters addressed to the editor by men and women, sometimes published with a reply, while the advertising section featured employment ads and publicity for new books and medicines. Marketing strategies were found even then, with advertising increasing in the run-up to the Dutch feast of Saint Nicholas in December and favourable reviews prompting publishers to advertise for the works in question. The editor-in-chief also seems to have made good use of the advertising section ? her publisher frequently uses it as a platform to promote her own work.
Bibliography:
- Ons Streven. Weekblad gewijd aan de ontwikkeling der vrouw. Title changed to Weekblad voor vrouwen en meisjes from 4 January 1871. Title changed to Courant voor Nederlandsche vrouwen from 2 April 1878. Schiedam, Van Dijk & Comp; from 1873, Schiedam. J. Odé. Leiden University Library.
- Jensen, Lotte. 2001. ‘Bij uitsluiting voor de vrouwelijke sekse geschikt’; vrouwentijdschriften en journalistes in de achttiende en negentiende eeuw in Nederland. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 183-232.
Susanne Parren, April 2007
Transl. Brenda Mudde
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