What is 'new' about the 'New Woman' Discuss the challenges posed by Essay

What is 'new' about the 'New Woman' Discuss the challenges posed by the emergenceof this figure in late Victorian literature - Essay Example of new genres of women’s fiction – women’s ‘sensation’ novel of the 1860s and the ‘new woman’ novel of the 1890s – as well as the emergence of a ‘new’ kind of woman in literature and society, challenging the Victorian social ideals and perceptions of femininity. [Pykett, 1992] While the sensation heroines, as Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Isabel Sleaford in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and Aurora in ‘Aurora Floyd’ present shades of a new kind of woman – â€Å"a woman who cannot easily be accommodated either to the category of normal, proper femininity, nor to that of deviant, improper femininity,† [Pykett, 1992; p. 19] the ‘new woman’ heroines of the 1880s and 1890s, as Lyndall in Olive Schreiner’s autobiographical novel ‘The Story of an African Farm’, presents more powerful, fiercely independent and more â€Å"seriously feminist† representation of women. Though Lyndall is more often referred to as the â€Å"best example† of the â€Å"new woman’ in English novel, [Monsman, 1985; p. 262] Braddon’s Isabel and Aurora Floyd are more subtler representations of an evolving, new femininity, at odds with the Victorian perceptions of femininity. It may be fascinat ing to analyse the development of this new femininity and representations of ‘new woman’ in literature, as women writers of the late -Victorian era defined and redefined femininity. As one attempts to understand the ‘new’-ness of the ‘new woman’ and the challenges posed by these representations in literature, it may be worthwhile to examine how the ‘new woman’ is described, as well as analyse the construct of this figure in literature in relation to the perceptions of femininity in their days. Smith Rosenberg explains that the New Woman was primarily a representation-- ‘a condensed symbol of disorder and rebellion,’ [In Pykett, 1992; p.137-38] actively produced and reproduced in the print media and in novels. From a more realistic perception the New Woman is