Feminism and the Popular Novel of the 1890s: A Brief Consideration of a Forgotten Feminist Novelist

Abstract

In an article in Feminist Review Rosalind Coward examines what she describes as 'a strange phenomenon, the emergence of what we may loosely call the novel' (1980: 53). Having loosely called it that, she goes on to question how feminist these novels really are, expressing concern at 'the intense commercial success and popular appeal of some novels which claim explicit allegiance to the women's liberation movement'. Central to her doubts about these novels is a question about 'the political validity of the admixture of conventional entertainment with a serious political message'. Disagreeing with Rebecca O'Rourke (1979) that all wnting by women is of interest to feminists because it charts areas of experience common to all women, Coward argues that womancentred writing has no 'necessary relationship' to feminism. She goes on to suggest that 'real' feminist writing is to be found in political texts rather than novels, and that the novels she instances (Kinflicks, The Women's Room) are 'a kind of writing... (that)... corresponds more closely to the structures of popular fiction rather than satisfying the incipient feminism of the population'. I take this to mean that the hard edge of feminist politics is lost in 'the conventional structures that make up the novelistic ' which these novels share with popular fiction in general. These are interesting and illuminating questions which need to be pursued further theoretically and in criticism of contemporary feminist or feminist-inspired literature. My own interest here is historical, and it begins with a quibble: it simply isn't true that the feminist novel is a modern phenomenon. Feminist writers of thew 18908 and early twentieth century, in particular Sarah Grand and Elizabeth Robins, achieved immense popular success and huge sales with novels which dramatized aspects of feminist thinking of the time. Their heroines were 'New Women' who joined the organized women's movement and worked with other women towards feminist ends. Unlike the 'New Women' in the novels of male writers Hardy's Sue Bridehead is the outstanding example these women were not depicted as 'puzzling', 'inexplicable' or 'mysterious'; nor were they shown as isolated, despairing misfits, but as women