New Woman Writers, Authority and the Body

Edited By: Stacey Floyd, Melissa Purdue

£34.99

This collection of essays explores fin de siècle “New Woman” writers who challenged women’s limited societal roles. The essays shed light on their progressive portrayals of female authority, strong physical bodies, and re-envisioned marriage plots.

This collection of essays contributes to scholarship on the emerging voices of women writers during the fin de siècle. These “New Woman” writers created a…

This collection of essays contributes to scholarship on the emerging voices of women writers during the fin de siècle. These “New Woman” writers created a distinctly different body of literature that reflected their concerns about women’s limited role in society. The essays cover a range of authors, shedding light on the ways New Woman texts also often offer new and progressive portrayals of women’s authority as connected to strong physical bodies. These scholars highlight how New Woman endings re-envision the marriage plot, self-destruction and even empowerment through pain. Additionally they help scholars, instructors and students contextualize the New Woman writers in terms of the Women’s Movement, nineteenth-century laws related to marriage, Darwinian theory, athletics for women, the New Woman’s navigation of urban life and even Jack the Ripper.

Stacey Floyd is an Assistant Professor at Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is co-editor of the journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. Her teaching and research interests include representations of the working class in social problem and Chartist literature in the nineteenth century.

Melissa Purdue is an Assistant Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her current research focuses on representations of motherhood, interracial marriage and women’s sexuality in New Woman colonial fiction. She is co-editor of the journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.