Celebrating the “New Woman”
Sarah Grand did not coin the phrase “New Woman” but she took it and ran, building it into a clarion call—a siren’s song, if you will—for all those who wanted to see themselves or support others as an evolutionary step forward for womanhood. Grand’s writing about the New Woman is perhaps surprisingly simple in its essential definition consider all the controversy and outrage she engendered among male opponents. The New Woman would be independent of the necessity to depend upon a man and she would also deeply be committed to seeing this era come about as a result of support for radical changes in the social system. It is a theme which is pervasive throughout her writing, whether explicitly addressed or more subtly incorporated.
Eugenics
Far more controversial today when considering the legacy of Grand is her wholesale adoption of what was even at the time highly debated: eugenics. This principle of theoretically maintaining the purity of “superior” genetic races through a host of medical procedures increasingly more horrific in nature would ultimately be entirely discredited as a result of their association with the Nazis, but at the time the science was not quite hard enough to reject it outright. Grand was hardly alone in supporting eugenics and was also not the only writer to incorporate it as a theme into their writing. The theory plays a significant role in the collection of stories under the title Our Manifold Nature, but is most grotesquely employed in a story with the tip-off title, Eugenia. It is a story which has over time been that which is most subject to harsh editing for republication and one can clearly see why when the narrator—speaking for the author’s already public support of the notion—writes of the title character:
“She was, in fact, essentially a modern maiden … With such women for the mothers of men, the English-speaking races should rule the world.”
Even in light of the fact that Grand's adoption of eugenics is being made for the purposes of feminist empowerment, such language should be abhorrent to anyone not running a white supremacy website.
Victory of the Patriarchy: The Fix was In
Essentially this theme which is confronted more like an attack than an underlying guide to understanding can be put quite simply: through history man has obstructed the ability for women to become educated and then oppressed them on the basis that they were not intelligent enough to do the things that required the higher learning skills of men. Grand especially confronts this demonic rigging of the game in “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” but it is also a vital piece in the construction of her novel, Ideala. The power of the patriarchy was constructed upon a fixed game in which the outcome was pre-determined and that predetermination was ensure through the further advantage of sheer physical force.
