Abstract
This thesis is a study of six New Woman fictions, and it analyses how each text develops and advocates for what I have termed different “styles of femininity,” in opposition to the traditional model of the mid-Victorian angel in the house. I begin with a discussion of Sarah Grand, Ménie Muriel Dowie, and Mona Caird’s conflicting reimaginations of motherhood, using contemporary journalism to support my close reading of the novels and determine the success of their respective reformulations. I then move on to an investigation of how Olive Schreiner, Grand, and Rhoda Broughton incorporate cross-dressing, androgyny, and female masculinity into their fiction to complicate the gender binary and further push the boundaries of the feminine. Lastly, I conduct a Kristevan analysis of how Schreiner and George Egerton test the limits of the realist genre as a means of expanding femininity, as they make use of elision, imagination, and fantasy to free their heroines from symbolic definitions of femininity. My analysis reveals that, while these six texts were seldom in agreement as to how femininity could be most productively redefined, their contradictions and conflicts meta-textually demonstrate the multiplicity and variety of femininities. The New Women’s efforts to diversify femininity were, I shall reveal, ultimately strengthened by the variety of perspectives offered in their fictions.