The 1890s: New Women

by

Nicole Schindler

2005

Content Overview

1. The New Woman - An Introduction

2. The New Woman’s Name and Means
2.1 The New Woman’s Image

3. New Education

4. The New Woman Literature

5. Challenges of and to Fashion

6. The New Woman’s Take on the ‘Woman Question’

7. The New Woman and Sexuality
7.1 Lesbianism

8. Conclusion

The Eighteen-Nineties: New Women

1. The New Woman – An Introduction

This paper will look at the New Woman movement of the 1890s in England. The Fin de Siècle was full of new ideas and challenges. Exciting social and technical developments and inventions took place. Women had challenged their subordinate social and political positions and condemned prevailing sexual double standard throughout the course of the 19th century. Feminists and advocates for the ‘Woman Cause’ urged for women’s rights to employment and full citizenship. In the last ten years of the century, though, the fight for liberation and achievement went a step further. Personal decisions, like dress, habit, choice of partner, or occupation were now becoming increasingly political. The women who fought on the frontlines, and were therefore the movement’s most visible agents, were referred to as New Women. The struggle was not only carried out on an individual level. In the 1850s, women had begun to organise in groups in order to question and defy their subordinate position in society. They were starting to agitate and speak out on all kinds of fields in culture and politics. Feminists were able to profit from the 1890’s accelerated speed of cultural developments; hitherto unthinkable things were being talked about in the press, in women’s clubs, in non-fictional and fictional books, even in fashion magazines. We will explore a variety of these new social and literary forms the New Woman movement in England adopted at the end of the 19th century.

Furthermore we will discuss the different contemporary debates on femininity. A special focus will be on the views on sexuality, the concept of marriage, and lesbianism at the time. Gender dynamics as well as social norms, laws, and professional options for women dramatically changed during the last ten years of the century. New theories on Darwin’s ideas, exploration into the field of psychology, as well as pure pragmatics all shaped the discourse. The New Women were by no means a homogenous group. We will highlight some of the members’ various political ideas on education, marriage laws and social morality, and discuss their cultural achievements.

One of the main questions in this paper will be: Did the new woman movement really bring about a new type of woman? Did the new women movement make any real changes? If so, what were the limits?

2. The New Woman’s Name and Means

It was Ouida (pen name of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé), storywriter and novelist, who took the now famous phrase ‘the new woman’ from British author and activist Sarah Grand’s essay ‘ The New Aspect of the Woman Question’. With this term she wanted to give those power-seeking females of her times, who were prepared to overturn conventions and accepted notions of femininity, a name. These women showed their ‘emancipation’ in every day life through practices like, for example, smoking, riding bicycles, using bold language or taking the omnibus or train unescorted. They sometimes belonged to all-female clubs like “Mrs. Massingberd’s Pioneer Club” or societies where like-minded individuals met and interchanged ideas. New Women wanted their own careers, desired sexual liberation from male suppression, and proper laws against marital violence.

The New Woman movement was a social and literary phenomenon and is generally considered the predecessor of the suffrage movement.¹ Due to this movement, the latter half of the 19th century saw passionate discussions and agitation on matters such as marriage and divorce laws, women’s property and custody rights, educational and employment opportunities for women as well as a lively debates on female suffrage.

When looking at these discussions one needs to differentiate between two generations of New Women, the first around the 1880s and 1890s and the second around the 1920s and the 1930s. In our paper we will concentrate on the first generation.

At a first glance middle-class New Women agitated primarily for changes in etiquette. They wanted an end to chaperones, long hair, and long skirts. At a second look they, more importantly, also fought for graver matters such as extended professional opportunities, a chance to safe independent travel and living, and the right to choose one’s partner(s). They fought for these changes in the popular press; often in the same magazines that at other times portrayed New Women as “unsexed, terrifying, violent Amazon(s) ready to overturn the world”². In the field of fiction writing the engaged women could express challenging ideas more freely. Non-fictional writing also helped to voice matters not dared to be mentioned publicly before. The suffragette movement depended in particular on such publications.

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1 see: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/suffragettes.htm

2 Richardson, Angelique (ed.). The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, S. 39