With the end of the 19^th century came many new ideas of sexuality and empowerment. They set the stage for the New Women movement and the beginnings of feminist writings and publications. The New Woman movement was the beginning of the push for female autonomy that would continue into the twentieth century, and even the twenty-first. The New Woman movement placed a heavy emphasis on independence and autonomy of one’s self. (Bordin). The movement encouraged women to find economic and social stability without men, but also encouraged women to use their moral righteousness to persuade their husbands to virtue. This movement pushed for educated and independent women. However, the independence was not solely conceptual but pushed into changes in dress and actions which would expand the women’s domain into the broader world including the workforce.

While many articles had been published throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the movement was fully realized with the publication of Sarah Grand’s essay, The New Aspect of the Woman Question. Grand condemned men who sexually strayed from their marriages causing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. She also condemned wives, whom she referred to as ‘cow women’, who allowed their husbands to commit such acts. Grand claimed that this preserved gender inequality within marriages (Ledger). In Grand’s writing, she addresses the double standard of the expectation for women to remain sexually virtuous, while men were not. Grand claimed that women needed to hold their husbands to the higher moral standard and reform them from their infidelity. Additionally, Grand embraces female sexuality and talks about her heroine’s desires. Sexuality and identity were major parts of the New Woman movement. With new rights in terms of property and divorce, women could finally have intellectual and sexual autonomy (Ledger).

The New Woman movement expanded on the ideas of women as the moral compass of society and called for their role to extend from the domestic sphere into the public sphere. Since women had the best interests of the country at heart, people claimed that a women’s role in the political sphere was not a contradiction to her domestic duties, but rather it was their extension and continuance (Tusan). Women’s great moral righteousness and selflessness would lead them to vote or speak on behalf of the better of the country. This idea of feminine selflessness resonated with the expected gender norms for the Victorian Era. While women did not receive the right to vote in England within the 19^th century, these new ideas of women active outside of the home were the foundation for many arguments in favor of women’s suffrage.

            This movement generated many critiques. A major opponent to the New Woman movement, Eliza Lynn Linton, wrote about “Wild Women” an alternative version of the New Woman as a menace to society (Pykett). One of the major concerns with the New Woman was about the institution of marriage: “the New Woman herself, riding her bicycle in her bloomers and apparently in no need of assistance from anyone, led many people to believe, or fear, that a woman who could choose how she would live would no longer choose men” (MacPike). Previously, women had always existed in a subservient role to their husbands and any male relations in their life. This was partially due to their economic and legal reliance on these men; however, with laws changing and economic independence possible for women, men no longer held extreme power over women. In actuality, however, women were not free from the limitations and expectations of patriarchal society. Another concern was that the New Woman endangered not only social order but also natural order. Much of the medical community supported the idea that development of a woman’s brain caused infertility (Pykett). People concluded that the survival of humankind was endangered by women’s education.

            As pages spun off the printing press, the idea of the New Woman circulated across late-Victorian society. The New Woman movement was a reaction to the changes in women’s rights throughout that era. As a product of the Victorian Era, the movement refracted the contradictions and complexities about what it meant to be feminine. Writers of the New Woman movement explored and exposed these contradictions (Pykett). The New Woman articles and novels illustrate the complex views on women throughout the Victorian Era.

Works Cited

Bordin, Ruth Birgitta Anderson, excerpt from “Alice Freeman Palmer: the evolution of a new woman,” Digital Public Library of America, http://dp.la/item/61122e6aa1279a1b82af4add9cf9c814.

Ledger, S. (2007). The new woman and feminist fictions. In G. Marshall (Ed.), The cambridge companion to the fin de siècle, cambridge (pp. 153-168). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/10.1017/CCOL9780521850636.009 Retrieved from http://ezproxy.depaul.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.dep...

Pykett, Lyn. The 'Improper' Feminine : The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing, Taylor & Francis Group, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/depaul/detail.action?docID=167885.

MacPike, Loralee. “The New Woman, Childbearing, and the Reconstruction of Gender, 1880-1900.” NWSA Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, 1989, pp. 368–397. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4315921. Accessed 1 Oct. 2020.

Tusan, Michelle Elizabeth. “Inventing the New Woman: Print Culture and Identity Politics during the Fin-De-Siecle: 1997 VanArsdel Prize.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 1998, pp. 169–182. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20083064. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.