One of the most important things to remember when reading NEQUA is when it was written, 1900. A reader should try to place themselves in a world with out aeroplanes, with cowboys riding down Main Street, where women were chattel. The derivation of "chattel" is very interesting. It comes from a French word "chatel" which described property. The French got it from Latin "capitale" which was from "caput", the word for head. My dictionary says it compared with capital and cattle.

To interfere with a man beating his wife was a crime. He was just correcting his chattel, his cattle. In Kansas, any woman advocating any idea that could be construed as even imagining that a woman might be a self guided, self regulated, equal under the law, human being, was guilty of treason to the human race.

In Valley Falls, Kansas a newspaper man printed an article which was against The Comstock Act, which specifically prohibited the discussion of martial rape. He served six years in prison for printing the article which had been written by a New York physician. The same editor after moving to Chicago printed two articles which resulted in a year at hard labor (read breaking up rocks). 

So that is the climate in which one should read NEQUA which was partially written by a woman who edited "The New Woman" a suffrage newspaper.

I have found several reviews of the book NEQUA which first appeared in 1901. Here is the first one.



From “The Arena” a magazine
       Vol. XXV # 2  Feb. 1901

........    The latest social vision that has come to my notice is entitled “NEQUA.” The author veils his or her identity under the nom de plume of Jack Adams. As a story, apart from the social theories, it evinces far more imagination than most economic or “problem” novels. There is a strong thread of romance and adventure running through the work. The author tells her story (for we hazard the guess that the author is a woman) in a simple straightforward manner. The hero, the heroine, and the modern argosy sail into the north sea and down into the interior world. Here they meet a race advanced far beyond our civilization, and it is largely with this fine and highly-developed people that the writer deals. The social theories are for the most part in alignment with what we conceive to be the highest and noblest vision that has been vouchsafed to the advance-guard of our time, although some things found in the new world will doubtless fail to command the approval of many readers. The book is a valuable contribution to the literature that is making a better civilization. The more that such books are circulated, the earlier will dawn the new day which shall bring the recognition of the right of all men to have work to do and just remuneration for their labors, the opportunity to enjoy home and the pleasure of education and wholesome recreation.