Gail Marshall

The New Woman and feminist fictions

In the first act of The New Woman , Sidney Grundys satirical play from 1894, the audience is presented with a dispute between two contrasting but utterly characteristic New Woman figures from the fin de siecle, Enid Bethune and Victoria Vivash: enid : Why should a man be allowed to commit sins - victoria : And woman not be given an opportunity? enid : Then you want to commit sins? victoria : I want to be allowed to do as men do. enid : Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself; there! victoria : I only say, I ought to be allowed. enid : And I say that a man, reeking with infamy, ought not to be allowed to marry a pure girl - victoria : Certainly not! She ought to reek with infamy as well! enid : Victoria! Enid Bethunes disapproval of male sexuality and her desire for sexual chastity in both women and men firmly ally her with a social purity feminism that was highly influential in the late nineteenth century. Social purity feminists campaigned against prostitution and decadent male sexuality, and had amongst their number the leading New Woman novelist, Sarah Grand (Frances Elizabeth McFall, 1854-1943). Grundys Victoria Vivash, by contrast, demands sexual parity between women and men, and wishes women to enjoy the same sexual freedoms as men. In the fictional field such a stance was supported by the popular writer of New Woman short stories, George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne, 1859-1945). Both positions - as evidenced by the success of Sidney Grundys theatrical spoof on the New Woman - provoked considerable controversy in the late-Victorian cultural sphere.

Women Re-Read Shakespeare Country

The nineteenth century saw the official establishment of Shakespeare as a national treasure, as his birthplace was bought for the nation in 1847; the Birthplace Trust was formed in 1866, and in 1891 was incorporated by act of parliament. By 1900, 30,000 visitors a year were visiting Stratford.1 But this official commercial adoption belies the variety of Shakespeare’s meanings for these visitors, and for Victorian women in particular. Both establishment bard and a voice adopted by radicals, Shakespeare’s sheer variety made him peculiarly suitable for adoption by politically various Victorian women in need of a mouthpiece who could be both responsive to their situation and sufficiently weighty to carry authority in a period in which their own voices benefited from the supplement of his. But there is also discernible in the responses of many Victorian women to Shakespeare, a personal element which exceeds political or literary utility, and which speaks instead of their emotional responsiveness to his work, and of the gratitude with which they welcome his ability to recognise and to voice aspects of femininity which would otherwise go unacknowledged.