Edith Searle Grossmann, 1863–1931

Abstract

Edith Searle Grossmann wrote the two most significant New Zealand novels to come out of the nineteenth-century women’s movement. In Revolt and A Knight of the Holy Ghost are powerful critiques of gender inequities, in spite of their didacticism and melodramatic excess. The first novel attacks male abuses of power, while the sequel presents Grossmann’s vision of a world with no gender or class divisions. Throughout, the compelling, psychologically convincing character of Hermione Howard provides the focal point. In her life as well as her art Grossmann upheld feminist ideals. One of the earliest New Zealand female Master’s graduates, she used the written word to campaign for women’s education. An independent career woman who worked as a teacher, journalist and writer, Grossmann kept her maiden name after her marriage and lived most of her life apart from her husband. Her journalism and fiction also reveals a passionate concern for New Zealand’s cultural identity. The Heart of the Bush, her final novel, creates a myth of New Zealand as a rugged, natural wonderland. This world of bush and mountains strips away the hypocrisies of English society, breeding men and women of integrity and passion, but also ‘dispossesses’ and eventually eliminates Maori (Stafford, ‘Going Native’, p. 168). Edith Howitt Searle was born on 8 September 1863 in Beechworth, Victoria and she spent much of her childhood in the Australian bush. She was the fourth child and third daughter of Mary Ann (nee Beeby) and George Smales Searle, both of whom were 40 when she was born. Her father was a newspaper editor and the family moved first to Melbourne and then New Zealand as he pursued his profession. The Searles settled in Invercargill in 1878, where Edith attended the Grammar School. In 1879 Edith Searle was sent to Christchurch Girls’ High School to finish her education. However, the principal, Helen Connon (later Macmillan Brown), admired Edith’s intellect and persuaded her to work towards entry to university. Connon was the first female Master’s graduate in the British Commonwealth and believed passionately in the need for women to develop intellectually. Edith became head girl of Christchurch Girls. In 1880 Edith was awarded a junior scholarship to Canterbury College and began studying towards a Bachelor of Arts. She was one of only four female students at the College (by the time she graduated this had burgeoned to over 100), but soon gained a reputation for her literary skill, coming second to Joseph Penfound Grossmann in the 1881 Bowen Essay Competition.