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the new woman: from eminism to theater

While being essentially fiction, in many ways the new woman did exist in the 1890s and 1900s. She is a product of the accelerating woman’s movement, a forerunner to the sufragette. The new woman was first named, it is claimed, by the radical novelist, Sarah Grand, in the North American Review in May 1894. Thereafter and with great rapidity the new woman was dissected in the pages of other reviews, spawned a genre of novels and was much discussed in ladies’ magazines. She was to be found on stage in the plays of – among others – Sydney Grundy, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Harley Granville Barker and George Bernard Shaw.
Before dealing with the fictional dimension of the new woman in the theater of Shaw – particularly in Mrs Warren’s Profession – a brief history of the movement for the emancipation of women in England until the end of the 19th century is given.


Feminism
Troughout the 18th century, after the industrial revolution in England, the Englis...

Posted by: Leonard Herriman

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