The ‘Woman Question’, the ‘New Woman’, and Some Late Victorian Fiction

Abstract

This article focuses on the emergence of the ‘New Woman' in late nineteenth-century English society against the background of feminist thinking that developed over an extended period, examining some of her literary manifestations in fiction by George Meredith, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird and George Egerton. It was clear to her more conservative sisters, not to mention the vast majority of men who took account of her, that the New Woman was radically aggressive in her desire for emancipation from ancient social, domestic, professional and political sanctions and restrictions, and as such she was both lampooned and severely criticized, not least by women, for the threat she seemed to constitute to the established order. However, support for her cause was evident, to varying degrees, in the work of canonical male writers of the time, especially in that of George Meredith, who serves to introduce the discussion.