The Late-Victorian Marriage Question - A Collection of Key New Woman Texts (Hardcover)

The Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's rights to an independent life reflects the impact the women's movement had on the formation and transformation of public opinion. The marriage debate was also about the New Woman, the "fin-de-siecle" representation of the feminist. This anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by connecting them to the public response they received. The first volume focuses on Mona Caird's "The Morality of Marriage" and the widespread controversy it provoked. The second volume widens the debate between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists by linking the public discourse on marriage and divorce to the controversy of the New Woman, a debate initiated and sustained by Sarah Grand's writings. The third and fourth volumes are concerned with New Woman fiction, providing selected reading from feminist and anti-feminist works, and reproducing the media debate on morality in literature. The fiction is taken from the writings of: Emma Brooke, Mona Caird, Gertrude Dix, Lady Florence Dixie, Emma Hepworth Dixon and George Egerton.