New Women

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, "new woman" novels reflected larger social debates over new occupations and votes for women. Plots of these novels often include: marriage as an economic and social (and sometimes loveless) contract; the rights of women to their own desires outside the bounds of family; and the defeat of oppressive conventions. Women depicted in these novels often resist traditional marital or social roles and forge new relationships of their own.

Women Doctors

Dr. Edith Romney: a novel
Anne Elliot. Dr. Edith Romney: a novel . London: R. Bentley and Son, 1883.

Anne Elliot wrote several novels featuring strong-minded heroines occupying roles usually filled by men. This one features a female doctor.

Anna Marsden’s Experiment

Anna Marsden’s Experiment
Ellen Williams. Anna Marsden’s Experiment. London: Greening & Co., 1899.

The plot involves an "intrinsically masculine" heroine who supplements her small inherited in-come with her contributions to women’s journals. Rejected by her attractive male colleague in favor of a pretty but frivolous art student, Anna Marsden assumes the persona and clothes of a man, whereby she gains the friendship of the male colleague and the love of the art student. A copy of the author’s only book.

Career Girls

The Career of Claudia
Frances Mary Peard. The Career of Claudia . London: Richard Bentley, 1897.

In this "new woman" novel, the tomboyish heroine has inherited money but, much to her friends’ bewilderment, chooses to work as a landscape gardener. Initially rejecting her suitor, she finally capitulates, but warns, "I must live my own life!"

Unconventional Lifestyles

What a Woman Will Do
Lucas Cleeve [pseudonym of Mrs. Adelina Kingscote]. What a Woman Will Do . London, F.V. White, 1900.

Mrs. Kingscote was one of the first female novelists to attend Oxford University. This novel is about a couple who agree to divorce so that he can marry a rich woman and support the couple’s four children.

Out of Wedlock

Seaweed. A Cornish Idyll
Edith Ellis. Seaweed. A Cornish Idyll . London: University Press, Ltd., 1898.

Edith Ellis was the wife of Havelock Ellis, the writer of books on sexual science. In Seaweed, the deeply sensual heroine is married to a pious but paralyzed miner. At her husband’s insistence, she conceives and successfully produces a child with another man.